Comfort weaves a horrific, beautiful tale with poetry and music for Toronto audiences
Red Snow Collective’s production of Comfort (playing at Aki Studio) is a lyrical, creatively staged, and outright heartbreaking drama about love and resilience in a time of horror and atrocity. I was spellbound by the complex storytelling and moving performances; this was a play that I will never forget.
Comfort is based on the true historical story of the thousands of “comfort women” — Korean, Chinese, Filippina, and others — brutally enslaved into forced prostitution by the Japanese army during WWII. As the previous sentence suggests, this play goes to some very dark places, but I loved the way it also cherishes the power of language to keep culture and human dignity alive.
Canadian-themed Beaver has potential it “didn’t quite live up to”
I had high hopes for The Storefront Theatre’s production of Beaver, a coming-of-age story set in small-town Northern Ontario. Unfortunately, I thought this play was extremely uneven.
Beaver had great sound design that skillfully evoked a Canadian winter, but I thought many of the characters lacked depth, and I was perplexed by some of the playwright’s structural choices. At the end of the play’s two-hours-plus runtime, I felt more disappointed than anything.
Breathing Corpses, on stage at Toronto’s Coal Mine Theatre, lacks coherence
I expected to love Coal Mine Theatre’s new production, Breathing Corpses. The production company came highly recommended. Unfortunately, although the cast was talented, the play was plagued by uneven pacing and a sense of disconnect from reality. This play tried so hard to be clever that it forgot to stay coherent, and many characters made decisions and expressed emotions that did not feel real or grounded in any way.
As its title suggests, Breathing Corpses is a drama built around death. The characters are clustered into three groups whose stories never intersect onstage. I respect playwright Laura Wade’s decision to let the audience do the work of figuring out the relationship between the groups of characters. However, because the scenes were never synthesized onstage, this play felt to me like it lacked cohesion.
Mouthpiece / Quiver is an extraordinary double-bill, on stage at Toronto Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
Right now, an extraordinary double bill is playing at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre: Mouthpiece, produced by Quote Unquote Theatre and presented by Nightwood Theatre, and Quiver, produced by Nightwood Theatre. Through innovative staging and raw storytelling power, these two shows offer a creative and profoundly moving exploration of the female voice.
These are two of the most urgent and unforgettable plays that I have ever seen. The storytelling techniques and structures in these plays are as bold as the stories themselves; together, Mouthpiece and Quiver offer an extremely cutting-edge night at the theatre.
All But Gone, on stage in Toronto, is a “performance of beautifully executed despair”
Canadian Stage’s production of All But Gone intersperses four of Samuel Beckett’s short plays with pieces of contemporary vocal music sung by two opera singers. Since Beckett’s plays are very different from what most of us are used to seeing at the theatre, I recommend taking a look at his work before you decide whether to see this performance. Otherwise you might come away saying, “Well, that was different,” like a puzzled woman in the row behind me.
Personally, I enjoy absurdist theatre (in small doses), so I was delighted by All But Gone. There was something especially beautiful and desolate about the opening moments of the evening. The house lights came down and performers Shannon Mercer and Krisztina Szabó began to sing long, slow notes of opera into the silence. Spotlights flickered across the audience, everyone hushed, and a tall blue curtain drew quietly across the stage: it was the kind of small but weighty moment that Beckett might have appreciated.
All But Gone, on stage in Toronto, is a “performance of beautifully executed despair”