S. Bear Bergman has great faith in the power of theatre to make change, and has been putting his money where his mouth is on that one for some time. A writer, performer, and lecturer, Bear works full time as an artist and cultural worker and loves to see as much live performance as possible – making this a fantastic gig for him.
For opera fans, there has become a certain electricity around Alexander Neef‘s innovation of the Centre Stage Gala. Centre Stage is when young singers from across Canada compete for cash prizes and spots in the Canadian Opera Company‘s world class internship program, the Ensemble Studio. It’s a little bit like going to watch minor league games but in very nice clothes; looking out for who clearly has the goods and enjoying a sense of having spotted them early as they make a career.
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)→
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.
The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2018-19 season with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
There are some excellent things about Eugene Onegin at the Canadian Opera Company to open the season: Joseph Kaiser, the French horn, and the direction of Peter McClintock. While I did not find myself carried away (as I would always prefer to be at the opera) I did feel nicely eased into the season, and felt as though it would be an equally nice way to ease a theatre-lover into opera appreciation.
The version of Winners and Losers showing at the 2018 SummerWorks Festival is adapted from the original play of the same name, written and performed by Marcus Youssef and James Long. Youssef and Long, like Valerie Planche and Makambe S. Simamba, are friends, artists making work in Canada, and of markedly different backgrounds (by which I actually mean backgrounds and not “background as a euphemism for race” – though also that). In the show, Planche and Simamba play a game where they throw out nouns from “TTC” to “Space Soldiers” and discuss whether they’re winners or losers.
Thaya Whitten, the subject of The Red Horse Is Leaving in the 2018 SummerWorks Performance Festival, was clearly a woman ahead of her time. The performance of her character, drawn heavily from her own writing and speaking engagements, is full of chewy, delicious ideas about art, commerce, relationships, colour, light, music, and fear. Whitten, who convened panel discussion and drew them live, who engaged people about their deep feelings and expectations around artwork, is utterly fascinating.
There’s nothing like a Morro & Jasp show: not in other time slots at Tarragon Theatre, not in the whole of the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival, not ever. Toronto’s favorite clown sisters have a new two-hander in the Fringe this year and it’s everything you ever wanted from them – bickering, antics, deep emotional engagement with the foundations of human connection, belly laughs and snacks.
Having loved (and cried during) The Nance on Broadway, I felt somewhat prepared to love (and cry over) The Pansy Craze: A New Musical, showing at the Randolph Theatre as part of the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival. The shows both throw the Gay Wayback Machine back to a liminal time in queerness, exploring a shimmering moment in history when gender-independence was briefly allowable in public before law-enforcement clamped its unforgiving jaws back down. I did love The Pansy Craze: A New Musical, and I did cry, and I am keen indeed to see how this show progresses.
What you see is what you get with Adam Schwartz, who references his lack of a filter and propensity for truth-telling repeatedly in his stand-up fringe show, Aspergers: More Tales of a Social Misfit. Playing the Annex Theatre as part of this years Toronto Fringe Festival, Schwartz’s short set is a set-up-and-knock-down series of jokes about how his Aspergers affects his life, what he’s learned and, of course, his mother.
When I chose this show to review, it was called Meg Makes Mistakes, and I wish this charming short solo about love and relationships and, well, errors in judgement had retained its original title. Instead it’s in the Toronto Fringe Festival program as Meg MacKay: Freelance Witch and is playing at the in Tarragon Theatre’s small but mighty Solo Room. It’s maybe about three-quarters of the way to being a finished piece, but somehow that’s part of the pleasure in it.
A new show in Toronto explores some of the many ways women fade from sight in our culture
A pre-Broadway run of the new musical about The Temptations is playing in Toronto
The Canadian Opera Company opens its 2018-19 season with Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
Having loved (and cried during) The Nance on Broadway, I felt somewhat prepared to love (and cry over) 
What you see is what you get with Adam Schwartz, who references his lack of a filter and propensity for truth-telling repeatedly in his stand-up fringe show, 