Piety collides with extravagance in Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary playing at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times

The trouble with seeing a show at Buddies in Bad Times is that the audience is often more interesting than the performances.

The woman with the frizzy grey hair, ranting about how her new girlfriend has been fucking her yoga instructor for years. (“I mean, Jesus Christ, I know dykes are meant to be incestuous, but SERIOUSLY?”) The bald man dishing about the atrocious denim jacket someone else is wearing. (“I thought we stopped wearing that shit in the ’90s.”) The confused-looking francophone woman, who exclaims–in an aside to her companion–“Mille tonnerre, y’a des tapettes partout!” (“Good lord, they’re all faggots!”)

There’s a quality of reunion in the place: of a community coming together. Rings to be kissed, clothing to be judged, old friends to greet, new friends to impress. The theatre–the putative purpose for the visit–is almost secondary by comparison.

But not tonight. Michel Tremblay’s Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary, freshly-resurrected after decades of obscurity, swallowed the room whole. Simultaneously warm, incisive and savage, his Manon embraces us, welcomes us, warms us, and invites us to confess our sins–our excesses, our assumptions, our identities –then leaves us as little more than vanquished children before the communion rail.

Continue reading Review: Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary (Pleaides Theatre / Buddies in Bad Times) →

A couple find a body on the shore in Flesh and Other Fragments of Love playing at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre

Flesh and Other Fragments of Love, which opened at the Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, is truly compelling. This is the English-language premiere of Evelyne de la Chenelière’s play, which was inspired by Marie Cardinal’s novel Une vie pour deux, and translated by Linda Gaboriau.

This is also an important first for me: I have never before seen a production helmed by Tarragon’s Artistic Director, Richard Rose. Considering the fact that he is a staple of the Canadian theatre scene, it’s about time! Continue reading Review: Flesh and Other Fragments of Love (Tarragon Theatre) →

The Ugly One takes a darkly satirical look at superficiality, playing at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre

The Ugly One is a dark satire about superficiality in the age of consumerism. It nips at the edges of society’s current idea of physical beauty until we laugh, and then it bites into the battle raging in our psyches between the desire to belong and the desire to stand out. And that bite digs too deep to laugh.

Lette is an engineer who has invented a most useful industrial plug, but he is far too ugly for his boss to let him be the one to sell it at conventions. That job goes to his young and handsome assistant. He asks his wife about his looks and she, unable to lie to his ugly, ugly face, tells him the truth. He goes to a plastic surgeon for a full reconstruction and comes out of it the most beautiful man in the world. He immediately gets put on the job of doing all the speaking at conventions and women line up for his autograph. His new admirers include a septuagenarian millionaire who’s had a lot of work done herself, buys a lot of industrial hardware, and has an obsequious son who follows her around – even into the bedroom. Continue reading Review: The Ugly One (Tarragon Theatre/Theatre Smash) →

Belleville-Ville is your monthly dose of hilarious cabaret improv at Toronto’s Monarch Tavern

If you’ve ever been in New York City and have been lucky enough to be taken into an out of the way bar by locals, only to have the time of your life, you might have an idea of what to expect from Bellville-Ville. It’s a cabaret-style improv show that happens on the first Thursday of every month, in a gem of a bar called The Monarch Tavern.

Belleville-Ville is an improvised soap opera with a cast of over a dozen. Actors remain as one character throughout the evening and each performance has a theme. The characters will remind you of people from your past, and probably from your present day life. The improv show takes place in a fictional small town that anyone can identify with regardless of where they grew up

Continue reading Review: Belleville-Ville (The Joy of Camping) →

A 24-hour performance of a series of vignettes make up A Wake for Lost Time at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille

Twenty-four hours after I walked into the backspace at Theatre Passe Muraille, I was sitting at home wondering why the live stream for A Wake for Lost Time had just been cut off. I wanted it to keep going. Much like the viewers of the Truman Show, I was rooting for the collective members of Elephants in the Room to get through 24 hours of performing, but when the end came I was not ready.

A Wake for Lost Time was a regular ninety minute show, except it was performed for a period of 24 hours. A single cycle, the show, was made up of around 23 smaller skits ranging from humorous metaphors and fish pondering the great beyond to poignant confessions and the digestion of Faust. The theme of ritual and cycles were ever present in the skits. Continue reading Review: A Wake for Lost Time (Elephants in the Room Collective) →