Reviews of productions based in Toronto – theatre includes traditional definitions of theatre, as well as dance, opera, comedy, performance art, spoken word performances, and more. Productions may be in-person, or remote productions streamed online on the Internet.
To see KICK‘s production of “Miss Julie: Sheh’mah” – the adaptation of Strindberg‘s play about sex between the upper and lower classes— I wore a two thousand dollar suit, a five hundred dollar shirt and a pair of seven hundred dollar shoes. My date wore jeans and a sweater: An ensemble that cost as much as my socks and much less than my tie.
Yet Shalome has money and no job, being a jet-setting creature of leisure and a blaxican American democrat, while I am, in everything except my politics and attire, decidedly working class. Not to mention broke and white.
These things may seem irrelevant. Yet it is precisely this blurring of social lines that makes it difficult to relate to an 1888 Swedish play about class. Just how does one render “Miss Julie” relevant to the times and land we presently live in? As radical as Strindberg’s play once was, it’s now in danger of becoming quaint.
When, one by one, I asked my friends to come see East Side Player’s production of Tartuffe by Molière, I didn’t get one taker. Maybe they were scared off by the foreign title and powdered wigs, or were worried that Molière was too 16th-century to be entertaining.
Their loss.
Tartuffe, it turns out, is an insanely sarcastic satire that attacks just about everything you’d like to see attacked–hypocrites, government, dogma, patriarchs and, of course, the ignorant masses. The audience (mostly silver haired) got really into it, cheering as their favourite characters wandered onstage. Didn’t take long to realize why: after getting hit with the first zinger of the night, I didn’t stop laughing till the curtains fell.
Just a forewarning… My laptop got stolen and it’s kind of knocked me off kilter (it’ so posting will be a bit more sporadic and may not be quite up to snuff. Hopefully I will be able to get a new laptop shortly. Now, on to the review…
The production of Black Rider at Tarragon Theatre is an incredible, and bizarre, show. And, really, it’s hard to expect anything else from a collaboration between William S. Burrows and Tom Waits. In fact, Scott, my show-partner for this one, described it as “a hilarious nightmare. I think it’s a pretty apt description actually. If I had been in a different headspace, or a kid, I would have been terrified.
So have you ever wondered what would happen if you put an existential philosophy textbook, a handful of amphetamines and the witty banter that goes on in your head after staying up for 72 hours into a blender?
Eavesdropping on theatre-goers at Canadian Stage Company’s presentation of Frost/Nixon made me feel incredibly young. People were asking each other where they were during what would turn out to be the most-watched interview ever, and I wasn’t even a fetus yet. Full disclosure: I was born in the 80s. I wasn’t around during most of television’s big-time events: Other than September 11th, I can’t think of a single time I’ve been really moved by something on television. Sometimes I’m jealous that I wasn’t anywhere when Kennedy was shot, and that I missed out on the paranoia-fuelled days of Watergate. Reality television didn’t centre around singing back then, but was just a tacky. Frost/Nixon captures that perfectly. Continue reading Frost/Nixon – Canadian Stage Company→
