Turtleneck arrives on the Toronto stage, “doesn’t get much better.”Let me sum up emerGENce Theatre‘s Turtleneck playing at the Tree of Life Theatre in five words: it is so absurdly good.
Brilliantly cast, darkly hilarious, unexpected–there is just no way this show should be missed.
Title of Deed questions the meaning of home, on stage now in TorontoTo say someone is ‘here’ begs the question: what, precisely, is that place? Nightfall Theatric’s Title and Deed, playing at the Tarragon Theatre Workspace, follows the story of one man trying to dig into the nature of leaving home and arriving in a new place. Unfortunately, this production begs the question a bit too pointedly of its audience, as its answers are often safe and mostly underwhelming.
Continue reading Review: Title and Deed (Nightfall Theatrics)
Mockingbird Close is a quick-witted dark comedy playing at the Red Sandcastle Theatre in TorontoIt never matters how much people care or love or even feel about another person, memories are always full of holes that get eaten away by preferred fictions. Eroding memory in the face of tragedy is the core of INpulse Theatre’s Mockingbird Close playing at Red Sandcastle Theatre.
There is no closure to be found in this show, just an uneasy, reflection on the nature of community, family, and what we want to be true.
Continue reading Review: Mockingbird Close (Inpulse Theatre)
What if you got the opportunity of the lifetime but you had to play up every stereotype you’ve spent your life battling? Bobby Del Rio’s Professionally Ethnic playing at the Toronto 2017 SummerWorks Festival explores the consequences of that decision and has a little fun on the way.
Continue reading Professionally Ethnic (Bobby Del Rio) 2017 SummerWorks Review
There is a place where Garth Brooks never pursued fame, Dolly Parton is a chef, and Shania Twain owns a boat. It’s a world unlike our own in whoischrisgains’s Nashville Stories playing at the 2017 SummerWorks Festival.
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“What year is it?” The innocuous questions opens Erased: Billy and Bayard by Queer Songbook Orchestra playing at the Toronto 2017 SummerWorks Festival.
Its the uncertainty in the answer that is at the heart of the show as it digs into the lives and accomplishments of musicians and Civil Rights activists Billy Strayhorn and Bayard Rustin.
Continue reading Erased: Billy & Bayard (Queer Songbook Orchestra) 2017 SummerWorks Review
You are invited into a maze where you wander freely, encountering the four elements, their environments, and tiny art installations depicting anything from police brutality to pollution.
Welcome to the Eldritch Designs Collective’s Paths, playing at the Artscape Youngplace Studio 109 as part of the Toronto 2017 SummerWorks Festival: a fully immersive live art performance.
Continue reading Paths (Eldritch Designs Collective) 2017 SummerWorks Review
The Lavender Railroad has “incredible chemistry” in a “tense little play”, on stage in TorontoThe question of who we save, and why we save them haunts In-The-Moment Theatre’s The Lavender Railroad, playing at The Box Theatre. Despite its heavy-handed title, this is not a show that takes its subject matter lightly, but instead tries to understand how a dark-mirror world could or would inform the traditional values people hold dear.
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El Retorno/I Return is “a stroke of beauty” on the Toronto stageThe fight for justice and freedom is not easily defined for families fleeing conflict. In El Retorno/I Return, part of Why Not Theatre’s Riser Project playing at the Theatre Centre, tells the semi-autobiographical story of a family reflecting on their decision to remain in Canada instead of returning to Chile as part of The Return Plan—an international push against Chilean dictator Pinochet.
El Retorno/I Return personalizes the struggle of political refugees, making a complex question—how do you fight for the freedom and peace of your country— into a simple, but hard-hitting, family drama.
Continue reading Review: El Retorno/I Return (The RISER Project and Why Not Theatre)
The Cabaret Company presents Sky Gilbert’s newest play It’s All Tru in TorontoI don’t envy Sky Gilbert’s attempt at creating an honest and open-ended discussion of the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure in Canada. The Cabaret Company’s It’s All Tru playing at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre lays important creative groundwork in discussing poorly defined laws around unprotected sex and HIV, systemic limitations on enforcing these laws, and the consequences of such enforcement.
While there’s clearly a purpose to the play—to challenge our perspective on these laws, It’s All Tru suffers from unbalanced characters whose behaviour undermines Gilbert’s point of view.