“We know you built your life around us…but we had to change some,” Colin Meloy admits freely on the mostly tongue-in-cheek opening track of his band’s seventh album. It has been nearly fifteen years since The Decemberists’ first release, and in order to survive this long as a quirky indie project, change was unavoidable. Whether […]
The latest productions from Coal Mine and Safeword share a common goal: to leave you shaken. They share some other things too (small casts, hip tones, interesting spaces) but it’s that shared goal that stands out. That’s not what all theatre artists are doing; most want to entertain you, to move you, maybe even inspire […]
Theatre is a tough career. It’s long hours and hard work, low pay, challenging politics, tons of rejection and unwavering job insecurity. It’s hard to get noticed as a freelance artist and harder still to build an audience as an independent producer. Even if you’re brilliant, you’ll still likely spend your days as many of […]
John Patrick Shanley’s A Woman is A Secret opened at the Theatre Centre last Friday to an enthusiastic audience. Though what brought audiences to their feet at the end of the show is not clear to me. For while A Woman is a Secret was beautifully staged, actors were bogged down by Shanley’s overly poetic […]
The girls on Girls are finally growing up! We’ve waited four long seasons, but we finally saw some huge changes in the girls during the Girls season finale “Home Birth.” First, we’ll start with Shoshanna. Shoshanna finally got a job offer! The problem? It was in Tokyo. And Shoshonna was getting really serious with the […]
The battleground of Toronto commercial theatre tends to consist of spirited upstarts launching a forward assault on a seemingly impenetrable Mirvish stronghold only to suffer the sort of casualties that only ever results in retreat (unless we’re talking Livent, that was more of a blaze of glory, however inglorious). The latest challenger in the fight […]
Released 3/17/15 This is a rough outing for the once great – or at least inimitable – Modest Mouse. Strangers to Ourselves is the band’s first proper LP in eight years. Combine a long hiatus with major lineup changes (including losing the legendary Johnny Marr) and one cannot help but listen with cautious optimism. Unfortunately, […]
Everyone continued to be completely terrible to each other during Girls’ “Daddy Issues.” Tad came to New York after coming out. Hannah and her mom weren’t dealing with it well, but they both, of course, have the right to their feelings. Hannah was feeling really uncomfortable about the whole thing, especially since people kept bringing […]