Double bill Kuwaiti Moonshine and By a Thread playing at Toronto’s Sterling Studio Theatre are personal stories that though entertaining, fall short in their conclusions
Double bills are often hard nights of theatre to sit through. They’re long, for starters, and they also ask the audience to suspend disbelief twice in a row, bring us from climax to conclusion only to do it all over again. Just as one story settles we’re thrown into the next.
One-man-shows can also be hard nights of theatre to sit through. It is more difficult for a single actor to create what many can. Listening to the same person talk for a whole hour is trying in any setting, in or out of the theatre.
Sterling Studio Theatre’s current double bill of one-(wo)man-shows Kuwaiti Moonshine and By A Thread makes for a demanding night of theatre.
You Should Have Stayed Home is the dramatic true story of a detainee during Toronto’s G20 riots playing at the Aki Studio Theatre
You Should Have Stayed Home is Tommy Taylor’s true account of being kettled, arrested, held in inhumane conditions for nearly 24 hours, and then let go with no charges laid in Toronto’s 2010 G20 debacle. Thousands of others received the same or similar treatment, which is hard for us Canadians to reconcile with our view of our society and our laws. This makes it a very important story to tell.
Taylor is a likeable guy, which I think is a huge part of why this show works. It’s storytelling, rather than a play: hardly anything is acted out on stage, mostly Taylor just tells the audience what happened to him. And what happened isn’t always easy to parse. If it were fiction, the plot would make more sense. But this is a true story that takes place in the midst of the chaos of the G20, and by chaos I’m not talking about broken windows or burning cars. I’m talking about the incomprehensible decision-making that happened at the upper echelons of police and security that day. Continue reading Review: You Should Have Stayed Home (Praxis Theatre)→
Soulpepper Theatre presents Farther West, a play about a woman’s journey for freedom, now playing at Toronto’s Young Centre
John Murrell’s play, Farther West, the Soulpepper production which opened last night, was first performed in 1982. I always wonder if an older play will stand the test of time; Farther West does.
You certainly can’t help but notice the stage as you go to your seat – a woman and a man asleep together, both of them naked. That’s more 1982 than 2013, there doesn’t seem to be as much nudity and sex in plays now. In the ’70s and early ’80s there was often nudity that felt gratuitous and a lot of gratuitous sex too.
Theatre Rusticle’s Dinner at Seven-Thirty is a richly poetic story of personal torment playing at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times
There comes a point in each of our lives when we reflect back on our individual histories and ask ourselves, “What have you become?” Theatre Rusticle’s current production, Dinner at Seven-Thirty, is inspired by Virginia Woolf’s iconic 1931 piece, The Waves. In this novel, we are introduced to a group of six childhood friends who have all entered adulthood, and now reminisce about the various moments that have defined each of their lives thus far.
Filled with poignant social commentaries and heart-warming depictions of personal torment, Dinner at Seven-Thirty is a wonderfully poetic production which further expands on the cannon of Woolf’s masterpiece as, now older and wiser, the six friends share new experiences.
The Killing Game is an absurd and bizarre dark comedy playing at Toronto’s Annex Theatre in time for Halloween
‘Ring Around the Rosie’ was a song we all sang as kids and then learned, years later, the true meaning behind the nursery tune – the black plague. The juxtaposition of a lilting kids’ song to deliver a lesson of history’s most devastating pandemic is greatly exaggerated in an avant-garde and absurdist way in Eugene Ionesco’s The Killing Game presented by Art & Lies Productions.
Numerous single act vaudevillian skits performed with as much outlandish kitsch and dazzling jazz handed grandeur as the production’s team of 18 actors can muster make up the evening’s two hour show. In the style of absurdist theatre with a nod to theatre of the macabre, The Killing Game, playing at the Annex Theatre, is a perfect precursor to Halloween festivities.
