Fuck You! You Fucking Perv! is going to bruise you. This SummerWorks show will disgust you, accuse you of horrible things, spit in your eye, and tell you where you can stuff your good intentions. But while her darts may sting, performer Leslie Baker hits every single one of her targets, nailing the audience square between the eyes.
And, frankly, we deserve the punishment.
Continue reading Fuck You! You Fucking Perv! (Leslie Baker) 2014 SummerWorks Review
In Yarn, playing as part of Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, Alex Eddington — a composer who hasn’t written a decent song in months — explores a radical solution. And once he arrives on the far-flung Isle of Mull, primed for six months of hard labour as a hotel chambermaid in the hopes of clearing his creative block, two things happen.
In this land of ancient tales, standing stones, selkies and solitude, Eddington finds an important part of himself.
But surrounded by sudden death, indifferent nature, and only the voices in his own head to keep him company, he also begins to unravel.
Continue reading Yarn (Alex Eddington) 2014 SummerWorks Review
It’s a hell of a thing to keep a secret from theatrefolk. Social butterflies with robust and devious imaginations, they’ll puzzle anything out. It should say a great deal that, walking into the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, I had no clue what to expect from the Confidential Musical Theatre Project: they’d kept this secret very well.
I knew the show would be a musical, with a cast who had learned their parts in isolation, but had never rehearsed as a group. Beyond that, it was anyone’s guess.
So when I entered the theatre, I was excited to see parasols — parasols which could only come from one very, very famous painting, and from one of Sondheim’s more obscure (and most celebrated) musicals: Sunday in the Park with George.
Continue reading Review: The Confidential Musical Theatre Project
In simple terms, Assassins (playing the George Ignatieff Theatre) is a musical about shooting the president. Each of the nine men and women featured is based on a real historical figure, and through Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics and music (built around John Weidman’s story), we get a unique perspective on the American dream. How much do these people — the insane, the desperate, the thwarted and the under-appreciated — have in common? How well do we really understand their motives? And what does this uniquely American habit of killing their leaders say about the conscience and nature of that nation?
Heavy stuff for a musical, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s StageWorks. Here, supported by some outstanding character work and several bold staging decisions, they make delightful stuff out of one of Sondheim’s darkest, most difficult, and most rewarding pieces.
We Liked 100% Presale. This was the most financially-successful Toronto Fringe Festival in recent memory, with artist revenues skyrocketing and a record number of sellout performances. Every festival has their winners and losers: for every company who raked in a few thousand bucks, someone else lost their shirt. But that’s the nature of the beast — and never before have there been so many winners.
We Disliked 100% Presale. The presale policy was fantastic for the artists, but angry Tweets and indignant queue-chatter both suggest that the resultant parade of SOLD OUT signs has left plenty of theatregoers with 10-packs burning holes in their pockets and beefs to pick with the festival. Maybe there’s a sweet spot between 50% and 100%; maybe Fringe should sell rush tickets next year (10 names on the comp list, but only 2 showed up? Why aren’t you selling those 8 seats? [editorial clarification: If someone is on a comp list the spot can be released and ticket sold. However, if they have been issued a *physical* comp ticket – for instance a member of the media – their spot can *not* be released unless they have been able to notify ticketing in advance. The feeling seems to be their empty seat, visible by a final check before closing the doors, should be up for grabs by waiting list folks. – Megan Mooney]); maybe Fringe just needs to do a better job communicating which shows are sold out. But however they repair this damage, Fringe has to get on it soon. Continue reading 4 Things We Liked (And 3 Things We Didn’t) At The 2014 Toronto Fringe