Reviews of productions based in Toronto – theatre includes traditional definitions of theatre, as well as dance, opera, comedy, performance art, spoken word performances, and more. Productions may be in-person, or remote productions streamed online on the Internet.
Powerful, complex remount of Dora-winning play arrives in Toronto
***NOTE: The rest of run has been cancelled to respect social-distancing requests around COVID -19
In The Runner, a remount of the 2019 Dora winner for Outstanding New Play presented by Tarragon Theatre, Jacob (Gord Rand) wakes up in a liminal space of shadow and spotlight, confused, unable to remember what has happened to him. As the pieces fall back into place, the space appears more and more to be one of judgment. Jacob attempts to remember, and to justify his life and actions, while constantly in motion on the eerie white stripe of a treadmill that bisects the darkness.
OIL is “even more timely than when it was originally published.”
***NOTE: The rest of run has been cancelled to respect social-distancing requests around COVID -19
ARC celebrates its 20th anniversary with the Canadian premiere of OIL by British playwright Ella Hickson, directed by Aviva Armour-Ostroff and Christopher Stanton. OIL tells a 150-plus-year-old story of the fossil fuel industry as it changes around a mother and daughter.
OIL tells the story of a mother, May (Bahareh Yaraghi), and her daughter Amy (Samantha Brown). The play follows their relationship over five time-periods and locations. All told, the story takes us from England to the Middle East over 150 years of history – from the advent of the fossil fuel industry to an imagined post-petroleum world.
School siege dramatized on stage in Mirvish’s US/THEM
US/THEM tells the tragic story of the 2004 Beslan school siege from the point of view of the children inside. Not through the naive and innocent portrayal we most often see, but through the inquisitive, creative and detail-oriented child-like personalities that we all know and love. As the program states: “Children understand everything.”
Our reviewer describes The Events as “a show I experienced in my stomach.”
The most disturbing truth about bad events is the impossibility victims face in trying to make it make sense. Piecing together every single, marginal component of the world, just trying to understand.
Site-specific Sunday in the Park arrives on the Toronto stage in a “beautiful canvas”
Sunday in the Park with George, Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s brilliant, century-spanning musical meditation on the place and value of art, gets a site-specific production from Eclipse Theatre at The Jam Factory for six short days.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning show celebrates the magic of the process of creation, which fits nicely with Eclipse’s ethos; professional actors are supported by fourth-year Sheridan students in a ten-day rehearsal process, to fashion something between a staged reading and full production. The result here is closer to the latter than the former.
Powerful, complex remount of Dora-winning play arrives in Toronto
OIL is “even more timely than when it was originally published.”
School siege dramatized on stage in Mirvish’s US/THEM
Our reviewer describes The Events as “a show I experienced in my stomach.”
Site-specific Sunday in the Park arrives on the Toronto stage in a “beautiful canvas”