“Why did I come to Copenhagen?” one of the characters asks, late into the second act of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen. I asked myself the same question after seeing Flat Earth Theatre’s production last weekend. I am a huge Noises Off fan, another play by Michael Frayn, but his two scripts are nothing alike. Copenhagen […]
The Next Stage Festival is the fascinating bridge between a show’s Fringe Festival run and its life beyond the circuit. It’s an inspired idea and a chance for some truly splendid indie theatre to get a little more attention than it did/would amidst hundreds of Fringe offerings in the summer. There are 12 shows this […]
I don’t remember the last time I saw a Mirvish production that really wowed me. The Toronto titans of entertainment are known for big budget musicals and star-powered productions, but it seems like lately their light just isn’t as bright as it was in the pre-Sars heyday of The Lion King and Mamma Mia. The […]
The newest play from Canada’s beloved playwright Hannah Moscovitch is a stirring and inspiring drama about groundbreaking Polish/Jewish educator Janusz Korczak, set in Warsaw in pre-ghetto 1939 (Act I) and oppressive and war-torn 1942 (Act II). Against Camellia Koo’s innovative set of destructible paper orphanage walls and directed with sublime understanding by Alisa Palmer, Moscovitch’s […]
In my University writing classes I always wanted to write inside baseball stories about how Shakespeare people talk about Shakespeare. Every professor I ever had (playwriting, screenwriting, tv writing- all of them) told me I wasn’t allowed. They said the audience would tune the characters out because they didn’t understand, that everything had to be […]
Toronto’s Red Light District is the only company that’s ever gotten me to like things I don’t like- from audience participation to Trinity Bellwoods after 9pm to German expressionism to blatant stage sex.
On a particularly stormy night, I ventured out to Boston University Stage Troupe’s production of Bug by Tracy Letts, directed by veteran Chris Hamilton, hoping for a night of horror and suspense. Unfortunately, I was less than smitten with the results. Billed as “the play that gets under your skin,” I was not moved by […]
Happy Medium Theatre’s production of Neighborhood 3: Requisition of Doom by Jennifer Haley is often funny, endearing in a nerdy (and sometimes intensely angsty teenage way), and engrossing. The basic story is that in the creepy/Stepfordian suburb of an unnamed town, all the teenagers have become totally engrossed with a videogame that uses satellite photos of the […]