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 […]
Click Here for a full list of our 2022 Toronto Fringe reviews. Unmatched (A) This clever piece presents itself at first like a pretty standard storytelling show wherein a comedian regales us with true tales of their less-than-stellar dating history. Caity Smyck is a compelling performer who connects with the audience instantly so I […]
Justin Miller’s beautiful drag clown Pearle Harbour lives simultaneously in the past and the future, a wise fool with a sharp wit and a big beautiful heart that’s too often broken. In Distant Early Warning, her new dystopian solo show at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, she’s alone and in love, totally helpless and […]
Jennifer Dallas, Artistic Director of Kẹmi Contemporary Dance Projects, says that she is inspired by choreographers who are playing in the cracks between disciplines. Dallas herself has been able to turn this “playing” into award-winning productions. In Kittly-Bender she successfully brought the worlds of dance and theatrical clowning together on stage, exciting audiences and winning […]
Clowning is an art. A wise woman who has spent most of her adult life performing as a both a theatre and a circus clown once told me that clowning is an impossible art to perfect because a true clown must be able to balance wearing a variety of hats all while acting the fool. […]
The return of Slava’s Snow Show to Toronto, staged at the Bluma Appel Theatre, is a resounding success. The show is everything it promises to be – truly a night of wonder, magic, and childlike joy. Although there were many families with happily giggling children in the audience, Slava’s Snowshow is by no means a […]
Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua- presented at Theatre Passe Muraille, written and performed by Justin Miller in his Critics’ Pick Award-winning role- is what’s been missing in theatre. With the political climate, we are starving for a noble leader and Pearle Harbour steps up to fill that role. The show is set in a mid-century wartime tent, similar to what […]
The antechamber shows are short, 30 mins pieces, and some of my favourite Next Stage offerings. This year brought two high-energy clown pieces. Leila Live A self-described “real life Persian Princess,” Leila Live (pronounced with a short /i/), offers a 30 min clown/drag cabaret, with singing, puppetry, original song writing, rapping, and of course, lots of laughs. A […]
Adam Lazarus’s play Daughter is about masculinity. Or rather: it is a play about toxic masculinity. Or, even more accurately: it is a play about the ways in which the patriarchy molds men into defective moral agents. This is a very intellectual description for a theatre review, and of a very visceral experience. So let me […]
Blind Date (Tarragon Theatre) I’ve already reviewed this wonderful improvised clown show and its creator Rebecca Northan won the 2015 MyTheatre Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for her work alongside a random audience member who became her spontaneous date for the evening. After a succesful same-sex run at Buddies in Bad Times last year, this […]
The final offering of the Canadian Stage Spotlight Festival: Australia was The Return by Circa, a genre-defying combination of cirque and opera. The stage is shared equally between the circus artists and the live chamber ensemble, with the former occupying stage right, and the latter stage left. An imposing black wall spans the width of […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2016 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. A celebrated educator and theatre-maker, Adam Lazarus specializes in bouffon, the satirical dark side of clown (he explains it better below). In his Outstanding Solo Performance-nominated work Daughter (which played at SummerWorks last summer), Adam capitalized on a landscape full […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Denmarked (B-) Carina Gaspar takes on Elsinore in her clown-based reimagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the spirit of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (with fewer verbal fireworks and more physical exertion), Gaspar zeroes in on minor characters from the original play and pushes them […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Peter Vs Chris (A+) I remember my first Peter n’ Chris experience. I was sitting in the back of a large venue in Winnipeg utterly delighted at what I’d stumbled in on. I was laughing so hard at the duo and recall thinking to […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Strictly speaking, Rebecca Northan‘s hilarious and affecting clown show Blind Date (which played at Tarragon this fall) is not really a “solo performance” as there are always at least two people on stage. But since we can’t possibly […]
The old art form known as commedia dell’arte appears infrequently in modern U.S. theatres. With masked, clown-like actors engaging in loud, brazen and eccentric sketches, commedia dell’arte relies heavily on lowbrow humor and audience participation to entertain, uninhibited by carefully scripted and staged material. When done well, commedia dell’arte can bring a smile to even […]
“You have a brave heart and a beautiful soul and it can be clearly seen by anyone who bothers to look closely” is (loosely paraphrased) one of the last things Rebecca Northan said to her co-star at Tuesday’s performance of Blind Date at Tarragon Theatre. I don’t know if she says that every time- the […]
Click Here for the Full List of our 2015 Toronto Fringe Reviews Morro and Jasp do Puberty (A) There are few safer bets in the Fringe than Toronto’s Sweethearts. The duo’s remount of their 2009 Toronto Fringe triumph is everything you could possibly want in a show about clowns going through puberty. It’s an absolute […]
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 defining […]
In the program notes of Knock! The Daniil Kharms Project, directed by Matthew Woods, dramaturg Matthew McMahan describes how the writings of Daniil Kharms were rescued by a friend, writer Iakov Druskin, from the bombed building the playwright lodged in; Druskin placed the “scattered remains…in a briefcase, and kept them hidden for decades.” A few […]
Valkyrie (B) I want to split this review in half. On one hand, I want to talk about Monique Renaud whose star turn in this contemporary version of the Norse myth of the valkyries is nothing short of mesmerizing. Funny, furious and infuriating, her performance as Bradley is the reason to see Valkyrie (for the […]
As soon as I sat down in the Annex Theatre for my first-ever Toronto Fringe experience, I realized that I had already made my first Fringe mistake. I failed to select a seat that would allow for an easy escape. Striding across the stage in the middle of a performance in order to leave is neither a good idea […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2011 My Theatre Awards, we’re proud to present the My Theatre Nominee Interview Series. Soup Can Theatre’s stirring production of Marat/Sade featured lots of great performances, few so intriguing as Heater Marie Annis playing a mental patient assigned the role of Charlotte Corday, Marat’s murderer, in Sade’s gruesome […]