My expectations were high going into Oleanna at Red Sandcastle Theatre. Grace Gordon and James McGowan are extremely accomplished both on stage and on TV. The play tackles very relevant material about power dynamics, authority and sexual harassment. Carol (Gordon), a young student, seeks to address her failing grades and confusion with course concepts by […]
Inspired by the true story of an opera singer and a French diplomat, Mr. Shi and His Lover is a semi-operatic play currently on Tarragon’s mainstage. The narrative traces a story in which the two fall in love, and proceed to have a twenty year relationship, during which time Mr. Shi believed his lover to […]
Featuring vivid characters and a dramatic story of jealousy, love, and redemption, The National Ballet of Canada’s adaptation of The Winter’s Tale is a beautifully choreographed, magical ballet that absolutely everyone should see at least once. Like the Shakespeare play on which it is based, the ballet opens with Polixenes, King of Bohemia, visiting […]
Dublin Carol is not your usual Christmas tale. Presented by Fly on the Wall Theatre, this brutally honest and bleak play is set over a single day – Christmas Eve – in the life of John Plunkett, an alcoholic Dublin undertaker. His lonely existence of booze and burials is tempered only by small moments of […]
Poison, currently on at The Coal Mine Theatre, is a story about two people. Actually, it’s a story about three people. We open on a man (Ted Dykstra) waiting in a lobby. Eventually, a woman (Fiona Highet) enters. There is immediate tension. What follows is a simple but heartbreaking story about grief. Originally written […]
I was at the opening night of actor-writer-comedian Daniel Stolfi’s Another Trip Around the Sun at The Bad Dog Theatre. The opening act for the night was improv duo Probably Pregnant (Lisa Gilroy and Natalie Metcalfe) who almost had us rolling off of our seats. A persistent Natalie begs Lisa to join her at the […]
Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? is currently on at Soulpepper, directed by Alan Dilworth. I love this play for so many reasons, not least of which is that I think it’s a great example of a man actually writing an amazing and complex female lead character, who essentially carries the entire show. […]
The best word I can think of to describe The 7 Fingers’ new show triptyque is magical. I know, I know, cheesy. But when a show can really make me feel, bring me into a zone where the rest of the audience fades away… I mean, that’s magic. The 7 Fingers return to Toronto for the 30th […]