Both of Canadian Stage’s current offerings are about people sleeping with people they shouldn’t be sleeping with. Both remarkably self-satisfied domestic dramas purport to be about “so much more” but that’s really about it. In the one-act contemporary opera Julie, well-to-do scorned woman Julie (Lucia Cervoni) sleeps with her callous, manipulative, engaged servant Jean […]
Canadian Stage just opened its 2015-2016 with Beckett Trilogy (Not I/Footfalls/Rockaby) at the Berkely Street Theatre. Directed by Walter Asmus (Beckett’s long-time friend and collaborator) and starring Lisa Dwan, this trilogy – performed back to back without intermission – is essentially an hour long one-woman show. But this is not a typical theatre piece, and […]
Umnikelo (Offering)
The opening night of Luyanda Sidiya’s double-bill performances of Umnikelo and Dominion was dedicated to putting an end to xenophobic violence…
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 […]
With a disarming amount of charm, South African performance artist Steven Cohen brought his infamous Chandelier to the final week of the Canadian Stage Spotlight on South Africa festival. We hear him before we see him, the sound of glass pieces jingling together fills the theatre moments before he enters slowly and deliberating from the […]
Big blasts of light and loud blares of capital S&D Sound Design (courtesy of designers Michael Walton and Thomas Ryder Payne respectively) pair with a dramatic thrust stage and celebrity star to suggest that Canadian Stage’s production of Harper Regan is event theatre. Important theatre. Groundbreaking, somehow. Don’t believe everything you read on a […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2014 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Last year’s Best Actor winner (for Soulpepper’s Angels in America), Damien is one of Toronto’s most prolific performers. So much so that he played a key role in not one but two of this year’s nominated […]
CanStage’s The Other Place is difficult to write about without giving too much away. For the play is reveal after reveal, as we move back and forward in time, uncovering family secrets, buried memories, and emotional turmoil. And yet, as we move down the winding road of this dense, emotional bit of realism, I was […]