Last night I covered my very first Dora Awards. For those of you who don’t know, The Doras are sort of like Toronto’s Tonys, celebrating the best in Dance, Opera, Independent Theatre, General Theatre and Theatre for Young Audiences. The night started out with a VIP cocktail reception in the basement lounge of the Sony […]
I was running around downtown Toronto like a madwoman Tuesday night, and not just because Single Thread Theatre’s The Loyalists Actually involves running (I know, I made that face too). I was mostly running because I saw two different site-specific shows in one night. I was at Campbell House (Queen & University) for 7pm to […]
Last night I took in a one-act site-specific double feature of The Loyalists in Victoria Memorial Square and Sockdolager at Campbell House, though the two have literally nothing in common apart from being set in Toronto in some century other than this one. I started off the night with The Templeton Philharmonic at Campbell House […]
Soulpepper was founded by friends. World-renowned, big-name, highly successful friends, but friends nevertheless. And to this day, Soulpepper is run by friends. You can see it when Albert Schultz knows the name of everyone in the lobby or when Derek Boyes uses his day off from You Can’t Take it With You to watch his friends perform […]
Look, I find some of what Rent teaches suspect, because I’m used to relying on intellect (and intellect says that investing in junkies, strippers, squatters and ATM RobinHood-ers isn’t necessarily wise), but I try to open up to what I don’t know*. I’m a twenty-something goodie-two-shoes who has never once not been able to pay […]
This has been a bit of a rough repertory period for the Canadian Opera Company- the full-length Offenbach they presented earlier this month was obnoxiously long and unforgivably dull and their double feature of Zemlinksy & Puccini one-acts contains one dreary dud and one brilliant success (the Puccini, predictably). With only 52 minutes of greatness […]
Rick Miller’s wackado Macbeth retelling, currently masquerading as a fourth Shakespeare production at the Stratford Festival, uses a comprehensive cast of voices from one of TV’s most successful crazy experiments, The Simpsons. When this silly one act was appearing at fringe and comedy festivals, or when it played at The Factory Theatre last September, it […]
My friends always laugh at me when I tell them Bring it On is about race relations. Because, you know, it’s about cheerleaders. But it actually IS about race relations. That iconic 2000 film was a quotable, hilarious, rip-roaring exploration of urban race relations, gender roles and outsider assimilation conflict. It Was! Screenwriters of massive […]