Makambe K. Simamba’s gripping play, inspired by Trayvon Martin’s story, is onstage in Toronto

Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers, written and performed by Makambe K. Simamba, is the story of Trayvon Martin’s first hours in the afterlife, and it is utterly gripping and rendered with great tenderness and bravery. It’s also surprising, which was unexpected with such a well-publicized story. Simamba had her work cut out for her trying to make theatre that didn’t feel like a simple rehearsal of the brutal facts. But Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers is so, so much more.

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Alumnae Theatre stages a play by television writer Michael Jacobs in Toronto

If you want to see some paintings this weekend and don’t want to go to just any old gallery, check out Alumnae Theatre’s production of Impressionism by Michael Jacobs. On until April 27 in Alumnae’s main space.

Impressionism is a play by writer Michael Jacobs, whom you’re probably more familiar with as the creator of Boy Meets World as well as several other television shows. In Impressionism Jacobs’ television writing shines through in the show’s humour, with some truly funny banter and zingers. Continue reading Review: Impressionism (Alumnae Theatre) →

Canadian Stage presents a wordless, slapstick comedy show from France in Toronto

What, you might be wondering, might a wordless, slapstick, burlesque, Francophone show – such as Bigre – be like? I went to Canadian Stage to discover, and found the answer to be: a little lewd, a little rude, and ultimately pleasing, if you come ready to laugh.

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Dance Matters presents a mixed program of contemporary dance in Toronto

Series 3 – Into the Fire presented by Dance Matters at the Pia Bouman School brings together a mixed programme of highly physical and mostly contemporary dance works. The final series of the season features a mix of eerie yet quirky creatures, a sensual yet combative duet and a fiery flamenco collaboration between a dancer, vocalist, and musicians.

Fadeout, created and performed by Anne-Flore de Rochambeau of Montreal opens the show. A bar of light in the centre of the stage only highlights the lower half of the dancer’s body, anything above the bar disappears in the pitch black space. The dancer-turned-creature, fidgets with her hands against her legs, noticeably uncomfortable while teasing to dip below the bar of light. The soundscape blends the sounds of birds chirping with different echos and rattles bringing you into this other world.

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Soulpepper presents a new production of Michael Frayn’s Tony-winning play in Toronto

“Math is sense. That’s what sense is.” So says Kawa Ada as Werner Heisenberg, a somewhat unwanted visitor to the home of his former mentor Niels Bohr (Diego Matamoros) and his wife Margrethe (Kyra Harper), in Soulpepper’s production of Michael Frayn’s Tony-winning Copenhagen. Frayn’s sophisticated, devastating play imagines the basis of a secretive meeting between Heisenberg and Bohr in German-occupied Denmark in 1941. Heisenberg, one of Bohr’s protégés, has a question to ask the older, more cautious physicist, which may prove a turning point to the war. The half-Jewish Bohr is apprehensive as to which of Heisenberg’s dealings with the Nazis are for show, and which carry the potential for true, civilization-ending harm.

Existing in a suspended purgatory, long after the deaths of all three, they dissect in free-wheeling debate what may have happened, writing endless drafts akin to Bohr’s constantly-updating papers. It’s a kind of physicist’s No Exit, where they are most perfectly able to torture each other about the morality – or lack thereof – of using nuclear power to form weapons, an issue that has regrettably become timely once again.

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