Blue Remembered Hills (Good Old Neon) This dark, unpleasant, uncompromisingly strange piece of physical theatre is born out of a British teleplay in which a group of children play and torture each other, as children do. The children are meant to be played by adults but director Nicole Wilson has fully grown the characters up, […]
The beautiful geometric highrises are dark grey, crisp and askew, creating a darkly modern, if slightly nightmarish cityscape which the audience observes as we wait for Acquiesce to begin. Downstage centre, an open briefcase is slightly illuminated with a gentle tungsten spotlight from above. Then, without warning— no dimming of the lights, no audio cue— […]
Dead End (Theatre Lab) This light-hearted one-act from playwright Jonny Sun and director Michael Orlando is the perfect Halloween-themed diversion in Toronto’s current sea of self-serious theatre. Sun traps bantering high school pals Christian Smith and Chris Wilson* in a dead end hallway as they flee the zombie horde that’s taken over their school, inviting […]
The Crackwalker is now on stage at Toronto’s Factory Theatre, directed by its own playwright, Judith Thompson. Originally written in 1979, the story takes place in Kingston, Ontario, in a town that is no particular town but could be any town (well, except Oshawa). The character of the Crackwalker (Waawaate Fobister) initiates the play with […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. We can’t think of a better way to describe Juno Rinaldi’s superb performance as an “odd woman” in Age of Arousal, the first production of The Factory Theatre’s much-lauded “Naked Season” than to just quote you […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2015 MyTheatre Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The low-key and “luscious”-haired Oliver Koomsatira usually plays innocents but when director Nina Lee Aquino tapped him for the role of Dave in her Factory Theatre production of Banana Boys, he got the chance to really […]
In Nina Lee Aquino’s brilliant and bare production of Leon Aureus’ stage adaptation of Terry Woo’s groundbreaking novel Banana Boys for the Factory Theatre, future Marvel star Simu Liu played golden boy Rick, the idolized but tragic alpha male who represents the unreachable ideal of a perfect Asian-Canadian young man. We talked to the 2015 […]
Banana Boys (Factory Theatre) I’m loving the Naked season at Factory. The text-centric, stripped down approach the company is taking to all the pieces in their so-far-so-good fall seasonette is spotlighting great performances, inspiring directorial creativity and refusing to let great texts get overshadowed by trappings. Banana Boys is the perfect example of what’s so […]