Elevated State’s production of James Graham’s play The Angry Brigade is playing at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace. The play is based on the search for, and arrest of, members of The Angry Brigade, a left-wing revolutionary group, in London in 1971. It’s a long play – two and a half hours with a 15 minute intermission. I left feeling as if I had seen two plays with the same cast. Continue reading Review: The Angry Brigade (Elevated State) →

Toronto’s Filament Incubator presents Paradise Comics a play by Caitie Graham

Paradise Comics, written by Caitie Graham and presented by Filament Incubator, is a play about ordinary people, and the inherent drama in ordinary life. In a small basement in Kensington Market we get a glimpse into the heartache, suffering, and also love that might be happening to the teenage girl across from you on the bus or the woman in front of you in line at the grocery store. Continue reading Review: Paradise Comics (Caitie Graham/Filament Incubator) →

Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times presents a show exploring the experience of being Black and queer

In 1989, as fifteen-year-old white suburban queer kid, I snuck downstairs into the basement at midnight and watched Marlon Riggs’ groundbreaking documentary Tongues Untied on PBS with the sound turned down so low I was two inches from the set, afraid to be caught but more afraid to miss a second of it. As Black Boys started to unfold on the Buddies In Bad Times stage I found myself catapulted back to the electric sensation of seeing genre-defining work about queerness and Blackness.

Continue reading Review: Black Boys (Saga Collectif/Buddies In Bad Times) →

Toronto’s Thought for Food re-imagines Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure as a Weimar era cabaret

For Thought for Food’s stylish and passionate, all-female production of Shakespeare‘s Measure for Measure, the Red Sandcastle Theatre has been transformed into a Weimar Republic era cabaret. The ladies—of all ages, shapes and sizes—ply you with offers of song and drink, which they provide, and prime your senses for a tale of corrupt politics and lust.  Continue reading Review: Measure for Measure (Thought for Food) →

The Damage Done, on stage in Toronto, stretches the seams of viability

George F. Walker’s characters are people you wouldn’t normally find at the theatre, although thanks to his decades-long writing career, they are certainly people you find on Toronto stages. Concentrating on the stories of Toronto’s East End neighbourhoods, Walker specializes in the theatre of the marginalized, sometimes returning to favourite characters and stories.

The Damage Done—directed by Ken Gass for Canadian Rep Theatre at The Citadel—is the third play in the story of Bobby (Wes Berger) and Tina (Sarah Murphy-Dyson), whose tempestuous teenage relationship resulted in two daughters, hard times, and a permanent split. In this new volume, the two are older (and maybe a little wiser) but at this point their story has stretched as far as it can go.

Continue reading Review: The Damage Done (Canadian Rep Theatre) →