Featuring the best in female comedians, the inaugural SheDot Festival begins on May 1 at The Comedy Bar in Toronto

“What happens over and over,” explains Martha O’Neill from her home in Toronto, a week before the inaugural SheDot Festival of women in comedy, “is that bills tend to feature one woman. There’s the observational guy and the storytelling guy and the guy working blue  – sexually-oriented comedy, you know – and whichever other guys and then: The Woman. Just one.” Because of this, O’Neill says, many comedy fans never get a chance to be exposed to the range and breadth of women in comedy.

From this idea, SheDot was born. Originally a working weekend for women comics to develop new material, discuss work, commiserate and celebrate at O’Neill’s father’s cottage in northern Ontario (“we called it Festivag! But I didn’t tell my father that. He’s 80,”) the experience was mixed for O’Neill. On the one hand, she loved being able to work with so many women and all their styles and humour. On the other, so many of them shared stories of being abruptly dropped from bills or having trouble getting work because many show will only book one, or perhaps two, women in an entire lineup. Eventually, in frustration and hope, O’Neill announced her intention to launch a women’s comedy festival and the somewhat more tamely-named SheDot came to life.

Continue reading Preview: SheDot Festival →

A man comes to terms with his deceased alcoholic father in Cold Comfort playing at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto

Cold Comfort is a one person show about an Irish man who is drinking alone with his estranged father’s corpse.  He knows it’s impossible, but he wants the dead man to speak and answer some questions, primarily why did his mother leave them when he was a child? But Kevin knows the answer already. His father was an alcoholic, and now Kevin is too. He even has his own ex-wife. He is distraught at following in his father’s footsteps but he doesn’t know any other way to live. Fly On The Wall Theatre presents this portrait of a disturbed man at Near Studio on the second floor of Tarragon Theatre. Continue reading Review: Cold Comfort (Fly On The Wall Productions) →

The Last Confession looks at the puzzling events preceding the death of Pope John Paul I, at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto

Somehow it seemed appropriate that the opening performance of The Last Confession at the Royal Alex was on a Sunday. After all, it is a play about the Catholic Church. Not a religious play though. It’s a political drama set in the Vatican.

It did make me give thanks for theatre. This is theatre at its best. A literate script by Roger Crane, tight direction by Jonathan Church, fabulous performances by a talented international cast, a towering set by William Dudley and perfect lighting by Peter Mumford. Continue reading Review: The Last Confession (Mirvish) →

Office politics clash with a newfangled business lingo in The Memo playing at Unit 102 Theatre in Toronto

Anyone familiar with the language of business knows that it can get a little… dramatic. Corporate lingo has this amazing way of charging forward impressively — driving results to generate insights for maximum value, and so on — without actually saying anything.

Vaclav Havel’s hilarious 1965 comedy The Memo, in a new production by Thought for Food theatre company at Unit 102 Theatre, addresses the nonsense of office jargon, and though utterly absurd, it’s spot on. Desk jockeys be warned, however: this ain’t “The Office.” The Memo is a darker comedy than that, and it kind of hurts.

Continue reading Review: The Memo (Thought for Food) →

The Canadian Opera Company brings Queen Elizabeth I’s later years to life in Roberto Devereux at Toronto’s Four Seasons 

Roberto Devereux by Gaetano Donizetti tells the story of the tragic end to the celebrated rein of Elizabeth the First. The set for the Canadian Opera Company’s 2014 production is a reconstruction of the historic Globe Theatre. During the overture, surtitles were used to provide the audience with historical context and the audience was treated to a charming tableau wherein Shakespeare directs the Queen herself in a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Continue reading Review: Roberto Devereux (Canadian Opera Company) →