Good Morning, Viet Mom “I can’t talk about my mom without talking about my dad. I can’t talk about my dad without talking about the divorce. I can’t talk about the divorce without talking about family. And I can’t talk about family without talking about my grandma.” And just so, playwright and comedian Franco Nguyen […]
The antechamber shows are short, 30 mins pieces, and some of my favourite Next Stage offerings. This year brought two high-energy clown pieces. Leila Live A self-described “real life Persian Princess,” Leila Live (pronounced with a short /i/), offers a 30 min clown/drag cabaret, with singing, puppetry, original song writing, rapping, and of course, lots of laughs. A […]
The Harold Experience This Assembly Improv show invokes the Harold Technique of audience participation to get suggestions from the crowd on which the theme of the show is based. The night I went, actors came down and bantered with the crowd, asking questions and making fast and funny connections between audience members until finally one […]
Jonno Another topical Next Stage piece, Jonno, offers a fictional account of a powerful, well-known radio host sexually assault women in Toronto. Most Canadians will recongnize the play as a thinly veiled fictional reworking of Jian Ghomeshi’s ‘alleged’ of sexual assault and hassment. In the first few moments, actor Jason Deline, playing the title character, starts his […]
Over the coming weeks I’ll be unveiling my rankings of every single new release I saw in 2017. There are over a hundred of them, it’ll take awhile. Standard Disclaimer So You Don’t Yell At Me: This Is Not A List Of the Best Films Of the Year. This is not a definitive […]
Absurdity abounds in this festive seasonal sequel to Hatoful Boyfriend, the notoriously bizarre pigeon dating sim…
The lush golden light of the Peter Pan set was a welcome contrast to the sharp cold evening we had rushed through en-route to the theatre, and the space itself served as a refuge from the busy Christmas Market (which Soulpepper ticket holders receive free admission to) surrounding the Young Centre for the Performing Arts […]
Welcome back to the final recap of Survivor: Heroes vs. Healers vs. Hustlers! It seems like only yesterday I was sitting down to pen my first recap of this season, feeling slightly let down by a lukewarm premiere but bubbling with hope and anticipation about the possibilities of such a fun and diverse cast, all […]