Exciting start to Toronto’s SoulO Theatre Festival with Chris Gibbs in Antoine Feval
The inaugural SoulO Theatre Festival opened last night with Chris Gibbs’ one person show Antoine Feval – the story of Victorian London’s most overlooked detective.
Toronto’s Storefront Theatre becomes a sensory-immersive space in The Bone House
This is going to be a difficult review to write. And not because Red One Theatre Collective’s The Bone House is a difficult show to love. Quite the opposite – this is an exciting piece of indie theatre. But its success is so reliant on what you don’t know about it that I feel wary of telling you much at all.
Toronto can explore the elusive human connection with AngelWalk Theatre’s I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
A lot has changed in the last 20 years. I like to think that the way people relate to one other has been revolutionized thanks to some major shifts in technology. Social movements, online slacktivism and even our clipped computer-based chit-chat instead of long-winded phonecalls or “electronic mails” has produced a new breed of social networking. Every day I’m bombarded with stories of how impossible relationships thrive and how overcoming social adversity produces the richest results. These feel-good news stories challenge expectations of what is expected of us to the point of redefining the definition of success. I want to believe that we have evolved beyond conforming to an antiquated ideal to paving our own way to find true happiness (and maybe, love). Continue reading Review: I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (AngelWalk Theatre)→
Heavy subject matter in The Little Flower of East Orange, playing at Toronto’s Unit 102 Theatre
There’s a hollowness at the core of The Little Flower of East Orange. (Currently playing in rep at Unit 102.) This is by design: Little Flower is about heroin addicts, faithless healers, and a septuagenarian whose life depends upon denial and self-repression. It’s gotta be served cold.
We’re talking hardboiled, experimental theatre without any of its edges sanded off, and Column 13, a young company with a strong background in precisely this type of cold, alienating, thinkity-think drama, are in a unique position to explore this opportunity. And when it works, it works.
The Dreamer Examines His Pillow has three characters: Tommy, Donna and Dad. The three are far closer to people that we know in real life than the ones we have to put up with on television. The issues they grapple with are universal and important. There is a connection between cast and audience. All this makes for a play that its audience can relate to. I certainly did.
