As much as I swear I really did appreciate the hilarious beauty of USA sitcom Playing House back in its excellent first and second seasons in 20014/15, you never really know how much you love something until it’s gone. Or maybe how much you missed something until it comes back? Either way, the rush of […]

 

Carole King is a worthy musical heroine, an artist of prodigious talent and notable personality, and book writer Douglas McGrath has crafted her life story into a dramatically compelling piece that is, if we’re being picky, really a play with lots of music more than a musical (with one tiny little exception, everyone is singing […]

 

From July 5-16, six of our Toronto staffers- Kelly Bedard, Duncan Derry, Lisa McKeown, Mary-Margaret Scrimger, Lorenzo Pagnotta and Chelsea Dinsmore- reviewed 100+ plays in this year’s Fringe Festival. We gave out more A grades than ever before in the best-reviewed Fringe we’ve ever seen. Click on the links to read more. The Reviews (in […]

The odd Bachelorette editing and schedule this year (a pre-rose ceremony cliffhanger here, a double episode there) meant that Rachel went from 15 remaining guys to 6 in literally two days. I usually do my yearly rankings known as the “Bachelor Scale” around final 10-12 but they completely jumped over that phase this year. On […]

 

The 2017 Dora Awards were handed out on Monday night at the beautiful Elgin theatre on Yonge Street, complete with a VIP cocktail reception and sprawling after party that took over multiple floors of the historic building. The Toronto Alliance of the Performing Arts (also known as TAPA)’s annual event is the most glamorous night […]

I know, I’m as surprised as you. But listen, I enjoyed Magic Mike XXL (the original Magic Mike too but it was less fun and wanted to be too many things) and every once in awhile I get a weird 4am burst of personality-abandoning “to hell with it” courage and decide to do something truly […]

Blind Date (Tarragon Theatre) I’ve already reviewed this wonderful improvised clown show and its creator Rebecca Northan won the 2015 MyTheatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her work alongside a random audience member who became her spontaneous date for the evening. After a succesful same-sex run at Buddies in Bad Times last year, this […]

 

For the past four years, I’ve been ranking every film I see- just the new releases, from January 1st to December 31st. The rankings are subjective, based entirely on how much I enjoyed and/or connected with or appreciated the film rather than on some sort of objective artistic criteria. Basically, this is a list of […]