I had never heard of Lucio Silla by W.A. Mozart before going to see Opera Atelier’s 2016 production. The opera was written when the prodigy was only 16 years old. Mozart’s unparalleled genius, blended with the freshness of youth and idealism, made for a night of very charming, light, yet sumptuously intricate lyrical singing.
Alumnae Theatre presents Tracy Letts’ Pulitzer prize-winning play August: Osage County in TorontoSo anyway, my friend Bronson and I recently headed over to Alumnae Theatre to see August: Osage County after getting a tip from a colleague. Neither of us were familiar with the play before the tip, and we both felt a bit like a couple of Toronto bumpkins after finding out that the play resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for playwright Tracy Letts in 2008, and was also made into a movie starring Hollywood heavyweights Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts.
Continue reading Review: August: Osage County (Alumnae Theatre Company)
We Three is spectacular. I wanted to get that out of the way before continuing to say any more about the show that is currently playing at the Tarragon Theatre’s Workspace. It is poignant, current, comedic, dramatic, and, spectacular.
The story starts as a reunion of university friends Skye, Jamie, and Blaire after the latter visits Toronto having lived the last two years Calgary. The apartment is mostly clean, and dinner is in the oven when Blaire arrives. Hugs are hugged and smiles shared until Blaire’s new breast implants are introduced.
Coal Mine Theatre’s Killer Joe, on stage in Toronto, has “humor and courage”As soon as I entered the Coal Mine Theatre, I was immersed in the dirty, trailer park world of Killer Joe. The audience was packed in, a hairsbreadth away from the action, with discarded take out containers at our feet and plastic ceiling tiles overhead. Was it always comfortable? No, but we were forced to take a hard look at the grit and violence of a world that society would often prefer to ignore. The cast and crew did a good job of authentically creating that world, especially considering a few of the curve balls in the script.
VideoCabaret presents a play that’s a definitive piece of Canadiana, The Great War, in TorontoVideoCabaret‘s specialty is taking Canadian history — a subject most people consider dry and boring — and making it bleed. Told through sequences of short vignettes (most are 2-4 minutes long) and best described as real-life editorial cartoons, their Village of the Small Huts series is frank, visually-arresting, and a perfect antidote to Heritage Minutes.
The Great War, part of their residential series at Soulpepper, plumbs the four years when Canada was rocked as never before, sending nearly 15% of our male population off to fight the First World War — and nearly blowing ourselves up in the process. And what makes VideoCabaret’s take so essential is how they explore not just the victories, and not just the losses, but what this experience can tell us about problems and struggles we’re still parsing today.