Athena Reich’s #ARTBIRTH was so unexpected, such a witty and subversive spectacle. Reich, as her pregnant Lady Gaga alter ego, drops a line early in the show warning us that this experience will transcend everything we think we know about music, theatre, and performance art… and it’s true. #ARTBIRTH is a parody, but it is […]
Follies is, in one way, exactly what you might expect from a 1971 work by the noted musical dramatist Stephen Sondheim, in that it’s a true spectacle, with lyrics that bounce effortlessly off its superb score, and huge, colourful and bombastic set-pieces that leave the audience in awe. On the other hand, the latest revival […]
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 […]
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 […]
Jason Robert Brown is one of the most well-respected composers working in musical theatre today. His credits include Songs for a New World, The Last Five Years and Parade (my personal favourite musical). In 2007, he premiered a show called 13, a musical written for a cast consisting completely of, as the name suggests, 13-year-olds. […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Erased: Billy and Bayard (A) Created and performed by the Queer Songbook Orchestra, featuring Andrew Broderick and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, the show weaves together the narrative threads of two 20th century musicians. Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin were both black and queer and who contributed significantly to the Civil […]