Four new plays open the New Ideas Festival at the Alumnae in TorontoThe first week of the 30th annual New Ideas Festival—organized by the Alumnae Theatre Company on this its 100th year—offers four new plays. Each one disentangles different approaches to the concept of following what you feel is right, and how that can come back and haunt you.
Homewrecker, a new play by Danny Pagett, is now playing at Toronto’s Assembly TheatreIf a play’s purpose is to offer a take on a specific subject, I’m expecting a nuanced perspective to run through its core, and that is certainly the case with Homewrecker.
Currently running at The Assembly Theatre, the story centres on a cheating, self-loathing divorcee named Craig (Blue Bigwood-Mallin) eager to figure out where he went wrong, and Veronica (Susannah Mackay), the woman he cheated with, whose steely resolve he needs to put himself back together. Craig’s basement apartment—uncanny in its execution by set designer Chris Bretecher—sets a believable backdrop for the play’s extravagant central conceit: Craig’s $5000 offer to Veronica for a night’s company to prove to himself that he’s able to avoid seducing her again and is thus not the deviant sexual animal he thinks he is.
Continue reading Review: Homewrecker (Coyote Collective/Leroy Street Theatre/Scapegoat Collective)