Powerful simplicity make  Miss Caledonia, playing at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, a prime example of the scope and spirit of Canadian theatre

At the end of Miss Caledonia I stood up, stretched a little, looked around, and noticed something highly unusual.

There, in the tiny little Extra Space of the Tarragon Theatre, six different people were crying: weeping tears of catharsis, and joy, and simple contentment.

This is not a weepy sort of play. Nobody dies of consumption, nobody is killed in a futile war, and there are no orphans hawking matches. In fact, the play is exactly what it says on the label: Melody A. Johnson (accompanied by fiddler Alison Porter) provides a straightforward, linear account of the time her mother was crowned Pageant Queen at the Caledonia County Fair.

How do you take that premise and make adults weep? It’s simpler than you think.

Continue reading Review: Miss Caledonia (Tarragon Theatre/Melody A. Johnson) →

Toronto’s Young People Theatre’s I on the Sky “essentially works” – and keeps hyperactive twelve-year-olds in rapt silence.

I on the Sky opens with a young woman in the very eye of a storm. Life around her park bench is calm and mundane: an old biddy feeds the birds; a tourist fusses with an unruly map; a bored municipal worker picks away at the litter. But for our protagonist, this is only a brief moment of respite in the midst of intense turmoil—and she doesn’t have long before the storm consumes her again.

Continue reading Review: I on the Sky (DynamO Théâtre/Young People’s Theatre) →

Stage Centre is bent on giving you a fun evening with its Toronto theatre production of Jitters.

Jitters, playing at the York Woods Library Theatre, is a multi-layered, tricky beast. The play is literally about three afternoons in the life of a theatrical production: the final rehearsal, the buildup to opening, and the day after. But beneath the surface, author David French has written a twisted sort of love note to Canadian theatre in the 1970s, and it’s the willingness of Michael James Burgess’ cast to engage with that subtext which makes this Stage Centre Productions mount really shine.

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An expertly acted refreshing look at a done-to-death Tom Stoppard play at Toronto’s Hart House.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of those plays you’re supposed to see. It features prominently on a list which often feels like dietary advice: “The Canadian Association of Theatre Nerds recommends three servings of Arthur Miller, four of Shakespeare, two of David French and one Tom Stoppard as part of a balanced theatrical diet.”

These shows have been done to death. They’ve had all the life sucked out of them. Directors and actors struggle in vain to find a fresh take; a new insight; some way of turning it on its head. Most fail.

Matthew Gorman’s Hart House production succeeds.

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Urinetown is a twisted story. In an unnamed Midwestern city, a water shortage has forced the authorities to forbid urination—except in privately-owned public amenities, which charge exorbitant sums for the privilege of peeing. Those who defy the law and illicitly relieve themselves are arrested and sent off to “Urinetown”, an unspeakably dark and horrifying place.

When the employees of one of these amenities decide to defy the monopoly and stop charging their customers (“WE PEE FOR FREE!”), revolution breaks out. Will the rebels succeed, or will the powers that be crush the movement and cement their grip on the city’s bladders?

Continue reading Review: Urinetown (StageWorks) →