Currently on tour, Taking Flight is a selection of three plays, chosen as the winners of a competition that aimed to produce pieces by first-time playwrights from within the British East Asian, South Asian, and Southeast Asian communities. Obviously, the politics of the aim can’t be ignored: that there is something particular about British-Asian (or […]
Toronto Fringe’s winter mini-fest Next Stage is in a tricky spot. It plays host to the first productions of every year in Toronto theatre; the audience full of hope and anticipation and ready to have the bar set for the year to come. Curated and titled as it is, it’s not hard to expect something […]
The busiest non-Fringe theatre month of the year is finally over and we’ve got 30+ more reviews under our belt. As we welcome in the holiday season and start turning our attention to best-of lists and award nominations, here’s the final set of reviews of this year’s massive november crop. Comfort (Red Snow Collective) […]
The final piece in Filament Incubator’s 8-plays-in-8-months experiment, Caitie Graham’s Paradise Comics is the perfect strong finish to a rocky but rewarding exercise in ambition and opportunity creation, combining the best elements of everything that led up to it- the quick banter of Rowing, a lighthearted approach to darker issues like ‘Til Death, the brutal […]
Eat, Buy, Repeat (The Second City) This “Guide to the Holidays” from the Second City Touring Company is charming and fun if a little imbalanced in quality. We begin with a group song about coping in the hellfire that is 2016 but the fact that no one in this cast can sing becomes a problem […]
Secrets of a Black Boy (Playing with Crayons/Theatre Passe Muraille) A constantly evolving mix of storytelling and narrative theatre, playwright Darren Anthony’s moving and evocative Secrets of a Black Boy brings five very different black men together for one last game of dominoes before their community centre closes. The play begins with a theatrical montage […]
A solid revival of a fringe theatre classic, this latest production of The Last Five Years embraces the personal lyrics and blissful melodies and provides a raw and touching take of a modern love story. A semi-autobiographical piece from Jason Robert Brown, this sung-through musical tracks the relationship between a young aspiring actress, Cathy, […]
A few years back, November was a pretty quiet month theatre-wise in Toronto, but it seems that everybody figured that out at the same time and decided to do something about it… at the same time. So now November is insane. According to the Canadian Theatre Opening Night Directory, there are 30 new shows opening […]