All posts by Jonathan Lavallee

Review: No Time To Kill (Mysteriously Yours)

Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre presents a new murder-mystery play at Toronto’s Old Mill

Clockwork background with the words No Time To Kill on it.Dinner theatre is about pure entertainment. You, and at least one other friend since dinner theatre isn’t really a solo activity, plan to have a lovely evening out with some food, a few drinks, and some laughs. Mysteriously Yours’ No Time To Kill does a great job in providing you exactly what you’re asking for in dinner theatre, food, laughs, and entertainment. Continue reading Review: No Time To Kill (Mysteriously Yours)

Rage Against the King (Pound Ionesco Faulkner) 2018 Toronto Fringe Review

Photo of Rage Against the King

RAGE AGAINST the King, produced by Pound Ionesco Faulkner at Toronto Fringe Festival, is the third part of a trilogy being performed this year where different groups are writing around a single incident and creating unrelated stories. This is important to know because we thought that we would be lost not having seen the others. Thankfully that isn’t the case; each one has its own story and can be viewed on their own.

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The Greatest LOVE STORY Ever Forgotten (The Boy Who Swallowed a Bullet Collective) 2018 Toronto Fringe Review

Photo of Brittaney Bennett in The Greatest LOVE STORY Ever Forgotten

The Greatest LOVE STORY  Ever Forgotten  produced by The Boy Who Swallowed a Bullet Collective playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

The Greatest Love Story Ever Forgotten is a sixty minute story told over two days about Florence (Brittaney Bennett) who is an elderly woman in a home. She’s visited by a therapy clown (Gungun Deep Singh) who discovers that the picture Florence thinks is her husband, is actually actor Rock Hudson. The clown undertakes to help Florence piece the memories of her life back together.

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Review: Grease: The Musical (Irregular Entertainment)

Popular musical arrives on the Winter Garden Theatre stage in Toronto

Grease: the Musical is a classic, and it’s got that classic vibe about teenage friendship and romance in the 50s. Returning for another run after playing in Toronto in early 2018, the production currently playing at the Winter Garden Theatre is, as the opening song says, the time, the place, and the motion to watch an entertaining rendition of this popular musical.

Continue reading Review: Grease: The Musical (Irregular Entertainment)

Review: After the Blackout (Soulpepper and RARE theatre company)

Melanie Lepp in a red robe holding a hockey stickAfter the Blackout is “powerful”, “vulnerable”, and “poignant”, on stage in Toronto

Regardless of everything else that happens in the play, the ending is what makes the point.

After the Blackout, playing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, is not a typical theatrical story. I say that beyond the fact that the stories are all about people with disabilities, and played by actors with those disabilities. The note by Judith Thompson, who wrote and directed After the Blackout, talks about how the goal of the play was to write a complex story in which the disabilities of the cast were facts, not features. That succeeded beyond measure, but it too is not why this isn’t a typical theatrical production. This story is a-typical because it’s a difficult story, not just in what it is saying but in how it is being said.

Continue reading Review: After the Blackout (Soulpepper and RARE theatre company)