There are a few operatic conventions that really get me down. The first is a wackadoo story that let’s say isn’t exactly grounded in human truth. The second is overdramatic Tragedy with a capital t. Though the two productions that make up the Canadian Opera Company’s spring season embody, respectively, these qualities to a tee, […]
Umnikelo (Offering)
The opening night of Luyanda Sidiya’s double-bill performances of Umnikelo and Dominion was dedicated to putting an end to xenophobic violence…
Tom at the Farm (Buddies in Bad Times) This gorgeous and disturbing piece of personal theatre from Canadian playwright Michel Marc Bouchard is one of the first truly great productions I’ve seen this year. Making its English language debut through Linda Gaboriau’s poetic and honest translation, Tom at the Farm is staged with searing insight […]
Creditors (Coal Mine Theatre) The final piece in Coal Mine Theatre’s fantastically successful inaugural season is a dark domestic drama from August Stringberg set in a 19th century world of rampant misogyny and even more rampant psychotic jealousy. The solid production benefits greatly from director Rae Ellen Bodie’s background in dialect coaching (there’s a clarity […]
With a disarming amount of charm, South African performance artist Steven Cohen brought his infamous Chandelier to the final week of the Canadian Stage Spotlight on South Africa festival. We hear him before we see him, the sound of glass pieces jingling together fills the theatre moments before he enters slowly and deliberating from the […]
“I wanted to write about obsession, about creativity, about risk-taking, about love and loss,” playwright Carolyn Smart writes about Hooked, now playing at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. Certainly all of these elements and more are present in this intimate montage of the lives of 7 women. This eclectic one-woman show exemplifies not only the […]
Ale House Theatre is Toronto’s indie original practices producer, a purist mandate of which I was very wary before I finally saw their excellent Othello. It turns out that, despite what recent Stratford seasons have taught us, original practices actually can showcase Shakespeare at its best (though I still don’t agree that they come inherently […]
There is one thing that struck me immediately about the new musical Fun Home: the audience, which was unique. The lesbian couple to my left had never been to a Broadway show before (a point that they stressed repeatedly while we chatted before curtain), and the older gentleman to my right was a seasoned theatre […]