Ross Petty’s annual Christmas Pantomime has been a beloved event in Toronto for 16 years. I can remember going as a kid and getting to see Canadian legends like Mr. Dressup (Ernie Coombs), Fred Penner, Kurt Browning, Rex Harrington and Karen Kain onstage as absurd twisted fairy tale creatures. It was the thrill of the […]
Music’s biggest awards announced their contenders this week. There are only 78 categories this year, which sounds like a lot but down from 109 last year it’s quite the drop. The result is a mix of the old familiar names and some wonderfully new additions but numbers a little lower than usual. My beloved Adele […]
It is amazing to me that the release and theatrical run of 50/50 came and went with very minimal hoopla. The film is everything Hollywood commentators love- clever and unexpected but somehow in adherence with current tonal trends, well cast, smartly written, genre subversive, thematically daring, backed by big names and based on a true […]
Shakespeare in Action’s second tragedy isn’t as strong as its repertory companion Romeo and Juliet. While the casually modern staging works wonderfully in R and J, in a modern Mackers a low budget can make things look haphazard because of the precision necessary to pull off a military look. The company would have been better […]
In the weeks before Anonymous hit movie theatres I was asked no fewer than 20 times how I felt about the film. “Could it be true?” people wondered of the absurd tagline: ‘Was Shakespeare A Fraud?’; “are you outraged?” demanded others, inquiring whether my bardolatry had me on the defense; “why is Xenophilius Lovegood in […]
The 24-year-old gold-medal-clinching hockey superstar, who was sidelined for more than 10 months after a devastating concussion last January, returned to the game on Monday. The CBC pre-empted their regular programming for the occassion as the entirety of Canada (and, presumably, at the very least, Pittsburgh) waited to see if their hero would be back […]
With the constant writing let downs on Glee, I couldn’t be more excited that a new scripted showbiz show is coming to network TV. NBC’s midseason hosts the premiere of SMASH. It’s grownup, it’s more polished, it’s got a much better cast and the musical numbers are limited to situations in which people actually are […]