Next to Normal is one of those pieces that, no matter what you do with it, ultimately comes down to the actors. You can place it on a cool, versatile and modern set, you can dress it up with colour-coded costumes and loud rock music, you can place it in the biggest venue available. Ultimately […]
Heart and Dagger Productions presents a challenge with verve; its newest production of MilkMilkLemonade is not for the faint-hearted. Set in a fictitious town, young Emory (played by “Bad Boy of Theatre” Joey C. Pelletier) dreams of a life outside his Nanna (played excellently in drag by Mikey DiLoreto)’s farm. He is just a regular […]
Soup Can Theatre’s production of Marat/Sade is packed full of great ideas, but they’re not always perfectly realized. Sarah Thorpe’s eloquent director’s note reveals the brilliant intellectual backbones of her interpretation- how she’s modernized the text to explore the themes in ways that are both nationally historic and hauntingly current. But her setting of 1957 […]
We were working hard this Toronto Fringe, taking in a total of 16 plays ranging from dance to drag to one-man displays or neurosis. There were companies of one, companies of ten, staged readings, fully-mounted musicals, lots of laughs, a couple of tears and grades ranging from A to D. Read on for the skinny […]
The Independent Drama Society (IDS) closes its final season in good health with Neil Simon’s The Good Doctor at the Factory Theater. Director Christine Toohey guides the production alongside a surprisingly large and diverse fleet of assistant directors, setting the tone for the collaborative piece. The Good Doctor is a collaboration in every sense- not […]
Peter Shaffer’s Equus has seen many notable productions since it was written in 1973, including a 1976 Broadway production featuring Anthony Hopkins and Peter Firth playing Dr. Martin Dysart and Alan Strang, respectively. Most recently, I saw the 2009 Broadway revival with Richard Griffiths and Daniel Radcliffe tackling the same roles. While appreciating the production […]
The stage adaptation of E. Nesbit’s story The Railway Children (onstage now with Mirvish Productions) is all bells and train whistles with very little to sustain it. The relatively small story feels like it takes hours to tell as the cramped audience waits patiently for the inevitable conclusion, or at the very least for the […]
My love for Urban Bard Productions has been well documented on this site. So, naturally, I was incredibly excited to see what director Scott Moyle has come up with for the uber popular and oft-insane comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The first thing to note when going to see Urban Bard’s Dream is that […]