Recent Posts

 

Comedy sequels are a tough bunch. The road is littered with sequels that tarnished the beauty of their original – Legally Blonde 2, Miss Congeniality 2, Being It On Again. Never is that more true than in the surprisingly good film, much like the above three, that exceeds expectations by being both female-targeted and on […]

 

Claudia Dey’s well lauded but suspiciously neat backwoods fairytale is an intriguing but flawed examination of co-dependence on its own but director Daniel Pagett does something directors rarely do with fairly new texts in the current production by new indie company Severely Jazzed Productions- he messes with it and, in doing so, he makes it […]

The use of white makeup as a base for exaggerated features has become a fairly standard practice in productions with a sense of heightened reality. This month in Toronto there are three shows all making use of the convention, albeit in wildly different ways.   Trudeau & Levesque Their distinctive makeup is arguably the most […]

Created by Why Not Theatre, The RISER Project is a new initiative that pairs established companies with emerging artists to share resources and make producing indie theatre just a little bit easier. The inaugural RISER season is taking place at The Theatre Centre with two shows already wrapped and another two currently on stage.   […]

As I walked out of Ballad of the Burning Star Tuesday night at the Theatre Centre, I ran into a friend walking into another show (Burnish, I believe). When he asked what Ballad was about, I said, with a kind of syncopated energy: “well, it’s a devised theatre piece, but it’s also very movement based, like […]

Survivor is making a bold move by bringing back 20 returning players for their next installment. This time around, each castaway has only played the game once and was not a winner. Even more impressively, they are letting us decide the line-up! I’ve been voting every day, but have to admit that my votes have […]

The latest indie company to take the stage at the Storefront Theatre is the excellently named Severely Jazzed, headed by improvisers Tess Degenstein and Hannah Spear. We spoke to Tess and Hannah about their inaugural production Trout Stanley which hits Bloor West this Thursday. Tell us about Severely Jazzed Productions and how the company got […]

 

Mad Max: Fury Road is a shot of adrenaline in the heart. It’s jolting from start to finish – with guitars that shoot fire and mutants who steal blood and cars with spikes and a dystopian world so dark it makes other dystopias look rosey by comparison. It has a plot that can best be […]