The new Soulpepper season opened last week with Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, directed by Ravi Jain, translated by Jon Laskin and Michael Aquilante, intensely modernized and adapted and localized by Jain and Paula Wing. The production stars Kawa Ada, a rapturously engaging and versatile performer born in Afghanistan and appearing on the […]
Clarity- of theme, of character, of purpose- is, to me, the greatest necessity in any Shakespeare production. Chances are the audience won’t follow every word of the script or even every beat of the story but if a production is thematically strong, has a solid sense of who each character is as a human being […]
CanStage’s The Other Place is difficult to write about without giving too much away. For the play is reveal after reveal, as we move back and forward in time, uncovering family secrets, buried memories, and emotional turmoil. And yet, as we move down the winding road of this dense, emotional bit of realism, I was […]
A Steady Rain (Paper Moon Productions) This intimate cop drama presented by Paper Moon Productions in the tiny room on Queen East known as The Grocery tells an action-packed story but does so all in past tense. Anthony Parise and John Palmieri play a pair of childhood best friends turned partners, a complex odd-couple dynamic […]
2014-15 are the years that math and science became incredibly cool in popular culture and a staple of popular entertainment. Two of the hottest Oscar contenders for Best Picture this year chronicle the lives of Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing. The cast of The Big Bang Theory is reaping considerable financial rewards for their television […]
Jesus Christ Superstar (Hart House) Jesus Christ Superstar is a really gutsy musical. It’s about a human being named Jesus and his friend Judas who embark on a mission to do good in the world only to have things spiral out of control until the PR spin around Jesus is so dangerous that he’s held […]
Where do I begin in describing how much fun I had at Kerplop! The Tale of the Frog Prince? I suppose at the beginning, with a description of a traditional panto for those not in the know. A pantomime in this context is a UK theatrical tradition based on staging well-known fairy tales in an […]
A Side of Dreams is a beautiful view into Metis cultural traditions of generational and ancestral healing. The evening begins with a wondrous and effective projection of a spider beginning to spin a web, through a suspended aerial hoop. The initial image and soundscape prepare the audience for the intimate and thoughtful performance to come. […]