All posts by Mara Gulens

Review: Hatched (Triangle Co-Op)

Hatched cracks open the implications of egg donation at the Toronto Free Gallery

I’ve neither given away nor sold my eggs. But there are many women who have, and their story is at the core of Hatched.

But just as compelling is the story of the children hatched from donor eggs. Like Nicholas (Jakob Ehman), whose mom couldn’t get pregnant and yadayada – tada!

As if life weren’t complicated enough, try on this version of nature vs. nurture. Are you my mother? Are you?

Continue reading Review: Hatched (Triangle Co-Op)

Review: The Hours That Remain (New Harlem Productions)

The Hours That Remain brings new blood to a new theatre space at the Daniels Spectrum in Toronto

Venues don’t necessarily add depth to storylines. But that certainly is the case with The Hours That Remain, a play about loss and acceptance playing in a part of downtown Toronto currently undergoing major revitalization.

The venue is the three-week-old Regent Park Arts & Cultural Centre (recently renamed Daniels Spectrum), bringing the arts to a previously rundown area many of us have no more than driven through.

A new play from the Saskatchewan Native Theatre Company playing in that $38-million-dollar jewel gives us reason to visit.

Continue reading Review: The Hours That Remain (New Harlem Productions)

Review: Il Trovatore (Canadian Opera Company)

Passions rage in the COC’s latest opera production at Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts

The week Toronto both proposed reinventing itself and questioned its stature as a world-class metropolis, I was up on the third ring of Diamond and Schmitt’s still awe-inspiring Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, taking in Il Trovatore.

Add to the above the fact that my companion for the night was my decked-out, opera-loving youngest daughter. In any case, our evening ended up being as much about the arts and culture experience as it was about Il Trovatore  specifically.
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Review: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Sterling Studio Theatre)

Hooking up love and loneliness in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at Drake’s old recording studio in Toronto

Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is performed in a new theatre space that was formerly Drake’s recording studio. It contains strong language and sexual content, and was written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony and Emmy Award-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley. And that’s just my teaser.

The play is intense. While it may be about “two of society’s rejects,” we’ve all, to some extent, been there – to the depths and highs of making love and making war. So it becomes, as good theatre does, an exploration of the self. But it is intense, and also extremely harsh.

Continue reading Review: Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Sterling Studio Theatre)