Upon entering the always versatile Baillie Theatre, it appeared as though I was walking into a title bout. With the audience framing three sides of the stage, the stage took the form of a dusty boxing gym. As the lights dimmed, it was clear that the boxing ring set before me was about to become the scene for a battle of both nerves and fists. Continue reading Review: The Royale (Soulpepper)→
A new show in Toronto explores some of the many ways women fade from sight in our culture
The late, great Southern writer Flannery O’Connor famously wrote “everything that rises must converge,” and I have always heard that sentence in the back of my mind when I see a piece of theatre that’s so emotionally specific and truthful that the experiences just shimmer up off the stage and, inevitably, converge with the audience’s experience (no matter how demographically different the audience member may be from the performer). Now You See Her, the new collaboration from Quote Unquote Collective, is exactly this kind of extraordinary work. Continue reading Review: Now You See Her (Quote Unquote/Nightwood/Why Not)→
Canadian Stage presents the latest work by Akram Khan in Toronto
The harmonious sounds of the tabla (Indian drums) greeted audience members as they walked into the Canadian Stage‘s Berkeley Street Theatre to watch one of Akram Khan’s newest dance works – XENOS. I’ve been a fan of Khan’s work as an artist since I watched his show DESH in 2013. His uncanny ability to draw the audience in through story-telling, alluring sounds, fascinating imagery, intricate movements in Kathak (Indian dance) and contemporary dance have left audiences from around the world standing on their feet after all of his creations – including the one I just experienced – XENOS.
Toronto dance company Sore for Punching You presents Exhale
Allison Cummings’ Exhale presented at DanceMakers Centre for Creation shows the beautiful complexities of communication through breath – reminding us of its vital and universal nature, the rhythm that it holds and the intense emotional effects it presents to others.
The beautiful sound design by Dora Award winner, Lyon Smith, brings in the audience before the show begins. The required silence of the audience, generally communicated by the universal sign of dimming the lights is forgotten, the entire audience is mute long before show time, captivated by the sound of live raindrops surrounding the stage. I could feel an added underlying rumbling sound through my whole body. Smith is present on stage, completely focused on the performers and his soundboard, amplifying the beautiful sounds of their breath with a simple yet effective soundscape.
A pre-Broadway run of the new musical about The Temptations is playing in Toronto
The latest show to play Toronto before transferring to Broadway, Ain’t Too Proud at the Princess of Wales Theatre is the story of The Temptations, one of the first and best known “crossover” groups in American music. The appetite for jukebox musicals is apparently never going to diminish, and though the writing is workmanlike, Ain’t Too Proud as a musical does what The Temptations themselves did: make bright, easy to enjoy, reasonably talented music on schedule.
Marco Ramirez’s striking and heart-wrenching play gets its Canadian debut in Toronto
A new show in Toronto explores some of the many ways women fade from sight in our culture
Canadian Stage presents the latest work by Akram Khan in Toronto
Toronto dance company Sore for Punching You presents Exhale
A pre-Broadway run of the new musical about The Temptations is playing in Toronto