All posts by Lin Young

Lin Young is a PhD candidate in the English Department at Queen’s University by day, an insatiable theatre-goer by night. She truly loves seeing innovative indie theatre, the strange sort of hole-in-the-wall shows that big companies would never take a risk on. She’s seen plays in basements, gardens, bars, and in old dilapidated houses, to name a few. She’s always on the lookout for the next theatrical experiment in the city, and loves seeing shows that have some quality of fantasy, historicity, or strangeness to them – especially if they involve puppets! She tweets about theatre, comics and the 19th century at @linkeepsitreal.

Circle Back (Good Idea Bad Show) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review

Circle Back logo

Circle Back (Good Idea Bad Show) is a romantic comedy that takes place entirely on Zoom and is part of this year’s digital Fringe Festival. Gwyneth (Lauren Maykut) is a graphic designer working out of Melbourne, and Jamie (Tabia Lau, also the writer and director) is a brand manager overseeing tobacco products. As their careers, lives and goals change over the course of several years, Jamie and Gwyneth’s paths keep intersecting as freelancer and employer. Continue reading Circle Back (Good Idea Bad Show) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review →

bloodrite (Other He/Arts) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review

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A statue in a bloody bathtub.

bloodrite (Other He/Arts) takes on the history of Countess Elizabeth Báthory, one of history’s most notorious serial killers who reportedly enjoyed torturing young girls and drinking their blood in the 1500s. Over the years, Báthory has served as the inspiration for many a vampire tale. Hers was a gruesome and bloody life, one that we often remember with a blurring of history with horror-fantasy (while Báthory was arrested for these crimes, for example, claims that she bathed in blood seem to have been exaggerated). As such, it’s fascinating material for adaptation. Continue reading bloodrite (Other He/Arts) 2021 Toronto Fringe Review →

Review: The Phantom of the Opera (Mirvish)

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Phantom of the Opera castPhantom of the Opera Brings Opulence and Gothic Romance to the Toronto Stage.

One of the longest-running musicals of all time, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera, based on the novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux, tells the story of a disfigured musical genius (Derrick Davis) living beneath the Paris Opera.

The Phantom, as he’s called by the opera’s artists and stagehands, is a controlling, sinister presence at the opera, where he frequently wreaks havoc. The Phantom also acts as both teacher and would-be lover to Christine (Emma Grimsley), the opera’s young new musical talent, who the Phantom considers the only appropriate vessel for his musical genius. Complicating matters is Christine’s childhood friend, Raoul (Jordan Craig), who also professes to love her. Along the way, there are a few murders, a love triangle, and a whole lot of stupidly-talented vocalists singing the roof off. Continue reading Review: The Phantom of the Opera (Mirvish) →

Review: CATS (Mirvish)

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Three performers from CATSCATS brings new choreography to the Princess of Wales in Toronto

This year, with a feature film adaptation on the horizon, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s CATS has become the subject of renewed public interest. Or perhaps, considering the fact that the stage show has always been popular (it’s one of the longest-running musicals of all time on both Broadway and the West End, and has frequently been revived), maybe it’s more accurate to say that new audiences have been discovering CATS (which is now, coincidentally, playing until January at the Princess of Wales theatre).

The truth is that CATS has always been a strange, esoteric, oft-poetic but frequently abstract affair, and that the new film (with its infamous trailers) are likely only magnifying what theatre-goers have known for a long time: CATS is weird. CATS is often impossible to describe, especially to those resistant to musicals in the first place. But CATS, by the same token, has always commanded large audiences, and has a unique appeal that is as mysterious and mercurial as its subject matter. Continue reading Review: CATS (Mirvish) →

July 11 Rave Roundup for the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival

image saying daily raves

Week two of the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival is upon us, and we’re counting up our rave reviews from our hard-won list of 149 reviews of the entire (review-eligible) festival! Plenty of those shows have been marked as RAVES by our reviewers, and we’re here today to highlight a few more of them!

What’s a rave, you might ask? Simply put: our reviewer loved it. Sometimes a rave is ‘I’d see that a second, third, fourth time’; sometimes a rave is ‘I’m STILL thinking about this show days later’; sometimes it’s as simple as ‘I had a really fabulous time at this show.’

Really, it’s all subjective, because theatre is subjective. These raves caught our reviewers’ attention, though–perhaps they’ll snag yours as well?

Continue reading July 11 Rave Roundup for the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival →