Vikki Velenosi and Kasey Dunn are the co-founders of Brick and Mortar, an artist-run company that owns and operates three independent theatre spaces in Toronto- The Box, The Attic, and, their latest addition, The Commons. All year round, those spaces are filled with indie artists mounting new, creative, challenging work. But for 5 days in […]
As a long-time Midnight Madness viewer at TIFF, I’m always surprised to find a horror film screening in the main festival (under Contemporary World Cinema) but given the tremendous cinematography and complex, if somewhat under-utilized, psychological study underlying Paco Plaza’s supernatural thriller, it makes sense that Verónica was deemed fit for a wider audience. If […]
I was really hard on the Stratford productions I didn’t like this year but it was actually a pretty strong season and the things that were good were Really good. This is them. Tartuffe Director Chris Abraham’s instinct to present classic texts in a contemporary setting is one of my top five favourite Chris […]
This was not my favourite season at The Shaw Festival. They had fewer bad productions than Stratford but they didn’t have as many great ones either. The best production of their season was a one-act playing sporadically at different venues, the second best a very limited run in the small studio space, then there’s a […]
In a really pretty strong Stratford season, these mostly good productions fell to the middle of the pack because other things were better, not because they were bad at all. These were Stratford’s mixed bag productions of the year- some polarizing (Bakkhai), some just generally medium (Romeo & Juliet) and the best recommendation I can […]
The thing to understand about the so-so list for The Shaw Festival this year is that they’re all pretty good productions; they mostly didn’t make the cut to be must-sees on account of the expectations game. All the over-promoted stuff of the year is on this list, the things that promised to be (had the […]
I promise everything gets better from here. Please keep in mind that I refuse to pull punches so you can believe me when I tell you you really should see the other stuff. Warning: brutality ahead. Twelfth Night I consider Twelfth Night to be Shakespeare’s most perfect text. That’s not to say it’s my […]
Though little stood too far above the pack this year at the Shaw Festival (“so-so” really carried the season over there), it’s remarkable that there’s only one show I think you ought to skip if you can. 1837: The Farmers’ Revolt This dully written and even more dully directed Canadian history play is a true […]