Blood Relations takes a chilling look into the Lizzie Borden murders at the Alumnae Theatre in Toronto
Alumnae Theatre‘s latest production, Blood Relations, takes on the infamous and bloody tale of Lizzie Borden, the young lady who was tried and later acquitted of the murders of her father and stepmother in 1892, and projects it ten years in the future. In this imagined future, Lizzie and her friend and lover, known only as “Actress”, play a mind game where Actress takes a stroll in Lizzie’s shoes during those critical few weeks leading up to the murder in order to answer the question ‘could Lizzie have done it?’
It was this very interesting take on the famous murder case that instantly piqued my curiosity having long been fascinated by the trial. Having now seen this production, I can honestly say I was blown away.
Playing at Leslieville’s The Grocery, A Steady Rain by Keith Huff is a riveting tale of two troubled cops. You’ll be hanging on to their every word. They face the horrors of Chicago criminal life as well as their own chronic, personal battles. Despite their best intentions, everything at home and on the beat goes wrong, and things progressively get worse. Continue reading Review: A Steady Rain (Paper Moon Productions)→
Canadian Opera Company’s New Staging of Don Giovanni Misses the Mark
The curtain on the Canadian Opera Company’s current production of Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart came up to stark silence at a somber family meeting. The audience had just been informed via projected text that we could expect a different performance of this tried and true classic. In the opera’s usual plot, three narrative strands about three objects of Don Giovanni’s prodigious desire converge into a perfect storm at the opera’s close. In this production, the principal characters were all members of a very wealthy, contemporary extended family. The action took place in a single set – the sitting room of the patriarch’s mansion. Continue reading Review: Don Giovanni (Canadian Opera Company)→
Playwright Moss Hart is reputed to have said “If you want to send a message, call Western Union.” His stance, and that echoed later by film directors of such note as Frank Capra, is that theatre might entertain or explore but that work with a message to impart is destined to be boring. With Small Axe, a coproduction of The Theatre Centre and Project Humanity, Andrew Kushnir has proven Hart decisively, irrevocably wrong. What’s more, he does so using a collection of theatrical elements that often spell disaster, but which apparently (to no one’s surprise more than mine) can in the right hands be combined to make a deeply affecting theatrical experience.
Secrets are revealed when a couple discovers a body in Une Vie Pour Deux on stage at Toronto’s Berkeley Street Theatre
Every so often a production takes a difficult discussion and uses it to reveal the flaws in our way of thinking. Une Vie Pour Deux (Love and Other Fragments) is a joint project by Espace GO and Theatre Francais de Toronto at the Berkeley Street Theatre is a work that dives into its subject and delivers a solid night of theatre.
