Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews BikeFace (A) BikeFace is as if Kate Beaton’s Velocipedestrienne comic came to glorious life. BikeFace is more specifically the theatrical realization of writer Natalie Frijia’s real life journeys across Canada on her bicycle. Performer Clare Blackwood imbues the one woman sequences with the restless […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Everyone Wants a T-Shirt! (A-) Exuberant, absurdist and smart, this Prairie Fire, Please production is a hilarious satire of the modern millennial corporate dilemma. Written by Madeleine Brown, It tells the story of Beatrice Little (Brittany Miranda), a young woman whose failed pitch for […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Harvey and The Extraordinary (A+) At once exploring childlike glee and darker undertones of more adult concepts of coping with loss through the lens of youth, Harvey and the Extraordinary is a stripped down play in a garage of one young Mimi, or […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews #KanderAndEbb (A) No stranger to cabarets, Ryan G. Hinds has delighted us over the years with many equally passionate and comedic one-man shows. #KanderAndEbb though is the most personal in my opinion. I really enjoyed hearing so many anecdotes, not only about the lives […]
Thom Pain (based on nothing) (Theatre By Committee)…
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. The brilliant Ingrid Hansen is a one-of-a-kind physical performer and out-of-the-box theatre creator. Her work is inventive, thoughtful, hilarious, and moving. She’s nominated this year for Outstanding Solo Performance for her Fringe piece Interstellar Elder, an odd, delightful, […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual…
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Mia Raye Smith made her Toronto Fringe Festival debut with I Am Hope, a humourous and heartwarming one-woman show about living with an anxiety disorder. Skillfully portraying 19 different characters, including her grandmother and therapist, Mia […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series…
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. When Pearle Harbour walked…
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Julia Haist’s site-specific solo show at the 2017 Toronto Fringe Festival transported the audience straight back to high school, complete with assignments I was unprepared for and photocopied handouts about a book I hadn’t read (sorry, […]
Originally written (and performed) by Dave Deveau, My Funny Valentine is a play based around the true story of a gay teen who was killed by his classmate in 2008. The narrative weaves through the surrounding community in the aftermath, and shows us the ways they are processing (or not processing) their grief, and the […]
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 […]
Manwatching is a one-man show written by a woman. That’s all I know about the author going in to see the show, because she remains anonymous. And each night a different male comedian sees her script for the first time, as he performs it. This was such a weird premise for a show that I […]
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 […]
Adam Lazarus’s play Daughter is about masculinity. Or rather: it is a play about toxic masculinity. Or, even more accurately: it is a play about the ways in which the patriarchy molds men into defective moral agents. This is a very intellectual description for a theatre review, and of a very visceral experience. So let me […]
Regeneration, just closed on Theatre Row but returning for one more performance on November 6th, is built upon what would seem to be sure-footing for interesting theatre: the high emotional stakes of a woman’s journey with breast cancer, and the life-shifting perspective that such a run-in with mortality can bring. The subject matter is emotionally interesting, […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE The Only Good Indian (B+) It’s difficult to grade this solo show from Pandemic Theatre because half its runtime is just a “long table” discussion that will surely be completely different every day (the one I attended was heady and somewhat confrontational though smartly moderated by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard) […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Explosions for the 21st Century (A-) My favourite SummerWorks show this year, Christopher Ross-Ewart’s philosophical and practical lecture on sound design is both an inventive theatrical presentation and a simply fascinating subject engagingly explained. With direction and dramaturgy by expert storyteller Graham Isador, Explosions for the 21st Century is […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Pearle Harbour’s Chautaqua (A+) [Ed. Note: A+ is the highest grade we give but, just for the record, MM’s official submission was “A+++++++”] This is everything I want to see, want to hear, want to be. Pearle Harbour’s stage presence is strong enough to cause you to fall in love, […]
Read All Our SummerWorks Reviews HERE Erased: Billy and Bayard (A) Created and performed by the Queer Songbook Orchestra, featuring Andrew Broderick and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, the show weaves together the narrative threads of two 20th century musicians. Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin were both black and queer and who contributed significantly to the Civil Rights […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Snap! (A-) I don’t know what I expected from Snap! but it wasn’t to be so charmed by this quirky site-specific show about four ordinary people attending a mandatory anger management programme. Led by Wanda, a facilitator leading her first session, the reluctant attendees […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews The Food Project (A-) A collective-oriented company, Theatre by Committee’s show is essentially a glorified commercial about the state of the food industry in Canada. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and they make what could very easily turn into a polemic into […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Songs for a New World Order (A-) As much as I didn’t like his sketch revue And Then It Happened, I loved Anesti Danelis’ solo show. Alone on stage with just his natural presence, a handful of funny stories, a guitar and a great […]
Be sure to check out our Full List of Fringe Reviews Maddie’s Karaoke Birthday Party (A) This perfectly cast site-specific musical is the best thing composing team Barbara Johnston and Suzy Wilde have done. The first 2/3 of the show is a perfect in-absentia character portrait as Maddie’s closest friends get up at the birthday […]