Click Here for a full list of our 2022 Toronto Fringe reviews. At the Table with Keith Brown (A) I hate to be tricked but I love hyper-specific skills that can only be mastered with good old fashioned decades of practice. So magicians often present a bit of a problem for me. What works […]
While in-person theatre with a traditional seated audience is still making its way back slowly, one type of live event currently thriving in Toronto is the immersive experience. In the past couple weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to check out three major immersive shows happening downtown and, though none really blew me away, I cannot […]
At first glance, magicians would seem to have it rough in the twenty-first century. No matter how much practice and skill goes into mastering a seemingly inexplicable trick, one whose origins may go back centuries, the audience’s wonder is more likely these days to be tempered by a quick google search, where a mercilessly quick […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of SummerWorks Reviews … And You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next (A) The sneaky dissonance of this latest storytelling show from Pressgang Theatre’s Graham Isador adds an intriguing layer of unspoken complication to an already rich and rewarding hour. Demonstrating once again his uncanny knack for structure, […]
To supplement their mainstage season of big American tours, Toronto’s one real commercial theatre presenter Mirvish Productions has been bringing in slightly smaller shows produced by Canadian companies to occupy the mid-sized mid-town venue formerly known as the Panasonic (it’s now the CAA Theatre, which I doubt I’ll ever get used to). In general, this […]
Toronto’s (Canada’s?) most ambitious professional theatre company is undoubtedly Soulpepper. The artist-led organization has never been shy about making their mark on the city but lately they’re expanding at a rate worth noting. This is especially noticeable at Christmas time, a season which used to consist of just two signature productions remounted in alternating years […]
The most annoying thing about the new Showcase/Syfy show adapted from Lev Grossman’s 2009 novel The Magicians is honestly just that it’s called “The Magicians” (and the promotional image to the right, that’s also very annoying for lots of reasons both feminist and aesthetic). It’s your basic CW-ish college-age fantasy drama. The mythology is complicated, […]
It’s unfortunate that so few magicians receive the funding or programming support to perform regularly in Toronto. Rather than a rich landscape of illusionists within which, like in any performance genre, there are some great and some not-so-great performers, all we really have on this theatrical level is David Ben. In a technical sense, that’s […]
Jesus Christ Superstar (Hart House) Jesus Christ Superstar is a really gutsy musical. It’s about a human being named Jesus and his friend Judas who embark on a mission to do good in the world only to have things spiral out of control until the PR spin around Jesus is so dangerous that he’s held […]
As the director of the new show “Nothing to Hide” at The Pershing Square Signature Theatre astutely points out in his Playbill note to the audience, there are two types of people who watch magic: those who simply enjoy the spectacle and those who try to figure out the secrets behind the trick. Despite the […]
The reason I chose Chamber Magic as one of the few Luminato shows to review this year was that it promised to be simply enjoyable in a way that most of the over-lofty festival fare isn’t. I was totally down to sit in my mandatory cocktail attire and be amazed by some trickery and a […]