Something for everyone in Second City Toronto’s latest Mainstage Revue, The Meme-ing of Life
I am not someone who gets Internet jokes. I know a little about grumpy cat, I’ve seen a few of those talking dog YouTube videos, but a lot of internet humour goes over my head. That poptart kitty? I don’t get it. I still have to mentally correct myself from saying me-me whenever I read the word meme.
But if you are as out of the e-loop as me, fear not! Turns out the show, save one skit, is really less about Internet jokes and more about how – as the title suggests – comedy memes life by imitating it. Continue reading Review: The Meme-ing of Life (Second City)→
LEAR gets new life thanks to Philip McKee and Harbourfront Centre World Stage in Toronto
‘A show built out of moments’ is the first method I could think of to describe World Stage’s latest production of LEAR at the Harbourfront Centre Studio Theatre. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s irreverent drama King Lear, brought to the stage with great care by director Philip McKee, and performed with gentle power by three women. That’s right, King Lear is a she.
To flesh out my explanation of this piece, I’d further posit that it’s an intricate performance of subtleties, built upon the success of moments of interaction between characters. Basically, what you can expect to occur on the Harbourfront Centre Studio’s mostly barren stage is a closer inspection of the singular moments within Shakespeare’s text as opposed to the whole story arc itself. McKee takes the story of Lear and, in a way, puts it under a microscope –or in this case, a microphone- amplifying the relationships between Lear and his daughters and cutting out the extra bits of story.
Off Mirvish closes its season with Dancing With Rage, at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre
Marg Delahunty finds out she’s going blind and embarks on a quest to find the love child she gave up for adoption in 1967. She wants to see her baby’s face. And that’s what Mary Walsh’s solo show Dancing With Rage is about. It opened tonight at the Panasonic Theatre, the third and final show in the inaugural season of Off Mirvish productions.
A highly-polished, detail-oriented Communicating Doors at Toronto’s Papermill Theatre
There’s a certain type of British farce: doors open and slam, an old man chases after a young woman, and everyone ends up dressed in someone else’s clothing. In writing Communicating Doors, Alan Ayckbourn was poking fun at these conventions–and giving them a faintly sinister twist. Doors isn’t some innocent sex farce: here we find a violent henchman lurking in the closet, a genuinely evil man calling the shots, and the lives of our three female protagonists in the balance.
Strap, lace-up, velcro or slip-on, we’ve all got out own version of dancing shoes. Our affordable theatre selection for this week pulls together some pretty swell dance events, because movement is just as communicative as text. Don’t believe me? Check these out!
There’s a certain type of British farce: doors open and slam, an old man chases after a young woman, and everyone ends up dressed in someone else’s clothing. In writing