VideoCabaret presents a play that’s a definitive piece of Canadiana, The Great War, in Toronto

VideoCabaret‘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.

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21st-Century Blithe Spirit takes to the Toronto stage

Blithe Spirit has had at least a dozen commercial and non-commercial productions in Toronto in the last decade. Noël Coward’s script is funny, bitchy, progressive and spooky, and its structural features — a single set, a small cast, worthwhile roles for actresses over the age of 25 — make it an attractive choice for producers as well.

The plot is straightforward: in an English country village, a remarried widower accidentally conjures up the spirit of his first wife, making him a sort of spectral bigamist. Neither wife is altogether pleased with this arrangement, and both are determined to have him to themselves — at any cost.

iBlithe seeks to “re-invent” Blithe Spirit for the digital age, bringing it forward 70 years to find new relevance, cut some of the padding, and make it work in a post-iPhone world.

Continue reading Review: iBlithe (The iPlayers/Red Sandcastle) →

Jitters is a Love Letter to Theatre, on Stage in Toronto

Jitters is playwright David French’s comic love letter to late-1970s Canadian theatre. As a company struggles towards opening night, Murphy’s Law kicks in: egos collide, wigs fly off, tempers flare and doors slam. The Care and Treatment of Roses was supposed to be their ticket to Broadway, but what if it never opens at all?

Continue reading Review: Jitters (Soulpepper) →

The Two-Character Play is difficult but rewarding, now on stage in Toronto

The Two-Character Play is such a play — so metatheatrical, so self-referential, so muddy and grey and inclined to squint at its audience — that it almost defies description. In simple terms, your reading of its plot and message will depend heavily upon what you bring to the performance.

But there are, unquestionably, two siblings riven equally by trauma and folie à deux. There is a play within the play, and there is a hostile world from which the only escape is a two-storey house with veritable blockades of sunflowers. The rest, gentle reader, is up to you. Continue reading Review: The Two-Character Play (Good Old Neon) →