Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! is playing as part of the 2020 Next Stage Theatre Festival. The show features a cabaret-style evening of music and storytelling with a political and often dark edge. She aptly describes it as “musical meditations on the pre-post-apocalypse.”
Underneath a warm and glamourous persona, Pearle Harbour delivers social commentary that is incisive, biting, and a little melancholy.
Continue reading Pearle Harbour’s Agit-Pop! (Justin Miller) 2020 Next Stage Review
Described as “salty as it is sweet,” Tease has a burlesque heart beating under the “traditional theatre” trappings of the 2020 Next Stage Theatre Festival, and when the show stays true to its internal rhythm, it’s a textured and interestingly nuanced pleasure.
Continue reading Tease (Theatre Lab and Big City Kitties) 2020 Next Stage Festival Review
Kitne Saare Laloo Yahan Pey Hain, having garnered great interest in a shorter form during Soulpepper’s collection Welcome To My Underworld last spring, is a wild journey into a difficult and gripping story that emerges, slowly, under pressure. While still shaking out a few last hiccups, the show has an undeniable theatrical power.
Morro and Jasp: Save the Date is being presented by U.N.I.T Productions as part of the 2020 Next Stage Theatre Festival. The show was originally performed as part of the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival. It’s the latest installment in the on-going adventures of two clown sisters. I had never seen any of their previous shows, and I was glad to finally be able to catch one. I found it gentle and charming – a perfect antidote to all the bad news out there.
Continue reading Morro and Jasp: Save the Date (U.N.I.T. Productions) 2020 Next Stage Review
Returning to the Next Stage Festival after a hugely successful run at the 2019 Toronto Fringe is Every Silver Lining, a refreshing new musical that is both light and youthful and a downright tearjerker. The story and music hit at just the right level; these characters sound like teenagers living through teenage lives, and as we’ve all lived through these years, you are bound to laugh, cry, and relate.
Continue reading Every Silver Lining (Silver Lining Productions) 2020 Next Stage Review