Dublin Carol is not your usual Christmas tale. Presented by Fly on the Wall Theatre, this brutally honest and bleak play is set over a single day – Christmas Eve – in the life of John Plunkett, an alcoholic Dublin undertaker. His lonely existence of booze and burials is tempered only by small moments of […]
Poison, currently on at The Coal Mine Theatre, is a story about two people. Actually, it’s a story about three people. We open on a man (Ted Dykstra) waiting in a lobby. Eventually, a woman (Fiona Highet) enters. There is immediate tension. What follows is a simple but heartbreaking story about grief. Originally written […]
*moderate spoilers ahead* Some of my earliest memories of the Marvel comics character ‘The Punisher’ come from the old PlayStation 2 game. A gritty third-person shooter where you could have Frank Castle (who, in this incarnation, stood at well over six feet tall and wore a flowing black trenchcoat) kill people the old-fashioned way, […]
I was at the opening night of actor-writer-comedian Daniel Stolfi’s Another Trip Around the Sun at The Bad Dog Theatre. The opening act for the night was improv duo Probably Pregnant (Lisa Gilroy and Natalie Metcalfe) who almost had us rolling off of our seats. A persistent Natalie begs Lisa to join her at the […]
New York City-based David Jacobson and The New Space Wizards have released a new demo, a follow up to their 2016 EP Psychedelica Revisited. The new demo was recorded with the live band that has been performing all around their native Brooklyn, and it has a nicely organic feel to all the tracks. Let’s face […]
I love half hour television. Most of my favourite shows are half hours- not necessarily comedies, but half hours. Peak TV has led to a boom in genre rebellion, shows that live in the unclassifiable grey and understand that “digestible” and “simple” are not synonyms. Because they are a half hour, I actually watched all […]
Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? is currently on at Soulpepper, directed by Alan Dilworth. I love this play for so many reasons, not least of which is that I think it’s a great example of a man actually writing an amazing and complex female lead character, who essentially carries the entire show. […]
The best word I can think of to describe The 7 Fingers’ new show triptyque is magical. I know, I know, cheesy. But when a show can really make me feel, bring me into a zone where the rest of the audience fades away… I mean, that’s magic. The 7 Fingers return to Toronto for the 30th […]