Pipeline is the perfect work to mark Soulpepper’s return to live theatre. Dominique Morisseau’s exploration of how American public schools set black boys up for failure at best and prison at worst was part of a 2020 program postponed by the pandemic. After two brutally long and tough years, director Weyni Mengesha and this cast […]
Annie Baker is good at making her stories the story. The Flick, a three-hour epic (or dirge, if you prefer) dazzled and bored audiences across North America before taking its talents to Toronto. After an off-Broadway debut in 2017, Antipodes now prompts audiences at the Coal Mine Theatre to examine the purpose of stories – […]
When you announce you have cancer, nobody quite knows what to say. Veteran Toronto director, writer, and performer Daniel Brooks has heard it all from would-be wellwishers whose missteps become his cautionary tales but the problem runs deeper. It’s Brooks’ problem more than anyone’s – he has a difficult story to tell and perhaps just […]
Dom Harvey
Soulpepper and Bad Hats Theatre’s Alice in Wonderland (available to stream at home until Sunday, April 18) is a welcome detour into a world no more absurd than our own. Lewis Carroll’s classic is an ideal canvas for a creative mind – a story so popular that even this young audience will know it well […]
Dom Harvey
The Queen’s Gambit embraces you like a warm marshmallow. Adapted from Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel and set in a flawlessly decorated pastiche of 1960’s America, the newest Netflix sensation tracks the meteoric rise of chess prodigy Beth Harmon as she battles her personal demons and finds a family to fill the void her real one […]
Dom Harvey
Before we announce the winners of the 2019 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our…
Dom Harvey
Every improv performer or fan has seen a troupe do the best they can with a weak or unpromising prompt. Moonstruck sidesteps that problem by drawing on the weird and wonderful world of dreams, quickly constructing a mini-universe and series of scenarios based on a wacky dream, nightmare, or something in between of an audience […]
Dom Harvey
Inside Box 4901 are some very different missed connections. Novelist Brian Francis makes his debut as a playwright and performer with a look back at a time when it was much harder to be himself. In 1992, as a young student with one foot still in the closet living in a straight house in a […]
Dom Harvey
Hannah Moscovitch’s Secret Life of a Mother is a raw and compelling portrait of the darker side of motherhood – one rarely acknowledged in polite conversation, forcing the arts to shoulder the burden of challenging these long-standing taboos. Moscovitch herself is the titular mother but the lead in this one-woman (but many-women) show is Maev […]
Dom Harvey
Julius Caesar is a tragedy for the masses. For the uninitiated, many Shakespearean tragedies are at least somewhat familiar because his work has transcended every cultural boundary: of course you know of Romeo and Juliet even if you don’t know obscure 16th century Italian poetry – or Romeo and Juliet. Others that haven’t installed themselves […]
If it’s hard to convince new audiences to give Shakespeare a chance, why not take it to them? Shakespeare-In-Hospitals goes to “traditional and non-traditional theatre spaces” with traditional and non-traditional stories – this season’s work is an ambitious blend of Shakespeare extracts, poetry, and original content dealing with tricky themes of family, memory, and loss. […]
It’s the holiday season which means we get to relive the quintessential secular Christmas story – apparently the only one, again and again. Avid Carolers are spoilt for choice – after leaving Spadina Museum full of festive cheer, you can head to The Three Ships Collective’s remount of last year’s brilliant Carol at Campbell House […]
Dom Harvey
Usually the premise for a comedy troupe is quaint, maybe a little quizzical. Dead Parents Society answers your first question right away and rejoices in how uncomfortable it makes you. Its members all lost a parent at a young age and combine to give a portrait of grief that’s darkly, uniquely comic and all the […]
Dom Harvey
In Tennessee Williams’ extensive canon, The Glass Menagerie stands out as the original “memory play”: the work is framed as the hazy recollections of the main character, whose reliability as a narrator is an open question. Williams uses this to issue an invitation to actors and directors to fill in and flesh out those memories as […]
Dom Harvey
If staging the perfect murder is hard enough, staging a good murder mystery has its own challenges. With all the mischievousness of its main characters, Patrick Hamilton’s Rope dodges those responsibilities by flipping the script: the murder is made in front of us and the motive is the mystery. It’s been a while since thrillers […]
Shakespeare earned the right to phone it in. It was clear that even his less daring and promising works would be feted beyond their merits – anything bearing his name would get the benefit of the doubt when the same script by a lesser or less famous playwright would be passed over. More generously, any […]
Dom Harvey
If reality TV taught us anything, it’s that there’s little easier to lampoon than the lives of the rich and famous; long before and through the television age, Noel Coward recognized and exploited this wonderfully. His wildly eccentric charm along with his inimitable talent and style made him the darling of the aristocracy whose attention […]
Dom Harvey
The safest compliment for art is that it knows who it’s for. Stratford’s roster in a given year mostly consists of sober, supposedly thoughtful pieces aimed at some cross-section of a reliable clientele: there will be something for the Shakespeare crowd, a high-concept work that tickles critics pink, and maybe a disappointingly rote dalliance with […]
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805-4821 (A) “805-4821 is a trans coming out story made out of other stories: a dialogue from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a half-remembered swim lesson, and an 80,000 word Facebook correspondence” This is how the promotional material introduces Davis Plett’s work, directed by Gislina Patterson. I added it to my roster expecting a show that could be […]
Dom Harvey
The label “immersive” is thrown around carelessly these days; Outside the March is working tirelessly to remind us all just what it means. Their latest project, Tape Escape, takes participants back in time and into a 90s video store – albeit with more brainteasers than the boarded-up Blockbuster down the street. This is a truly […]
Dom Harvey
Take a look at our full list of 2019 Fringe reviews HERE. Death Ray Cabaret (A-) Second City stalwarts Jordan Armstrong and Kevin Matviw bring a wonderful verve to their free-wheeling Fringe show. Partners on and off the stage, the pair have a fun and easy dynamic that lets them skip between sketches without missing a […]
Dom Harvey
Take a look at our full list of 2019 Fringe reviews HERE. The Ballad of Frank Allen (A) “Fringe veterans performing an award-winning show” sets your expectations high; “sci-fi buddy-comedy about a tiny man who lives in another man’s beard” scrambles your expectations beyond repair. Audiences go into this show not knowing what they’re walking into […]
Dom Harvey
Award-winning comedian Ian McIntyre blends the relatable and the absurd in his new revue, The Rise and Fall of Dataman, running for two nights at The Bad Dog Theatre. In a series of sketches, directed by Kirsten Rasmussen, he recounts life as a 9-5 paper pusher with an exuberance and expressiveness that contrast sharply with […]
Dom Harvey
If you want drunken debauchery, raucous theatrics, or just a good old street fight, Sterling Road isn’t your first destination. That changed this week as Angela’s Murdoch’s 1855 Toronto Circus Riot dramatizes the bizarre brawl in 1855 that marked a unique episode in the young city’s history and led to major changes in its law enforcement. […]
Dom Harvey
It can take a good family to show you what a bad one truly looks like. The team at Soulpepper brings tremendous verve to Tracy Letts’ August: Osage County, doing its best with an endless and endlessly ambitious script. August takes familiar tales and tropes of family dysfunction and weaves them into a three hour […]
Dom Harvey
It can be surprisingly hard to find a good old cabaret act done well. Toronto cabaret veterans Thomas and Kevin Finn and Kevin Godfrey, dropped in at the Lower Ossington Theatre to remind us what that looks like alongside Julia Carrer, who was reliably impressive in the musical numbers dotted throughout the evening. The comedic […]