A couple personal biases to get out of the way before I begin. First, I don’t know much about opera, although my four year old loves it, so I have a growing appreciation of the music since I’m hearing it much more often these days. Second, I’ve had a crush on John Malkovich (who plays Casanova in this production) since I first saw Dangerous Liaisons many years ago.
Theatre that takes it back to the 90s at Buddies in Toronto
I expected to laugh and I expected to sing along but I didn’t expect A Very Christerical 90’s Cabaret to make me cry. In retrospect it’s not so surprising: for one thing, the show is in Tallulah’s Cabaret at Buddies, which is a space with a bar, so I was softened up by the pitchers my companion and I were downing. And music is very good at evoking emotion, and music from a significant period in a person’s history has even more of an impact. Chris Tsujiuchi is slightly younger than I, but his tales of growing up queer in the 90’s definitely resonated with me. It also helped that he is a very good story-teller and an absolutely delightful performer.
The pacing and lighting set the tone in Specter at Toronto’s Sterling Theatre
Having never been to the Sterling Studio Theatre before, I decided to check out its performance of Specter last night. Not knowing what to expect, I was there simply because something about the synopsis had been enticing.
Improv and collaborative theatre take over the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto
This is NTOW’s third Script Tease Project, the first in association with Soulpepper. NTOW is Naomi Sniekus and Matt Baram, both talented actors and stellar improvisers. They ask playwrights (seven this year) to write two pages of a script. Each performance is a different playwright. Sniekus and Baram see the script for the first time at the beginning of the show. They do a cold reading of the two pages and improvise the rest of the one hour play. Last night the playwright was Judith Thompson.
