Fabulously staged Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time comes to the Toronto stage

When you enter the Princess of Wales theatre for Mirvish’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, you’re essentially walking into a giant cube made up of grids and pinpoints of light. Everything is mathematically precise, with the entire world of the stage sectioned off into regimented squares and shapes. This is the world of Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old math genius who has what the book the play is based on describes as “behavioural difficulties.” Continue reading Review: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mirvish) →

Canadian Opera Company brings shades of grey to Arabella on the Toronto stage

The final collaboration of Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arabella is either a deceptively grim meditation on love in society, a typical comedy of manners, a proto-feminist parable of the volatile position of women in the marriage market, or a light and frothy romance. Sometimes it can be all of these things at once. I’m not entirely sure which The Canadian Opera Company‘s adaptation of Strauss’ Arabella wants to be — but that very ambiguity is what makes it interesting.  Continue reading Review: Arabella (Canadian Opera Company) →

Tom Shadow  is “charming” and “outrageous,” now on the Toronto stage

As I read through the program for Theatre Lab’s recent venture—The Adventures of Tom Shadow—I notice that they chose to title it a “comedy musical” and not a “musical comedy.” Smart move, because the musical theatre geek in me may have been disappointed with the lack of kick lines. No worries though, because The Adventures of Tom Shadow was everything I could have wanted and more in a “comedy musical,” if those are a thing? Are they a thing? Let’s make them a thing now.

Continue reading Review: The Adventures Of Tom Shadow (Theatre Lab) →

Canadian Opera Company’s Elixir of Love, now on stage in Toronto, is “good, simple fun”

The backdrop for the Canadian Opera Company’s new production of L’elisir d’amore (Gaetano Donizetti, 1832) glides us into a small, unspoiled pastoral village. It seems impossible that war could ever disturb such a place, but it is 1914 in small town Ontario… Continue reading Review: L’elisir d’amore/Elixir of Love (Canadian Opera Company) →

Young People’s Theatre presents Bello, a folktale with scary moments, on stage in Toronto

On Wednesday afternoon my grandson Desmond and I went to see Bello at Young People’s Theatre.  It’s billed as suitable for kids from six to nine years old. Desmond is six years and three weeks old. It was his expert opinion that one of the classes attending the performance was a kindergarten class and that the kids weren’t six yet. They seemed to manage just fine.

Bello is essentially a folktale “about a time when there were no phones, no cars, and no light bulbs…” and a young boy named Bern who gets lost in the snow on his way back from school. Continue reading Review: Bello (Young People’s Theatre) →