There are a few operatic conventions that really get me down. The first is a wackadoo story that let’s say isn’t exactly grounded in human truth. The second is overdramatic Tragedy with a capital t. Though the two productions that make up the Canadian Opera Company’s spring season embody, respectively, these qualities to a tee, […]
Spoiler Alert right off the top because this was the first episode of TV in quite some time that Facebook actually ruined for me the night-of (usually it’s more of a “this happened 3 months ago, at this point you deserve to be spoiled” kind of thing). I fight with people about The Big Bang […]
Tom at the Farm (Buddies in Bad Times) This gorgeous and disturbing piece of personal theatre from Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard is one of the first truly great productions I’ve seen this year. Making its English language debut through Linda Gaboriau’s poetic and honest translation, Tom at the Farm is staged with searing insight […]
Creditors (Coal Mine Theatre) The final piece in Coal Mine Theatre’s fantastically successful inaugural season is a dark domestic drama from August Stringberg set in a 19th century world of rampant misogyny and even more rampant psychotic jealousy. The solid production benefits greatly from director Rae Ellen Bodie’s background in dialect coaching (there’s a clarity […]
The totally goofy, very sitcom-y NBC spring sitcom Undateable is not the sort of show you really want to go to bat for when begging the networks not to cancel your favourite things (this year that’s The Mindy Project and About a Boy, both regular purveyors of honest to goodness human emotion) it is, nonetheless, […]
FOX’s beloved hipster comedy once reigned as my favourite show on TV, without competition. In 2012- the year that encompassed the last half of the first season, when the show really hit its stride, and the first half of the second season, when it really took off- it nearly swept the My TV Awards, winning […]
I watched the pilot of American Horror Story back when it first began, guided by unshakeable loyalty to Connie Britton and general fondness for Dylan McDermott. That was the last episode I saw of American Horror Story, simultaneously bored and horrified by the easy, gratuitous Ryan Murphy-ness of it all. Then I heard all the […]
Ale House Theatre is Toronto’s indie original practices producer, a purist mandate of which I was very wary before I finally saw their excellent Othello. It turns out that, despite what recent Stratford seasons have taught us, original practices actually can showcase Shakespeare at its best (though I still don’t agree that they come inherently […]