2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Date Me (Ted&Lisa)

Photo of Ted Hallett and Lisa Merchant in Date Me by Tanja Tiziana

Date Me, currently playing in the Factory Antechamber at the Next Stage Theatre Festival, is an improvised comedy show where creators Ted Hallett and Lisa Merchant act out an imagined first date between two characters based on real life dating profiles. Often laugh-out-loud funny and appropriately awkward, this “different every night” 30-minute farce is one I would definitely see a second time!

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2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Two Truths and a Lie (Pressgang Theatre)

truths-1Each night of the Next Stage Theatre Festival , three Toronto theatre artists, Graham Isador, Helder Brum and Rhiannon Archer, will take over the Factory Theatre’s Antechamber and each will impart an outlandish tale. Two of them will be telling true stories from their lives and one will be telling a story that’s made up. The fun for the audience is in guessing which one is fiction. Hence, their new half-hour show Two Truths and a Lie.

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2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Blood Ties (Edge of the Sky)

blood_ties

Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston, members of the writing team behind some of the most-acclaimed musicals to come out of the Toronto Fringe in recent years (including Summerland and The Fence) bring the latest incarnation of Blood Ties, a darkly comedic musical the duo has been honing for several years, to the Next Stage Theatre Festival.

Keen-eyed observers may recall that the musical was featured as part of the storyline on season 2 of “Orphan Black,” the Toronto-based BBC America/Space cult hit science fiction thriller starring Tatiana Maslany. A musical about a bunch of friends tasked with cleaning up the bloody mess in a bathroom following a relative’s suicide on the eve of their friend’s wedding, Blood Ties is the kind of quirky dark comedy that has the potential to also achieve cult hit status some day but at this point I still think it needs some more work. Continue reading 2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Blood Ties (Edge of the Sky)

2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Clique Claque (Pea Green Theatre Group)

Clique Claque

It’s 1880, and the theatres of Paris are under the thrall of the elegant and cutthroat Madame Clothilde (Michelle Langille), a sinister “Chef de Claque” whose band of professional “clappers” can manipulate any audience in town.

It’s into this den of theatrical vipers and vampires stumbles Victor (Victor Pokinko), a hapless young Canadian musician–and thus begins Clique Claque, a period melodrama now on stage as part of the Next Stage Theatre Festival.

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