We live, as they say, in an age of anxiety. The daily stream of fear from world news means that we not only shoulder our own burdens, but those of billions of others. Worry Warts, presented by Convergence Theatre at the 2019 SummerWorks Performance Festival, is a short, guided tour through our personal anxieties, helmed by a troupe of sympathetic listeners.
Continue reading Worry Warts (Convergence Theatre) 2019 SummerWorks Review
A (musical) Midsummer Night’s Dream, presented by Driftwood Theatre in Withrow Park, was adapted to a musical in 2004 by composers Kevin Fox and Tom Lillington and director D. Jeremy Smith. They wanted to put an a cappella twist on Shakespeare’s classic comedy of fairies and love triangles. The result is a fun, well-paced show that packs on the charm and shakes off a lot of the potential staleness of this constantly-performed classic.
Continue reading Review: A (musical) Midsummer Night’s Dream (Driftwood Theatre)
Anesti Danelis: Six Frets Under, a site-specific one-man musical comedy show presented by Danelis at the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival at the Tranzac Club Tiki Room, returns the singer-songwriter to the stage after 2017’s hit, Songs For A New World Order. Danelis, wryly noting that he was competing with a raucous punk show in the bar’s main space — thankfully, this stopped soon after he began — also informs us that he’s not tweeting with the gadget in front of him, but running his own tech because nobody would help him. Luckily, he seems easily capable of doing it all himself.
A whirlwind of self-deprecating and absurd musical humour, Six Frets Under is an endearing, hilarious tour through the strange corners of Danelis’ mind. Danelis is curious about a lot of things, and, by his own admission, has said a lot of stupid stuff in his time. These qualities have become fodder for catchy tunes that had the audience howling. His stated goal is to leave us all with “a little less existential dread,” and I think he succeeded.
Continue reading Anesti Danelis: Six Frets Under (Anesti Danelis) 2019 Toronto Fringe Review
The Art of Kneading by Helen Knight (presented by Farenheight350) was a late entrant into the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival, so it isn’t in the printed program. This absence of advertising means that Knight needs (kneads?) all the help she can get to avoid playing to small houses. That would be a shame, as her passionate, well-written and partially autobiographical show about the lengths mothers will go to make sure their children are fed deserves an audience.
Millennial Knight is attending a bread-baking class; a very bourgeois act, she admits, for a woman who grew up on welfare. As she wrestles with the dough and whether or not to snap a selfie of her yeast-wrangling, she reminisces about her mother’s struggle to raise three children as a pot-scrubber, and her resolute belief that pride bows before sustenance. She’s also catapulted back to the story of Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first immigrant to cross through Ellis Island, and a more present story of a young nurse on a school placement in Zambia, combating both AIDS and childhood malnutrition.
Continue reading The Art of Kneading (Farenheight350) 2019 Toronto Fringe Review
The Trophy Hunt, presented by MadFandango Theatre Collective at the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival, is a roving site-specific piece about predator and prey in the urban jungle. Taking place at 401 Richmond, playing several times per night, and accommodating only 25 audience members per performance, it takes its audience on a sort of twisted summer-camp safari where we hear monologues from three characters on both sides of the hunt. Continue reading The Trophy Hunt (MadFandango Theatre Collective) 2019 Toronto Fringe Review