The latest productions from Coal Mine and Safeword share a common goal: to leave you shaken. They share some other things too (small casts, hip tones, interesting spaces) but it’s that shared goal that stands out. That’s not what all theatre artists are doing; most want to entertain you, to move you, maybe even inspire […]
Theatre is a tough career. It’s long hours and hard work, low pay, challenging politics, tons of rejection and unwavering job insecurity. It’s hard to get noticed as a freelance artist and harder still to build an audience as an independent producer. Even if you’re brilliant, you’ll still likely spend your days as many of […]
John Patrick Shanley’s A Woman is A Secret opened at the Theatre Centre last Friday to an enthusiastic audience. Though what brought audiences to their feet at the end of the show is not clear to me. For while A Woman is a Secret was beautifully staged, actors were bogged down by Shanley’s overly poetic […]
The battleground of Toronto commercial theatre tends to consist of spirited upstarts launching a forward assault on a seemingly impenetrable Mirvish stronghold only to suffer the sort of casualties that only ever results in retreat (unless we’re talking Livent, that was more of a blaze of glory, however inglorious). The latest challenger in the fight […]
Big blasts of light and loud blares of capital S&D Sound Design (courtesy of designers Michael Walton and Thomas Ryder Payne respectively) pair with a dramatic thrust stage and celebrity star to suggest that Canadian Stage’s production of Harper Regan is event theatre. Important theatre. Groundbreaking, somehow. Don’t believe everything you read on a […]
Fringe hit 52 Pick-Up is back, this time at Fraser Studios with more chances to catch any and all of the 4 rotating casts made up of mostly Howland Company founding members. Originally part of the cast, directors Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster & Paolo Santalucia have subbed out, so none of the performances will be quite […]
It’s hard to know where to start in discussing vox:lumen, which opened at the Harbourfront Center’s World Stage last week. Do we being by talking about the show itself: a dance in the dark that made light a player on stage with dancers lighting each other and themselves from a variety of sources, including flashlights. […]
We need to talk about a disturbing trend on Broadway that must be stopped. This trend impacts the public at large and, if not curbed soon, could have unsavory consequences for us all. The terrible scourge plaguing mankind? Mediocre (and even bad) plays selling out large Broadway theatres at astronomically high prices strictly because a […]