There were 9 Shakespeare productions happening in and around Toronto this summer (that I know of). I missed only one of them (Mother Nature really didn’t want me to see The Taming of the Shrew, even though it was directed by one of my favourite theatre artists in town!). The best was Shakespeare Bash’d’s no-frills […]
No actor in the history of television has been a part of so many great shows as this year’s My TV Honorary Award winner. We honestly believe that to be true. He’s a three-time My TV Award nominee and has been churning out memorable television performances for 20 years on no fewer than 5 of […]
How to Disappear Completely was the second best thing I saw at SummerWorks this year (after Wild Dogs on the Moscow Trains). I loved it. It was everything I wished some of the other shows had been- personal, truthful, and funny without losing its sense of tragedy. Itai Erdal is the rare theatre creator able […]
“Red Team III” was the first episode of The Newsroom that was truly great. Not just Sorkin-is-a-better-writer-than-most-people good or even wow-that-was-entertaining-and-impressive good like some of the best episodes in this greatly improved second season of the unfairly dismissed HBO drama. It was stop-playing-tetris/put-down-the-diet-coke/slow-clap-at-the-end great. It was great like season two of The West Wing was […]
Joe Orton’s black comedy Entertaining Mr. Sloane is a strange but compelling piece of theatre. It slyly speaks (in a strong cockney accent) to the fragility of our moral character while presenting us with people who reach very extreme conclusions. There’s an absurdist bent to the dark realities within these flawed human beings but the […]
Be sure to read about my pick for the Must-See production of SummerWorks ’13 as well as Part 1 of everything else. I was warned that Murderers Confess At Christmastime is incredibly disturbing. And it is. But it’s far more accessible than I was expecting. Generally with boundary-pushing theatre I find that you can […]
CLICK HERE to read my review of the one Must-See production I’ve identified so far this SummerWorks, Wild Dogs on the Moscow Trains. Wild Dogs aside, my first few days at Summerworks ’13 have been a mixed bag. I started off with the crazy surrealist black comedy Holy Mothers that is, as someone I know […]
In my opinion, Parade, as a text, is a grand achievement in musical theatre. The fact that it is only Jason Robert Brown’s second (arguably third) best work is therefore astounding but we’re not here to discuss the composer or Alfred Uhry’s book (again). StageWorks Toronto was coming off of Urinetown when they chose Parade […]