John Patrick Shanley is likely best known as the writer of Doubt: A Parable, the Pulitzer-Prize winning four-hander that was turned into the slightly over-embellished 2008 film starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, adapted and directed by the writer. But Shanley is an impressively prolific writer, with a long, vibrant list of works to […]
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 […]
As I said in our awards announcement (and everyone has said basically every day for awhile now), this was not humanity’s best year. But, you know what, it wasn’t our worst either. Remember how much you all liked Civil War? I couldn’t relate to that, but I was happy seeing how happy you were. There […]
TV might have saved 2016. Seriously, it wasn’t the best pilot season network-wise (I’m still having nightmares about that CBS comedy slate) but how many shows were you passionately invested in in 2016? How many characters did you care about? How many worlds did you happily dive into once a week to take a break […]
A timely and shaded production that breathes much-needed life into the faces of primary school history posters. Based on Friedrich Schiller’s text from 1800, Mary Stuart- both adapted and directed by Robert Icke- is unexpectedly riveting. Following the story of Mary Queen of Scots and her cousin, Elizabeth I, it recounts Mary’s final days in prison […]
As I checked in at the ticketing table, the young ladies hovering around in bright blue Beta Tau Alpha t-shirts and perfectly cuffed jeans transported me back to college. It is there I stayed for the duration of Beth Hyland’s new play For Annie, unable to escape the sense that the ideal audience For Annie, […]
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 […]
We’re grading on a curve here because, well, you’ve seen a CBS procedural, right? They’re outlandish, over dramatic, formulaic and cheesy- those are the rules and, while they can be worked around, they are never truly broken. So, grading curve, keep that in mind as I proceed to tell you that Scorpion is intermittently pretty […]