Clarity- of theme, of character, of purpose- is, to me, the greatest necessity in any Shakespeare production. Chances are the audience won’t follow every word of the script or even every beat of the story but if a production is thematically strong, has a solid sense of who each character is as a human being […]
A Steady Rain (Paper Moon Productions) This intimate cop drama presented by Paper Moon Productions in the tiny room on Queen East known as The Grocery tells an action-packed story but does so all in past tense. Anthony Parise and John Palmieri play a pair of childhood best friends turned partners, a complex odd-couple dynamic […]
A Side of Dreams is a beautiful view into Metis cultural traditions of generational and ancestral healing. The evening begins with a wondrous and effective projection of a spider beginning to spin a web, through a suspended aerial hoop. The initial image and soundscape prepare the audience for the intimate and thoughtful performance to come. […]
Toronto-based comediennes Gwynne Phillips and Briana Templeton (winner of the 2011 My Theatre Award for Best Actress) are the sketch duo behind some of the indie circuit’s most inventive and emotionally resonant work. Together they make up the perfectly named Templeton Philharmonic, the award-winning team who brought the fantastic site-specific roller-coaster An Evening in July to last […]
Burgeoning Stratford hotshot Tyrone Savage tread a tricky path very strategically in getting his vision of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to the Storefront stage (where it’s currently playing until December 21st). Edward Albee’s blackly comic domestic drama is famous in name but rarely produced on stage, the shadows of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton […]
Purists will hate this Macbeth. The theatrically skeptical will find it heady and ridiculous but, mostly, it’s the purists who will hate it. Director Sophie Ann Rooney takes huge, ambitious leaps of interpretation and some of her key cast members don’t have a clue how to speak the verse. They absolutely have a point, the […]
In tiny spaces just off Queen West last week, two tiny plays took my breath away. One in the more metaphorical sense that it left me speechless and contemplative and moved but uncomfortable with said moving. The other in the literal sense that I was crying so hard I had trouble catching my breath. […]
Dystopia is all the rage these days, as any of the recent hits in YA fiction/blockbuster film adaptations will indicate (The Hunger Games; Ender’s Game; The Giver, etc.). The Boston fringe theatre scene is no exception, and companies can choose to either stage new works (e.g. Flat Earth Theatre’s What Once We Felt) or give […]