The return of the in-person Toronto Fringe Festival is something I’ve been looking forward to pretty much every day for the past two years. Over the course of 8 days, I reviewed 40 shows. Click the titles below for the full reviews. In Alphabetical Order: 2 Robs, 1 Cup: What Happens When You’re […]
Likeable but slight, Love Quirks at AMT Theatre is little more than a tease. Despite spirited performances and several successful numbers, Love Quirks frustrates due to an under-baked plot and inconsistent vision. Love Quirks is the story of four thirty-somethings who live (mostly) together in New York City, navigating heartbreak, sex, and the nuances […]
Nearly three full hours, consisting of very little plot yet somehow lots of plot contrivance and noted mainly for its extended bursts of tiresome moralizing, Too True to be Good is quintessentially Shavian in a way I find hard to love. It’s so typical that there’s almost a strange comfort in its inclusion in this, […]
Robert & Willie Reale’s musical adaptation of Arnold Lobel’s Frog & Toad books is so deliriously pleasant that I nearly got heatstroke sitting in the uncovered section of its outdoor audience at the Shaw Festival and barely noticed. My cheeks hurt from smiling and I cried so much that it’s better measured by time than […]
Is the Harry Potter theatrical sequel worth seeing? Our review of the latest from Mirvish Productions.
Ted Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt’s 2 Pianos 4 Hands is considered one of the great success stories of Canadian theatre. Spinning a tale about parallel adolescences tied together by classical piano training, this elegantly simple two-man production balances a double life as crowd-pleasing goofball act punctuated by well-played concertos and a darkly funny memory play […]
Théâtre français de Toronto’s Singulières (co-presented by Crow’s Theatre) is the sort of show that can be either revelatory or evocatively familiar. If you’re a woman who’s spent a good portion of your life single, the true stories told in Maxime Beauregard-Martin’s thoughtful docu-play will likely ring true in that way that good true theatre […]
The city’s longest running opera company offers a really lovely blend of young professional artist support and community-based involvement. Their latest production, Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana (which ran June 2-5 for three performances only at the Harbourfront Centre’s Fleck Dance Theatre) perfectly illustrates that two-pronged approach to opera for everyone. It’s hard to explain […]