University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music stages professional calibre opera

The University of Toronto Faculty of Music’s production of Così fan tutte by W.A. Mozart was of exceptionally high calibre. Throughout most of the production I was completely able to forget that I was watching students under the age of 30. This high calibre was unsurprising since the U of T’s music program is widely recognized to be one of the most competitive programs to be admitted to in Canada. Continue reading Review: Cosi fan tutte (U of T Faculty of Music) →

Frances and Marybeth delivers laughs at Toronto’s Factory Theatre

Frances and Marybeth, a play described to be about, “Two sisters. Three Men. Fourteen litres of milk. One ultimate date night.” by Neale Kimmel premiered at Factory Theatre Studio last night.

Frances and Marybeth is a farce complete with mistaken identities, false identity, and an unexpected guest.

Frances is a spontaneous free-spirit who has spent the past three and a half months on Marybeth’s couch, crying and eating salt and vinegar chips while trying to get over a breakup with her fiance Rick. Marybeth is her cautious younger sister who sells her paint-by-numbers art on craigslist.

After experiencing a “life-moment” at the gynecologist she meets the dashing Antonio in the dairy aisle and invites him for dinner. She persuades Marybeth to invite Paul – who buys her paintings – so they can have a double date.

Rick, her ex-fiance, shows up and hilarity ensues.This is a very funny show.

Continue reading Review: Frances and Marybeth (bracket)Theatre →

Happy Woman humours at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre

Nightwood Theatre set and costume designer Denyse Karn is kicking buttocks on the Toronto scene these days. In January they had the stunning Penelopiad and now they’ve followed it up with The Happy Woman at the Berkeley Street Theatre. The stage is divided into three areas, brightly coloured in green, blue and yellow, and these colours appear on every single set piece in their respective area. The five characters all have an individual colour that predominates their costumes. The symbolism is not subtle – the promiscuous woman wears red, for example – but it is striking and thus effective.

As the title indicates, the play is about a woman who is determined to be happy. But plays aren’t written about people who are actually happy (that would be boring.) And life for everyone inevitably has unfortunate situations; being determined to be happy all the time means ignoring anything that may be problematic – even to the extent of ignoring the suffering of your children, both when they are young and when they are grown.

Continue reading Review: The Happy Woman (Nightwood Theatre) →

Toronto’s Hart House Theatre presents the Tennessee Williams play The Night of the Iguana through March 10, 2012.

Tennessee Williams was one of the most prolific playwrights of the 20th century. Many of us studied his work in school but despite his notoriety most people are probably only really familiar with a handful of plays out of the dozens he penned throughout his career. Continue reading Review: The Night of the Iguana (Hart House Theatre) →

Toronto’s Pandemic Theatre stages Tjorvi the Flaccid‘s viking quest to restore his name and honour

Let me start off by saying that a show about vikings is not something I would ever consider seeing. Ever. So I’m not quite sure why I signed up to see it, but I’m so very glad that I did. Even though I was pretty skeptical walking into this one, the title and the description of the show promised some laughs and delivered within the first five minutes, so I knew I was going to enjoy this show.

Every character in this show does an excellent job. The roles are very well suited to the actors and the over-the-top physical comedy of the piece is very well done. This show is all about the actors and their comedic timing, which is spot on. There’s hardly ever a dull moment on stage.  Continue reading Review: The Lost Sagas of Tjorvi the Flaccid (Pandemic Theatre) →