Have you ever been trapped with your thoughts after making a mistake? Have your thoughts ever manifested a buffalo? A talking buffalo? Please stay with me here. The Buffalo Play, currently running at the The Tank until May 23, almost lost me before it even started once I realized a human would be dressed as […]

Second City’s 82nd and current Mainstage revue, Walking On Bombshells, opens on a stage that’s a convincing mock-up of the dingy Osgoode subway station. It’s the backdrop for the show’s opening musical number, a ditty about the perils of subway travel entitled “Is It Warm or Is It Wet?”    That specificity is unusual for […]

The Resistance Continues. That’s the sub-title of The Second City’s latest run of their feminist sketch phenom She The People. And there are a lot of things to resist: those who are against vaccinating their children, men telling women what they can and can’t do, or double standards that women have to deal with. Carly […]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Grey’s Anatomy lately. That show,…

Initially staged at SummerWorks in 2015, Erin Shields’ Beautiful Man features Jennifer, Sophie, and Pam (Ashley Bottling, Mayko Nguyen, and Sophía Rodríguez), who perch on stools facing the audience. They chat about their favourite show featuring a woman detective who investigates violent crimes targeting beautiful young men. They gush over her darker side – she’s […]

Michel Marc Bouchard’s classic play Lilies (Les Feluettes) was made into one of the most beautiful Canadian films in the 90s, and more recently an opera (2016, Opéra de Montréal) that has been described as containing an “uncommon dramatic intensity.” This latest staged adaptation Lilies; Or, The Revival of a Romantic Drama, unfortunately, misses that […]

I hated Veep when it premiered back in 2012. Armando Ianucci’s biting satire of American democracy felt to me like useless cynicism, a crass comedy of bad behaviour like It’s Always Sunny without the insight. Veep grew into itself in season two and I at least started to intellectually appreciate its style even if I […]

What caught my attention for Tarragon Theatre’s performance of OLD STOCK: A Refugee Love Story was Ben Caplan. I read that he did the music for the show, and immediately knew I would give it a try. Caplan, a Halifax native, has been on my musical radar for years, ever since I heard “Stranger”, from […]