Mike was that kid who walked into the high school stage crew booth, saw the lighting board, and went ooooooooooooh. Now that he’s (mostly) all grown up, Mike keeps his foot in the door as a community-theatre producer, stage manager and administrator. In the audience, he’s a tremendous sucker for satire and parody, for improvisational and sketch-driven comedy, for farce and pantomime, and for cabaret of all types. His happiest Toronto theatrical memory is (re) Birth: E. E. Cummings in Song.
Heavy subject matter in The Little Flower of East Orange, playing at Toronto’s Unit 102 Theatre
There’s a hollowness at the core of The Little Flower of East Orange. (Currently playing in rep at Unit 102.) This is by design: Little Flower is about heroin addicts, faithless healers, and a septuagenarian whose life depends upon denial and self-repression. It’s gotta be served cold.
We’re talking hardboiled, experimental theatre without any of its edges sanded off, and Column 13, a young company with a strong background in precisely this type of cold, alienating, thinkity-think drama, are in a unique position to explore this opportunity. And when it works, it works.
Sound theatre fundamentals in The Biographer, playing at Toronto’s Videofag
In the second act of The Biographer, playing at Videofag, the titular character welcomes a stranger into his home, offers him a cup of tea, and invites him to spew his guts. Tell me everything. Tell me anything. The stories of strangers are a biographer’s lifeblood; the fact that this particular stranger is brandishing a knife is just an added bit of flavour.
And in that moment, Daniel Karasik’s play is laser-sharp. There is insight and perspective to be gained from these scenes.
But scenes always end. And when it happens, these moments of clarity disappear completely.
Geography of a Horse Dreamer blends the dark with the charismatic, part of Toronto’s Playwright Festival
Geography of a Horse Dreamer (playing as part of the Playwright Project) ends with a jam session: an old-fashioned, stomp-your-feet hootenanny, accompanied by dustbowl-folk band Local 164 on guitar and ukulele. Instead of bows, the cast urge the audience to clap along and join in on the chorus. A few good friends playing a little good music, and you’re invited to take part.
And, to some extent, this whole production feels like an extension of that jam session. A half-dozen actors who clearly relish working together just for the joy of doing so; an over-the-top, absurdist script which begs not to be taken too seriously; complete artistic freedom. When these sorts of elements collide, the result is always energetic, charismatic, compelling and worthwhile, and this production is no exception.
Glorious performances in When the World was Green, The Underground Theatre’s piece in Toronto’s Playwright Project
The most memorable scenes in When the World was Green (part of the Playwright Project) take place in near-darkness. An Interviewer (Shannon Taylor) floats on the surface of a river, coursing quickly and deftly around obstacles, determined to reach her destination. And an Old Man (David Fox), framed by a thin strip of twilight, slips closer to oblivion every time he breathes.
As with most two-handers, the story scarcely matters: the murder-and-cookery plot is interesting, but it serves primarily to give us these two characters. The real meat of this culinary play is in the performance.
A great evening of aspiring comics on stage at Toronto’s Crown & Tiger
There’s always something charming in a show that knows exactly what it is, and the Toronto Comedy Brawl, playing at Crown & Tiger, has no pretensions. Your $5 buys you roughly an hour of above-average amateur stand-up in the dingy basement–producer Ian Atlas calls it a sex dungeon–of what may be the diviest dive bar on College.
It’s better than I make it sound.
This is the Brawl’s 5th year, and Atlas has its operations down to a science. The six to eight comedians do short five-minute sets: if a comedian’s good, the short set leaves the audience wanting more; if not, the short set ensures that this is a speed bump rather than a derailment. The hosts rotate; when MoT attended, former contestant Wojtek Arciszewski did a magnificent job: subtly pumping the crowd, filling time and keeping the energy going without making the show entirely about himself.
There’s always something charming in a show that knows exactly what it is, and the