Soulpepper adapts Of Human Bondage, the classic novel of unrequited love and the human condition, to the Toronto stage

At the end of the first act of Soulpepper’s production of Of Human Bondage, based on the 1915 classic novel by W. Somerset Maugham, I asked my companion what he thought so far. He liked the staging but found that the story was overly focused on unrequited love. I argued that there were other themes as well: addiction, poverty and class; the value of art vs medicine in society; and the role of loyalty in friendship. But I also agreed that, to someone with minimal engagement to older literature, some of the romantic histrionics might seem irrelevant. But didn’t unrequited love still exist? Aren’t modern relationships just as fraught? I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing from the play. Continue reading Review: Of Human Bondage (Soulpepper) →

The dark world of the sex trade comes to light in Soliciting Temptation playing at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre

Soliciting Temptation, playing now at Tarragon, pits an aging business man with a taste for young flesh against a fiercely ideological university student, both from North America, in the slums of an unnamed developing country. The context is sex tourism, specifically youth sex tourism. The man has hired the girl for the night, believing her to be local and younger than she is. She is posing as a sex worker, and as underage, in order to torment whatever man engages her for the evening. Continue reading Review: Soliciting Temptation (Tarragon Theatre) →

Gavin Crawford brings his signature top-notch impressions to the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival

The Gavin Crawford show at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival started twenty minutes late, but the venue sold beer and cookies, so it was a pleasant wait. When he did appear onstage it was in the persona of Kathleen Wynne, which I loved because I am a political junkie and because he really did look a lot like her. Granted, Crawford is quite the chameleon who almost eerily becomes the person he is spoofing, but Wynne seems a particularly perfect character for him. It’s also particularly apt for Ontario’s first lesbian premier to feature in a show as gay as this.

How gay is it? Well, the title is Shitting Rainbows. Continue reading Review: Gavin Crawford: Shitting Rainbows (2014 Toronto SketchFest) →

A couple’s decision to have a baby leads to interesting complications in Lungs at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre

Lungs, currently playing at Tarragon Theatre, is a two-hander that explores the relationship between a man (Brendan Gall) and a woman (Lesley Faulkner) as they decide, and then attempt, to have a child. As the play starts the man has just dropped the “let’s have a baby” bomb on the woman in a most inappropriate circumstance – while in line at IKEA.

This provokes the woman into a neurotic spiral, worrying about what a child would mean for their lives, and her body, but mostly concerned with the ethical implications of bringing a CO2-producing human into an overpopulated, over-polluted world. The man tries to calm her down but he does it poorly — as always, telling someone to “calm down” does the exact opposite. Continue reading Review: Lungs (Tarragon theatre) →

Music, movement and song celebrate the feminine in UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW at Toronto’s Worldstage

When the house lights dimmed at UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (playing at WorldStage) and I first saw a fat, black, naked woman walking calmly through the audience, it deeply affected me, even though I had seen promotional material, including pictures, and knew what to expect. I’m probably not active enough to call myself a “fat activist”, but let’s call me a fat activism enthusiast, and I’m definitely a nakedness enthusiast. I have seen and loved many a fat naked body before. But this was different than in a private residence, or at Hanlon’s. This was theatre. And theatre is a celebration.

Theatre, to some extent, always deifies the representations onstage, in that we have to watch them, we are compelled, we have no choice.  So to see naked bodies, some of them fat, some of them racialized and one of them genderqueer, owning a stage before a rapt audience was like a religious experience for me. It was like there was finally a form of public worship I could believe in. Continue reading Review: UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW (Worldstage) →