Alice in Wonderland in all of its iterations has primarily focused on Wonderland being a mental representation of Alice and her current situations. Whether it was from the original story about Alice embracing the nonsensical and learning to question, or the American McGee games that took Wonderland and Alice to more mature/darker realms of living […]
A still relatively new but already beloved Toronto holiday theatre tradition is Three Ships Collective/Soup Can Theatre’s site-specific Christmas Carol staged at the historic Campbell House Museum. As the production prepared to get back on its feet after a two-year pandemic hiatus, we caught up with director Sare Thorpe and playwright/assistant director Justin Haig […]
The expansion of the Shaw Festival season to include a duo of holiday shows every December has proven to be a truly winning innovation. The mini-season in the winter forms a welcome bridge between the festival’s regularly scheduled April-October season and makes the company feel like a full year player rather than a summer getaway. […]
There is a joke once seen on tumblr that describes different nationalities’ approaches to death in stories. American writers write I WILL DIE FOR LOVE! British writers write I WILL DIE FOR COUNTRY! And Russian writers write I WILL JUST DIE! An overly simplistic take but this critic’s first thought when seeing that joke was […]
A restorative 90 minute tour of the heart by way of a gruff Canadian poet, The Shape of Home is an original narrative concert born in isolation with roots in a familiar form. Joined by fellow multi-instrumentalist super-talents Beau Dixon and Raha Javanfar, it’s thrilling see perennial favourites Frank Cox-O’Connell and Hailey Gillis reunite for […]
I love the concept behind Soulpepper’s bold Lear Family Double Bill that pairs a very solid production of Shakespeare’s King Lear with a new play by Erin Shields that imagines what might have happened seven years earlier to inform the behaviour of the characters in King Lear. Shields’ play Queen Goneril focuses not just on […]
Renaissance Now Theatre & Film delivers a capable production of Macbeth thanks to its strong supporting cast and inventive staging; however, the potential of a “Redux” remains underdeveloped and its leads struggle to carry momentum. What starts as a fairly standard interpretation of Macbeth breaks wide open in Act 1, Scene 3: Angus (a […]
Stratford’s big flagship production this year is Chicago, promising programming for its darkness and modernity compared to the festival’s usual musical fare. With two leading female characters and a few great supporting ones, the musical also presented a great opportunity for the festival to highlight some overlooked talent and maybe even recruit some new stars. […]
Onstage at Oshawa’s Regent Theatre for four days only, this thrice-postponed iteration of a homegrown cult hit is a shaky attempt at commercial theatre production with community theatre limitations. I admire Mansfield Entertainment’s concept of bringing large-format theatre to a community that could use a serious arts infusion and the professional designation should mean that […]
No one else is anymore but we’re still physical media devotees round these parts. In that spirit, we’re sharing the details of a few of the most exciting new home entertainment releases for collectors who are still into that kind of thing. Review copies were provided by Warners Brothers and Universal. All thoughts are our […]
Did you know that one man owns the rights to Batman? Michael Uslan has executive produced every Batman film (including animation!) since 1989. Then he wrote a memoir. And now it’s headed to Broadway! We chatted with Michael in the press room at San Diego Comic-Con about his brilliant Bat-life and the journey to the Great White Way.
Gaslight The 1938 play that inspired the idiom “gaslighting” has dipped briefly into the public domain, allowing the Shaw Festival to commission Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson to adapt the story into this new version. It’s a clever thought, giving audiences the backstory behind such a ubiquitous concept (one that is very much not self-explanatory) […]
Aldis Hodge, Jimmi Simpson and more preview the upcoming Green Lantern: Beware My Power from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.
CLICK HERE to read all of our SDCC 2022 Coverage. At the Random House booth on the floor at San Diego Comic-Con, we got to chat with some of the awesome writers creating for kids (and kids at heart). Alexandra Monir’s original Black Canary adventure Breaking Silence was released in 2020 but is more relevant […]
In BMI & White Bear PR’s Character of Music press room at San Diego Comic Con, we got the opportunity to sit down with director Simon McQuoid to discuss his film Mortal Kombat and the role of music in filmmaking.
We caught up with director Jim Batt and animator Josh Mahan at San Diego Comic Con to hear about their creative process in working on the short film animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Grave of St. Oran, narrated by Neil himself.
Inside the San Diego Comic-Con press room with the team behind WB Games/Player First Games’ sprawling IP mash-up MultiVersus.
Dominic Monaghan, Phil LaMarr, and Lindsay Whisler discuss Audible’s Moriarty: The Devil’s Game at San Diego Comic-Con.
Chatting with author Suyi Davies about his work on Stranger Things: Lucas on the Line for Random House Kids at San Diego Comic-Con 2022.
Reporting on The Orville from Comic-Con International 2022 in San Diego.
The landing page for all of our Shaw & Stratford Festival reviews from the 2022 season. Stay tuned as this page will update throughout the summer.
After a 2 year hiatus from writing reviews due to the pandemic, I was welcomed back by Driftwood Theatre’s Bard’s Bus Tour opening performance of King Henry Five. In keeping with the past few years, it was fitting that the show did not go off without a hitch. Due to weather conditions, the performance was forced […]
Everybody is the dream. If you ever hear someone question the goal of modernizing and diversifying the country’s biggest and most entrenched theatres, tell that person about Everybody. This production is why that forever and always struggle is important. Beyond just issues of fairness and the importance of representation, it’s important because real success means […]
Click Here for a full list of our 2022 Toronto Fringe reviews. 2 Robs, 1 Cup: What Happens When You’re Done Eating Shit? (A) I was grateful for Fringe’s masking policy when I saw this atrociously named solo show from the ever-inspiring Vikki Velenosi. The true story opens with a voicemail so shocking that […]
More reviews from the Toronto Fringe Festival! Featuring Sketch T-Rex,
The term “jukebox musical” is used to describe two completely different types of productions. It’s a general label thrown onto anything that uses pre-existing songs instead of original music and is thus very often misapplied to biographical musical plays like Jersey Boys or Beautiful where all the music is diegetic. In this context, I completely […]