That’s right, I’m talking about Mirvish’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical and Tarragon’s Marshall McLuhan one-act in one article. They’re both terrible- dull, simplistic, varying degrees of ridiculous- and they’re playing in Toronto at the same time, but the two have more in common than just ruining my Wednesday nights. In Jason Sherman’s The […]
Norman Yeung’s Theory is an ambitious meditation on thorny and topical issues, from free speech in academia and society to race and representation in media. Isabelle, a proudly progressive film professor, sets up an anonymous and self-moderated discussion board for her radical new syllabus. Students flood the forum with vicious comments and a campaign of […]
Given the heated discourse on race relations today – on and off stage – I am not sure if my title’s statement is positive or negative. One thing is for sure: we can never escape our history. This is the position which Sybil (Virgilia Griffith) maintains and will fight to the death to honour in […]
Girls Like That (Tarragon Theatre) The more I think about this fantastic ensemble piece about teenage girls dealing with the age of slut-shaming gone viral, the more shocked I am that it was written by a man. Playwright Evan Placey captures the complexities and contradictions and crushing, inescapable pressures of girlhood with such painful authenticity […]
Before we announce the winners of the 2017 MyEntWorld Critics’ Pick Awards, we’re proud to present our annual Nominee Interview Series. Most people know Noah Reid as a screen actor. He scored his first film credit in 1996 and has shown up in pretty much every major Canadian television show in the last two decades (and a […]
Rarely am I so entirely delighted with almost every moment of a production as I was with Hannah Moscovitch’s new play Bunny, on at the Tarragon until April 1st. In the playwright’s note, Moscovitch explains that writing this play was a vehicle for processing her relationship to the Victorian novels she loved so much as […]
Death and marriage are all the rage on Toronto stages at the moment with four current productions totally preoccupied with one or both. The most prominent is Groundling Theatre Company’s Lear, the young company’s best-to-date by miles. The press release for director Graham Abbey‘s well-focused production claimed that the company was presenting “Lear with a […]
I went back and forth on the title of this On Stage in TO roundup, the options being “small to big” and “best to worst” because both descriptions apply to the shows I’m about to discuss in the order in which I’m going to discuss them. Read into the pattern what you will- perhaps small, […]