Review: Non Gratas, A Latinx Comedy Show With a Lot of Melodrama (Alma Matters Productions)

Cultures collide in Non Gratas at Bad Dog Theatre Company

Non Gratas, A Latinx Comedy Show With a Lot of Melodrama, is an improv comedy show that does its name proud. Produced by Alma Matters, and staged at Bad Dog Theatre Company, it’s loosely built around two young Latin American women who become friends after immigrating to Canada. As they struggle to connect with a new culture, they highlight the gap between two stereotypes—Canadian humility and Latinx passion—with jokes that kill but also let me into their devastating longing for home. 

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Review: The Band’s Visit (Mirvish)

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Photo of Sasson Gabay and Chilina Kennedy in The Band's Visit by Matthew MurphyEgyptian musicians wind up in a small Jewish town in The Band’s Visit at the Ed Mirvish Theatre

“You probably didn’t hear about it. It wasn’t very important.” That’s the tagline to the events of the David Yazbek/Itamar Moses musical The Band’s Visit, now playing on tour at the Ed Mirvish Theatre. The show, based on a 2007 Israeli film, won 10 Tonys in 2018, and comes highly celebrated for such a supposedly small story.

In 1996, the Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, from Egypt, gets invited to play a show at Petah Tikva, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Instead, due to a miscommunication, they wind up at Bet Hatikva, a (fictional) small desert town where absolutely nothing ever happens. As they wait for the next day’s bus ride out, the band members accept the initially-wary townspeople’s offer of their homes, hospitality, and the potential for unexpected, fly-by-night connections.

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