This week in Theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto. It includes just-opened shows as well as productions that are about to close.
Stockholm / Tarragon Extra Space / 8:00pm/2:30pm / $15-$30
Seventh Stage Theatr…

Tarragon brings back Michel Tremblay’s play, with new layers of sophistication.

The Real World? Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman Avenue) Runs to June 3 Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 2:30 p.m. matinees $21–$51 We’ll never quite understand why some audience members aren’t interested in sticking around to ask questions during post-show talkbacks. If your parking’s about to expire, or you have a very [...]

"It was awesome!" That was the response from my friend’s 11-year-old daughter coming out of Dancap’s production of West Side Story, now playing in Toronto. I’d debated bringing my 9-year-old daughter with me to opening night.  Yes, the songs in…

The final production of this year’s National Arts Centre English Theatre season is Shakespeare’s King Lear. But it’s not just any King Lear; it is King Lear with an all-Aboriginal cast—the culmination of an idea actor August Schellenberg and the late director John Juliani had forty-five years ago – and, on top of that, Aboriginal [...]

This week in theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto. It includes just-opened shows as well as productions that are about to close.

Dance Marathon / World Stage – Enwave Theatre / 7:00pm / $35
An immersive and p…

An American-Korean director and playwright tackles black politics in a challenging script that’s brutally funny, and just plain brutal.

The Shipment Enwave Theatre (231 Queens Quay West) May 9–12, 8 p.m. $15–$45 As progressive as we like to think our society is, every once in a while there is a case (Trayvon Martin, for example) that exposes an obscene, overt act of racism. We mourn the victim, shame the culprit, and take solace in [...]

© 2004-2012 Rebecca Bollwitt – Miss604.com. If you are not reading this via official Miss604 channels, this content is being reproduced without permission. Broadway Across Canada is bringing Mary Poppins, the live musical, to Vancouver this summer. The songs we remember from childhood, the impressive dance numbers, and a high level of energy is set [...]

The Canadian premiere of New York playwright Rajiv Joseph’s romcom with a twist. Or, should we say, a sprain.

Gruesome Playground Injuries The Theatre Centre (1087 Queen Street West) May 2 to 13, Tuesdays to Sundays at 7:30 p.m., weekend matinees at 1:30 p.m. $20–$30 We’ve all had our scrapes and bruises from the playground, and chances are the words we used to describe them at the time were “gr-ooooss” or “awwwesome.” But imagine [...]

The belief that love makes us perform crazy and self-destructive acts in pursuit of the desires of the heart has been the inspiration for a seemingly endlessness amount of stage fare. Included in that group is Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injurie…

Death and the Maiden is set in Chile in 1990, in the aftermath of the Pinochet regime.  Fifteen years earlier, Paulina Salas (Geneviève Sirois) was abducted, tortured, and raped for two months.  A chance meeting has her husband Gerardo Escobar (Chris Ralph), a lawyer freshly appointed to the new government’s commission to investigate the prior [...]

There’s no need to pussyfoot around it. The practice of translating popular film to stage musicals has become so rampant, not to mention poorly done, that you’ve already chalked up Bring It On: The Musical as another in a long line of bad productions o…

This week in theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto. It includes just-opened shows as well as productions that are about to close.

The Agony And Ecstasy Of Steve Jobs / Secret Location / 8:00pm/2:00pm / $20-$2…

Emerging playwright Daniel Karasik gets meta with a play about twenty-somethings who don’t know how to handle the opportunity their generation was born into.

The Innocents Tarragon Theatre Studio (30 Bridgman Avenue) April 17 to May 13 Wednesday, Friday, Saturday at 8 p.m.; Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m. $17-$22 You may have heard of this new little show called Girls on HBO. Hannah is 24, two years out of university, interns for a living in New York City (supplemented [...]

Eric Peterson becomes the grandpa we all wish we had in Soulpepper’s You Can’t Take It With You.

You Can’t Take It With You Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street) April 26–June 21, various dates and times $22–$68 The 2010s have Modern Family, just as the 1990s had Full House and Family Matters. All of those TV shows are comedies that celebrate the quirks and unbreakable bonds within families. In [...]

This week in theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto. It includes just-opened shows as well as productions that are about to close.

Bring It On: The Musical / Ed Mirvish Theatre / 8:00pm/2:00pm / $25-$100+
Comp…

The Bronson Centre is a happening place this weekend, people – the Joel Plaskett Emergency and Frank Turner tonight, and Measha Brueggergosman Friday night – both shows that promise to bring it. Tonight you can also get your punk/hardcore fix with Dayglo Abortions and EndPrograms at Mavericks, while jazz aficionados can hear inspirations from Dave [...]

A brash 17th century farce seems a fitting end to Canadian Stage’s 2011/2012 season—which shows just how far Matthew Jocelyn has taken the company.

The Game of Love and Chance Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front Street East) April 16 to May 12 Mondays to Saturdays at 8 p.m., Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. $24 to $99 The Game of Love and Chance is a 300-year-old farce made up of arranged marriages, mistaken identities, class dynamics, entrances [...]

It’s often been claimed that achieving great comedy is far more difficult than striking the right balance of emotion in drama. There are just so many variables when it comes to tickling the funny bone. The strength of this claim can be seen in the late…

Newfoundland’s Artistic Fraud brings the true story of Lanier Phillips, a black Navy man saved by the women of the coastal town of St. Lawrence, to Toronto in a well-intentioned but uneven production.

Oil and Water Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst Street) April 18–May 6, Tuesdays–Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. $30–$40 As we saw last month in Mikaela Dyke’s Dying Hard, for many years life in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, wasn’t easy. While the men working in the mines developed silicosis and lung cancer, which would [...]

Evolution Theatre’s double-bill of two very different plays (Berni Stapleton’s Mary Magdalene and Adventures in Sobriety and [boxhead] by Darren O’Donnell) is challenging for both the performers and the audience. Whether or not you’re ready for the challenge will very much determine how much you enjoy both productions. In the single-performer Mary Magdalene and Adventures [...]