Yes yes yes and once again yes. In five years covering the Canadian Opera Company, I’ve never seen a rep season with this much storytelling depth and theatrical impact. I’ve never seen a perfect balance between homegrown talent, international stars, and homegrown international stars. I’ve never seen female characters with this much agency and this many […]
A powerful and poignant musical production from director Thom Southerland, who yet again manages to deliver an incredibly high calibre of fringe theatre. Ragtime boasts an accomplished score, intriguing story and cast and creatives who more than equal the quality of the source material. Tom Rogers and Toots Bucher’s set design is instantly striking, […]
It’s time, once again, for the On DVD series featuring new releases from Paramount Home Distribution and Elevation Pictures. Genius Written by heavy-hitter John Logan …
I am not normally a fan of plays where the action moves around, with the audience moving with it. My ideal theatre experience is sitting down, quiet and comfortable. At Keffiyeh/Made in China, I am forced out of my comfort zone: to move around and interact with the space and the audience and the actors […]
On Monday CBS announced the cancellation of two shows after just one season each. Both BrainDead and American Gothic were summer series- a seemingly cushy spot for a network drama where cable-like 13-episode seasons, less competition and lower ratings expectations often result in good-faith renewals that give critical darlings time to find their feet. A […]
If there is one subject that makes most people uncomfortable, it is that of homelessness. Rare are those who stop and speak to homeless men and women on the street, let alone go see a play about it. Although it may feel uneasy at first, Cuckoo Bang’s Choosers, written by Holly Mallett, does an excellent […]
My favourite TIFF film of the year was writer/director Andrea Arnold’s American Honey (in theatres now), a meandering travelogue about a group of lost kids who find an imperfect home in a cramped bus travelling the country together to sell magazine subscriptions under the thumb of self-made-almost-woman Krystal (Riley Keough in one of 2016’s most […]
Unless you are blessed from an early age with extreme self-awareness, patience, and unshakeable self-confidence, then your adolescence was (or is going to be) probably very fraught. It’s a period of time that upends the life you’ve lived up to that point: everything becomes more complicated, less secure, and a little more threatening. You simultaneously […]