I’ve always liked to believe you can tell a fine play by its title. In this case, playwright Jordi Mand has ingeniously chosen a seemingly ordinary one which, in actuality, alludes to the electrifying secret that propels the story forward in this head-to-head dispute between Marion (Susan Coyne) and Teresa (Christine Horne) about what really […]
Two weeks after the PQ was elected as Quebec’s minority government- causing concern of renewed interest in nationalist policies- the time could not be more right for a project fusing our country’s strong English playwriting tradition with the electroacoustic music Quebec is renowned for. Montreal-based composer Louis Dufort and Toronto-based writer Tom Walmsley were both […]
The Summerworks Festival is my one big regret of the summer, theatre-wise. After a disappointing Fringe, I was really looking forward to the juried, uniquely Torontonian festival. The lineup looked pretty good and I had my press pass all lined up but I simply dropped the ball. I saw only 6 productions over the course […]
I left Ajax – the play at Summerworks, not the place – hardly able to speak, let alone know what to think or feel. The play aims at shocking audiences by providing them with a raw kind of truth that so often does not accompany discussions on sexuality and violence. It attempts to hold up a […]
Heads up, the first part of this article will be about Urinetown itself. I’ll tackle the production later on. Don’t take the opinions in the first part as a reflection of my feelings on the generally good Stageworks show. If you want to read only the review, it starts by the production photo so just […]
As directed by Laszlo Marton and featuring the Academy members alongside Soulpepper vets, The Royal Comedians is fine. It’s nowhere near the company’s best work but it has some moments of greatness. Bulgakov’s text is not unlike the production’s repertory fellow The Crucible in that it’s a historical parallel to the author’s contemporary struggles. In Albert […]
The summer air has begun to cool down, but With Somebody Who Loves Me, an independent production by Manzo Entertainment, is heating up the Tarragon. A shortened version of the dance spectacle just completed a successful run at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, where the cast of eight dancers played to packed and enthusiastic houses […]
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in response to McCarthyism in the 1940s-50s, and it is appropriately infuriating. Responding to the communist witch hunt that was targeting writers like himself, Miller wrote a piece that would become one of the most widely produced American plays in history, about an actual witch hunt. He uses the 1692 […]