With a three-year-old and a nine-year-old to consider, it can be difficult to find shows that are accessible to the little one but not boring for the big one (to say nothing of boring for the semi-responsible adult accompanying them). When a show that’s pleasing to all three comes along, like The 26 Letter Dance, it feels like an entire March Break miracle
Continue reading Review: 26 Letter Dance (Young People’s Theatre)
Since Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, Nanette, started doing big business in views and reviews, all sorts of comedians have written or dusted off longer solo pieces that combine comedy, storytelling, and a little good old theatrical flair. Franco Nguyen’s Good Morning Viet*Mom, playing in the Aki Studio theatre after a solid Next Stage Festival run, is an entry into this category (and a solid one at that).
The Stratford Festival production of Molière’s satirical play is currently on stage in Toronto
School of Rock hits the stage at Toronto’s Ed Mirvish Theatre; family fun holiday musicalHere’s what you need to know, from the perspective on an eight-year-old, about School of Rock at the Ed Mirvish Theatre: “That was the awesomest show I’ve ever seen!” While my jaundiced 44-year-old view is perhaps a little less unreservedly complimentary, part of the value for me in bringing actual children to theatre intended for children is to understand what they like, love, or…don’t especially care for. School of Rock fell squarely into the “love,” category and prompted my middle child to ask a question they’ve never, ever asked before: “Do you think they’d let us see that one again?”
Family-favourite musical Mary Poppins warms the hearts of Toronto audiences at Young People’s Theatre“I like how this is looking,” said my eight-year-old companion as we settled into seats for Mary Poppins at the Young People’s Theatre. “It looks fancy on the stage and I see musicians. Is there a lot of music and dancing in this show? I would love that.” When the orchestra swelled and the lights dimmed, they bounced happily in anticipation, which proved well-warranted – there was indeed a lot of excellent music and dancing, and we absolutely did love it.
Continue reading Kid +1 Review: Mary Poppins (Young People’s Theatre)
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.
Continue reading Review: Centre Stage (Canadian Opera Company)
A new show in Toronto explores some of the many ways women fade from sight in our cultureThe 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 TorontoThe 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 OneginThere 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.
Continue reading Review: Eugene Onegin (Canadian Opera Company)
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.
Continue reading Winners and Losers (Chromatic Theatre) 2018 SummerWorks Review