Rodgers & Hammerstein’s at once conventional and bizarre western romance opens with a strapping cowboy named Curly singing about what a beautiful day it is. The first act proceeds down a very charming road from there, full of banter and whimsy, meant-for-each-other lovers, fun dance routines, showy solo numbers and amusing bit parts. Then things […]
Chris Abraham knows how to assemble a cast. The Seagull- his latest production for Crow’s Theatre, currently playing at the Berkeley- sports the director’s most perfectly constructed ensemble yet with some of Canada’s greatest actors each playing their strongest notes with a key lack of background noise to distract from Chekhov’s incisive story about art and […]
Read Thea’s Reviews and Lorenzo’s Reviews of the NSTF. Graham Clark Reads the Phonebook I loved comedian Graham Clark’s solo show at last summer’s Fringe Festival. So did everyone else, including Fringe head honcho Lucy Eveleigh. So Lucy invited him back for the Next Stage Festival. This, in theory, makes sense (especially considering they have […]
Big Shot “I wish life were more like an action movie.” This is the plea of our young narrator at the beginning of Big Shot with Surreal SoReal Theatre out of Montreal. This solo show, written and performed by Jon Lachlan Stewart, weaves the story of four strangers who meet on a subway car, in […]
Theatre is alive at host venue Factory Theatre as patrons showed little fear, braving the cold winds at the outdoor ticket booth – huddling closely but with great anticipation of the shows on the inside. Both shows I viewed my first night at the festival were relatable in that they dealt with relationships and loss, […]
2014 was so much fun for us at My Theatre (Toronto). We hosted our first-ever My Theatre Award Party on April 7th, hired a handful of new part-time reviewers, and saw upwards of 200 productions between January 1st and December 31st (literally, the last one was at 8pm on New Years Eve). We started the […]
Potted Potter (Starvox Entertainment/Potted Productions) In the second international tour of this two-man 70-minute reverential romp, creator/performers Dan & Jeff (Clarkson & Turner) are replaced by Ben & James (Stratton & Percy), who are essentially playing Dan & Jeff but are wisely called Ben & James. The new guys are plenty loveable and plenty enthusiastic […]
Burgeoning Stratford hotshot Tyrone Savage tread a tricky path very strategically in getting his vision of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to the Storefront stage (where it’s currently playing until December 21st). Edward Albee’s blackly comic domestic drama is famous in name but rarely produced on stage, the shadows of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton […]