Reviews of theatre, dance, opera, comedy and festivals. Performances can be in-person or streamed remotely on the web for social-distancing.
The night began with nuns, and yes, the nuns were horny. “I think I’ve heard this one before,” I thought to myself as I settled in with my friend at the back of Comedy Bar for comedy troupes 2 Humans, Rulers of the Universe, and The Templeton Philharmonic. I was wrong.
The Wanderers, presented by Cahoots Theatre Company, is one of those pieces that is so filled with richness that it’s hard to write about because there’s just so dammed much to say.
Kawa Ada has produced a script layered with light and darkness that travels between Afghanistan and Canada, real and imagined, lore and legitimacy. And director Nina Lee Aquino has worked beautifully to bring both extremes to life.
Continue reading Review: The Wanderers (Cahoots Theatre Company)
“Is it going to be scary?” asked Stanley, my four-year-old review partner, for the eleventeenth time. “Will there be real monsters? There won’t, right? It’ll be people in monster suits, right? (long pause) Will the suits be scary looking?”
There are several quite brilliant things about the production of Where The Wild Things Are at Young People’s Theatre, but among them, the most reassuring to me as a parent was this: there are no monsters. No external monsters, anyhow; in the story, all the Wild Things are played by the audience. By the time Linda A. Carson (in a dual role as Max’s mom and Our Narrator) is instructing the children to scare their own toes, everyone’s located and made some peace with their inner Wild Things – which is, of course, the whole point of Sendak’s original book. With a relatively simple, whimsical staging and a lot of audience interaction and participation, Where The Wild Things Are is honestly the best littlest-kids show I have ever seen.
Continue reading Review (Kid + 1): Where The Wild Things Are (Young People’s Theatre)
Swan Lake is an enduring classic and one of the most famous ballets of all time. Tchaikovsky’s score is iconic and the ballet itself is pervasive in popular culture; its popularity is currently buoyed by the recent Oscar-nominated film Black Swan. It really does feel like one of those pivotal works of art that one ought to see in their lifetime.
Luckily for those of us in Toronto, the National Ballet of Canada is presenting its magnificent production of Swan Lake for an eight-performance run at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, just in time for March break. Continue reading Review: Swan Lake (The National Ballet of Canada)
Stepping firmly into their 40th year of entertaining audiences with impressively imaginative puppetry, the Puppetmongers have remounted their very first production of The Miller and His Wife for a special spring break run at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backspace. Full of whimsy for the little ones, pop-culture interjections for the slightly older ones and chuckle-worthy dry humour for the adults, it’s a refreshingly nostalgic reminder of just how magical theatre can be.
Continue reading Review: The Miller and His Wife (Puppetmongers)