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.
Alinka Angelova is gunning for Broadway with MUTE: The Musical! playing now at the Toronto Fringe Festival. If anyone had a million bucks to put behind it, we’d have a commercial hit.
Continue reading MUTE: The Musical (Infinity Arts) Toronto Fringe 2014 Review
If you’re like me, when you’re coming to a show and you see that there’s audience participation involved, your immediate reaction is a combination of irritation and unease. So when I went to see Summer Hot, Some Are Not, put on by The Good Samaritans at the Toronto Fringe Festival, I was glad that I’d be protected by my status as a reviewer – I had a good excuse to stay out of it.
How wrong I was. Yes, I was never specifically called out by the performers of the taboo-breaking sketch comedy revue (thank Zeus). But they brought up more than enough thought-provoking stuff throughout the show that I can’t help but feel like the “audience participation” they were referring to included self-reflection.
Continue reading Summer Hot, Some Are Not (The Good Samaritans) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review
Roller Derby Saved My Soul gives it all away in the title, a bit – it’s a story of a girl who discovers roller derby and finds herself. Ho hum. Be warned, though – don’t underestimate this Toronto Fringe Festival show. As I left Tarragon Extraspace late tonight, I left anything but ho hum – I found it thoroughly delightful.
Continue reading Roller Derby Saved My Soul (Broken Turtle Productions) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review
There may or may not be an underlying thematic connection between the various sketches of Dame Judy Dench’s Those Shoes That Light Up at the Toronto Fringe Festival, but as the show songs suggest, forget about it. The point here is the comedy.
Consisting of Jessica Greco, Claire Farmer, Chris Leveille, Shannon Lahaie, Gavin Pounds, team Dame Judy Dench deliver a fun night.
Continue reading Those Shoes That Light Up (Dame Judy Dench) 2014 Toronto Fringe Review
Licking Knives, is the first Toronto Fringe Festival show by Headstrong Collective. It is a very controlled, and self-contained show. In the space of 45 minutes, actor Melanie Hrymak stands on the stage in the Theatre Passe Muraille‘s Backspace and tells her audience about her character’s life. That short space of time contains as perfect and as powerful a theatrical performance as anyone is likely to see at Fringe.
“These things are more romantic when you are not living them,” Hrymak says at one point in Licking Knives. “These things” are the key events in the life story of a stylish Parisian woman of the mid-20th century who, as it happens, managed to escape Ukraine alive during the worst period in Ukraine’s history.
Continue reading Licking Knives (Headstrong Collective) 2014 Toronto Fringe Festival