Dark Heart is a “brave new world of a show” playing on the Toronto stage

Dark Heart, a Thought For Food production now playing at the Assembly Theatre, is a prequel to an earlier work by playwright Genevieve Adam, Deceitful Above All Things, which is set in the same world of colonial New France. I haven’t seen it, but now I’m more than intrigued — this nuanced, captivating show inhabits a world worth visiting and revisiting.

Continue reading Review: Dark Heart (Thought For Food) →

Tarragon Theatre brings the Dora Award-winning Mustard back to the Toronto stage

In Kat Sandler’s bright and offbeat Mustard, now being remounted at the Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, the titular character isn’t supposed to be there. Yet he persists. Mustard (Anand Rajaram) is Thai’s imaginary friend, confidant, and protector. That’s all well and good, but most imaginary friends aren’t supposed to hang around until you’re 16. Thai (Rebecca Liddiard), however, is both blessed and cursed with a giggly, rambunctious, fully-grown imaginary man with a penchant for scatological humour, because she needs a little extra love. Her father deserted the family, her mother drinks and takes pills to pretend to cope – and, oh, she’s pregnant by her college-age boyfriend.

Mustard has already won Doras for best production and performance (for Anand Rajaram), and it’s easy to see why. It’s got the bones of a typical family drama with an appealing atypical spin. It’s got humour, heart and fantasy — and it’s got just enough dark-edged, brutal danger to spice things up.

Continue reading Review: Mustard (Tarragon) →

Million Dollar Quartet brings musical legends together, now playing on the Toronto stage

Drayton Entertainment’s production of Million Dollar Quartet at the newly-renamed CAA Theatre is a fictionalized jukebox musical about a real once-in-a-lifetime jam session. On December 4, 1956, four men gathered in a room in a meeting that would never be replicated. The recording studio at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records was largely responsible for the birth of rock and roll, and the independent shop still had the sound bigger record companies wanted to emulate (or steal) at all costs. Past, present, and future Sun Records stars Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis would play there together for the first and last time.

More of a concert with a whisper-thin plot than even a jukebox musical, Million Dollar Quartet knows and embraces what it is: an easy and assured crowd-pleaser squarely aimed at the demographic that can at least vaguely remember 1956 (or the decade thereafter). If you like the music, you will have a good time. If you don’t, why are you there in the first place?

Continue reading Review: Million Dollar Quartet (Drayton Entertainment) →

Timely and engaging Moll arrives on the Toronto stage

In this current world of #metoo, when it comes to sexual violence and predation, there are a few common themes. One, people in power tend to get away with things. Two, women who are victimized are often seen as tainted, and three, the onus appears to be on the woman to prove she is good enough, special enough, trustworthy enough not to have somehow deserved it. Cue the very timely Moll, a world-premiere musical being presented by the Randolph College for the Performing Arts at the Annex Theatre. A loosely-inspired, modern Canadian update of the 1722 novel Moll Flanders, it’s about a woman trying to become self-reliant with the deck stacked against her.

Written by Leslie Arden and the late Cathy Elliott, with Anna Theresa Cascio, Moll is a complex, catchy, and consummately professional show that I hope will have a life outside of Randolph. Even if not, like #metoo, it reminds us of the importance of listening to women’s voices in the here and now.

Continue reading Review: Moll (Randolph College) →

Poison explores the human relationship with loss, playing at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto

The Canadian premiere of the award-winning Poison by Dutch playwright Lot Vekemans, Coal Mine Theatre’s first commissioned translation, features a gaping hole at its core by design. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, it’s one of the most fulfilling plays I’ve seen this year. Continue reading Review: Poison (Coal Mine Theatre) →