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.
Among audience members in the packed Tarragon lobby for Blind Date on opening night, there was a palpable buzz among the men as it became clear to anyone who hadn’t heard that one of the men in the audience would shortly be chosen to spend the following ninety-odd minutes onstage. With the performer. Creating (as creator and performer Rebecca Northan quipped) a “new Canadian play.” If I hadn’t been tagged as a reviewer, and therefore off limits, I freely confess that I would have been nervous too.
Superhero! is Toronto’s Mysteriously Yours’ latest dinner-theatre murder-mystery
In the world of theatre, a certain unofficial hierarchy of “importance” is known to exist and – we should probably all acknowledge – murder mystery dinner theatre tends to get ranked toward the bottom of the Serious Cultural Events scale. As the one who had to sit through Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia last fall, I can tell you for certain that while Superhero! A Bam! Zap! Pow! Murder Mystery might be less important, it’s certainly a lot more fun.
No one could be more delighted to report that seeing Starry Notions tonight at Annex Theatre meant I finally found a Toronto Fringe show I want to rave about, to go on at length about, to answer strangers in lineups with when they ask the traditional Fringe smalltalk question: have you seen anything you’ve loved? Yes. I loved Starry Notions. Would you like to hear all about why? Excellent.
It takes a big personality to fill the Tarragon Mainspace, and also a big crowd. While Jenny Hamilton didn’t have the latter for her 11pm show of Klondyke: Stand Up Straight From The Yukon at the Toronto Fringe Festival, she certainly has the former. Possessing the classic Yukon values around propriety and the vocabulary to match, Hamilton takes us on a whirlwind that starts with an encounter with a homeless Tim Gunn-wannabe on a Toronto sidewalk and finishes… at the gynecologist’s office. There are plenty of laughs in between.
In a fairly full house in the Factory Mainspace at 1:45 on a sunny Saturday at Toronto Fringe Festival, Sam Mullins (eponymous author of The Untitled Sam Mullins Project shows his stuff. The photo above does not lie: Mullins tells stories. If I had a sharpie, I’d amend his sign to read “I tell (three fairly interesting and one utterly riveting) stories (well enough that no one looked at their watch for an entire hour).” In a nutshell, there’s the show.
No one could be more delighted to report that seeing 
It takes a big personality to fill the 