Mary-Margaret Scrimger

Theatre Lab’s new musical comedy, currently onstage at the Factory Studio Theatre, can be summarized in one word: clever. The title- The Adventures of Tom Shadow- suggests a Peter Pan-type protagonist and a familiar tale of his far-flung adventures. The opening scene features the expected happy nuclear family at bedtime and, when the parents leave, Tom Shadow takes […]

  Lisa McKeown

Co-produced by Ahuri Theatre and Bad New Days, Flashing Lights is a story that explores the ways in which technology affects lives, and specifically our relationships. From the internet and the dissemination of information that it enables, to the screens we look at all day long, we are becoming – quite literally – cyborgs. The […]

  Oliver Simmonds

Chloe Lamford’s set presents a box in the Jerwood Downstairs surrounded by scaffolding, which contains the kind of modern, expensive, prefab apartment you see in every part of Central London. It’s typical, and typically furnished, and the performance notes specify that the ‘generic art’ on the walls looks like it’s been ‘chosen by a property […]

  Duncan Derry

Bathroom intimacy is a key part of any romantic relationship. Worst opening sentence ever? I stand by it only because Filament Incubator’s production of Becky Tanton’s How to Drown Gracefully is often just as upfront (if more elegant) about its characters’ entwined romantic and physical sufferings, and it sets the whole thing, even in scenes […]

  Chris Behmke

Tooting Arts Club’s production of Sweeney Todd at the Barrow Street Theatre is the perfect thing to see this fall: part dark theatrical masterpiece, part haunted house. It’s the most creatively staged production of Sweeney Todd that I have ever seen: the show is set in a pie shop (with fresh pies baked by the former White House pastry […]

  Kelly Bedard

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Hart House Theatre) The saga of Hart House musicals is full of high highs and low lows as their success fluctuates wildly depending mostly, it seems, on the popularity of their chosen show. They don’t pay their performers so, in order to lure the right talent, they have to offer […]

  Lisa McKeown

Aptly timed, this DMT Productions prequel to Waiting for Godot is currently playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace while Soulpepper’s production of Beckett’s play is starting to wrap up. I have a deep personal affinity for the original: I first read it in high school, I have taught it in a class on existentialism, […]

  Chris Behmke

Doing improv well, especially in the improv-saturated comedy scene of New York City, is a difficult task. Doing improv well with the musical sensibility to fit with improvised music is even more difficult. Rapping improv, for an hour and a half about a historical figure that no one knows that much about, often at a […]