Catch one of Bollywood’s great actors in Toronto this weekend in Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar
This weekend, Why Not Theatre brings Naseeruddin Shah and his wife, Ratna Pathak Shah – royalty of South Asian cinema – to town for a christening of Toronto’s newest theatre venue, the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre.
The pair resurrect George Bernard Shaw and Stella Patrick Campbell in Dear Liar, a play chronicling their infamous, decades-long love affair. (It was also a well-documented affair: Dear Liar is based almost entirely on written correspondence between the married Shaw and his married mistress.) While the play has always been prey to mixed reactions, Why Not Theatre gives Dear Liar one of its best incarnations in recent memory. Continue reading Review: Beyond Bollywood – Dear Liar (Why Not Theatre)→
In case you’ve been living under a rock: there’s a play being staged at SummerWorks called FRANCE or, The Niqab, which tells the tale of two headstrong women caught up in a legal struggle concerning this controversial religious clothing. In coming to terms with their differences – and their many similarities – these two go head to head on more than just hemlines, providing their audience with comedy and conversation-starters in equal measure. Continue reading FRANCE or, The Niqab (Old Pirate) 2012 SummerWorks Review→
Marine Life, a smart tragicomic psychodrama staged by Theatre Crisis for SummerWorks, bills itself as an “intimate fish-tale of apocalyptic proportions,” and that’s pretty accurate. Let’s break this down.
Intimacy: Environmental activist Sylvia finds herself in an awkward triangle of affections with her new love-interest-slash-defense-attorney, Rupert, and possessive, suicidal brother, John (he prefers Juan).
A play about gun violence in Toronto is now more than timely. But Aneemah’s Spot, produced by MotionLive and Cric Crac Collective for this year’s SummerWorks festival, elevates the discussion of this hot button issue beyond mere polemics. Through the eyes of two vivid characters, it looks at the complicated ways that art and love stay afloat in the wake of tragedy.
