A hilarious whodunit mystery, Ravenscroft is playing at Toronto’s Sterling Studio Theatre

Ravenscroft (Sterling Studio Theatre Collective) is now playing at the Sterling Studio Theatre. The play written by Don Nigro was adapted into a movie re-named The Manor in 1999 starring Peter O’Toole. Ravenscroft can be described as a mixture of Downton Abbey and Clue, with a lot more laughs and questionable accents.

Six actors filed out onto the small stage of the Sterling Studio Theatre, maneuvering around furniture quietly in strict choreography. There were five women and one man with a majestic mustache. The mustached gentleman was Inspector Ruffing, who was hard-pressed to find the truth about a dead man at the bottom of a staircase in the Ravenscroft manor. Then the lights came on and the mystery was afoot.
Continue reading Review: Ravenscroft (Sterling Studio Theatre Collective) →

The Titanic is revisited in a survivor’s story in Scotland Road playing at Toronto’s Papermill Theatre

A line at the end of Scotland Road says it all: “You’re nostalgic for a disaster you never knew.” Yes. We. Are.

Even after a blockbuster movie, underwater documentaries and interactive artifact exhibits where you pick a card that determines whether you live or die, we still trek across icy parking lots (how appropriate!) to a relatively unknown playhouse in the depths of Toronto’s Don Valley to witness yet another rendition of the Titanic story.

Continue reading Review: Scotland Road (Amicus Productions) →

Free Outgoing is a tale of sexual assault lived through a family steeped in tradition, at Toronto’s Factory Theatre

In Free Outgoing (from Nightwood Theatre), disgrace ruins the lives of the widowed Malini and her children after her fifteen year old daughter, Deepa, is filmed sexually by her boyfriend on his phone and the recording spread until it reaches the public internet. It’s set within a Tamil family in the very conservative city of Chennai in India, which means the level of censure from the community is beyond what we would expect in North America.  This extremity works to highlight some of the same issues we face here, possibly in subverted or insidious ways. The most striking thing about the play is that Deepa herself is not a character.

Continue reading Review: Free Outgoing (Nightwood theatre) →

Idiot’s Delight is a comedic anti-war drama playing at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts

Soulpepper opened their 2014 season last night with Idiot’s Delight,  Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prize winning play written in 1936.  Theatre was different then, casts were big. It’s not often anymore that you have an opportunity to see a play with a cast of 20 talented actors.

Idiot’s Delight is set at a resort in the Italian Alps. Initially, aside from the staff, the multicultural hotel has only one occupant: a phlegmatic German scientist who wishes nothing more than to leave. But as one would expect in Europe in 1936, tensions escalate rapidly between world powers, borders are closed, and when a train is unexpectedly stopped, guests begin streaming in the doors: a couple of English honeymooners; a whole troupe of song-and-dance blondes from America; a harried showman-cum-manager; a French communist and rabble-rouser; a notorious and well-connected arms dealer; and a dangerous Russian woman who has never, in her life, told anyone the complete truth–about herself, about the world, about anything.

Continue reading Review: Idiot’s Delight (Soulpepper) →

The Children’s Hour explores the destructive results of a lie at the Toronto Centre for the Arts

I am always of two minds when I am about to see one of my favourite plays, and so it was that I went into Encore Entertainment’s production of The Children’s Hour (playing at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, Studio Theatre) half-ecstatic and half-terrified. Will they get it right? Will my guest be equally enamoured of it, or will they look at me in that funny way, wondering why I’ve subjected them to such rubbish?

Before I delve into the thick of it, let me first say this: I love Lillian Hellman’s play wholeheartedly. It chronicles the tragic aftermath of lie told in spite, and explores the consequences of such unpleasant human characteristics as selfishness, resentment, and self-righteousness. Continue reading Review: The Children’s Hour (Encore Entertainment) →