The workshop performance of Catherine Hernandez’s The Femme Playlist, played at Toronto’s Aluna Theatre, was an eye-opening collection of introspective life experiences
There’s a special place in my heart for the workshop performance, in exactly the same way there is for a brand new foal: I adore them even though they cannot yet do all that they someday will. You can see their good bones and spirit even in the hours when it’s all they can do to stand, damp and wobbly. Catherine Hernandez‘s Femme Playlist (shown at Aluna Theatre for a single-night benefit) is beyond the damp and wobbly stage; not quite outgrown some of it’s angularity but clearly at the last stage before dazzling.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which played at Toronto’s Al Green Theatre, is a show with a lot of heart that is both frivolous and insightful
There’s something marvellous about small town spelling bees, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (which played the Al Green Theatre) captures it beautifully.
Spelling, in the format used for the bee, is a useless skill: nobody over the age of 14 will ever be asked to stand up and spell a word in front of an audience. On the list of weird things we do to children, it ranks quite high. But in this middle-school gymnatorium (“THIS IS A BULLY-FREE ZONE!”, shouts the poster on the wall), nothing could possibly matter more. The lives of these students revolve around dictionaries and all-night drill sessions–and the bee itself, for this afternoon, may as well be the Thunderdome. Ten kids enter. One kid leaves.
Sexy striptease meets a unique history lesson in The Firecrackers Present: Bad Girls of History, a cheeky and sensual burlesque show at Toronto’s Club 120
History is an important subject to study, but sometimes it is easy to drift away from the tomes and documentaries that seem to repeat the same stories. If only there was a way to spice up a history lesson, so that your eyes popped instead of drooped down with boredom. Club 120 may have found the perfect solution that stimulates that brain, among other things.
Toronto’s The Weaker Vessels present Would You Rather…?, a sketch comedy show that may have left the audience in stitches but still managed to fall short
I’m not a comedian. So in reviewing The Weaker Vessels, I brought one along.
We’ve covered these guys before, and they sounded right up my alley: clever, existential, absurdist and whip-smart sketch comedy. All five performers are pedigreed: the programme is literally filled with Second City This and Upright Citizens That. And tonight, we were promised an evening of good, not-altogether-clean fun, casting a jaundiced eye towards the theme of choice.
Jokes were told. People laughed. But on the whole, my guest and I both wished they’d made different ones.
An emotionally heart wrenching story about Canada’s tainted blood scandal, Tainted is playing at Toronto’s Aki Studio Theatre
On Friday evening I saw Tainted at the Aki Studio Theatre at Daniels Spectrum. It’s a powerful play; the story of one family deeply affected by the tainted blood scandal and how they deal with it.
It puts a human face on an inhuman chapter in recent Canadian history. The tainted blood crisis was the worst public health crisis that Canada has experienced. Almost 30,000 people contracted HIV and/or Hepatitis C as a result of receiving transfusions of tainted blood. Hemophiliacs were especially hard hit.
This is a play that everyone should see, not just for the story but for the writing, the direction and the acting. It’s a beautiful production.
