Poking comedic fun at biblical tales, Genesis & Other Stories is playing at Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre

Genesis & Other Stories (playing the Red Sandcastle) is playwright Rosamund Small’s love letter to amateur dramatics: to 14-hour cue-to-cues held in sweltering church basements and freezing middle-school gymnatoriums; to the tumbledown sets, costumes & props that volunteers dig out of their closets or laboriously assemble with their bare hands and loads of duct tape; and, above all else, to the strange, overly-earnest creatures who inhabit this world.

Director Christoper’s late father adapted the Book of Genesis to suburban America in the 1960s, and–as a final act of devotion–he tries to shepherd his ramshackle cast through the truly awful script for the play-within-a-play.

Sadly, even the otherworldly guidance of our deceased writer can’t save this company of misfits, wannabes and has-beens from their personal and public melodramas.

Happily, we get to laugh at their misery. And laugh, we do.

Continue reading Review: Genesis & Other Stories (Aim for the Tangent) →

Cabaret springs to life with unbridled sexuality and high-heeled high kicks at Toronto’s Lower Ossington Theatre

Cabaret (playing the Lower Ossington Theatre) is set in and around Berlin’s decadent Kit Kat Klub, a late Weimar music hall. The drinks are cheap, the air is thick with cigarette smoke, and the girls–and boys–are very, very happy to make your acquaintance. Under the watchful eye of the Emcee (Adam Norrad), a young American writer (David Light, as Cliff) is inducted into Berlin’s low society. Guided by the eager hands of new friend Ernst Ludwig (William Doyle) and the lingering fingers of the charismatic Sally Bowles (Kylie McMahon), he is quickly at home in his new city: a cheap apartment, a dangerous girlfriend, and all the friends, food, lovers and gin he can stomach.

But we all know how the Weimar era ended, don’t we.

This story cannot possibly have a happy ending.

And all that’s left is to sit back, clutch our pearls, and watch the historical train wreck unfold.

Continue reading Review: Cabaret (Lower Ossington Theatre) →

A Conversation with Edith Head brings the famous Hollywood designer to life at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times

Edith Head was one of the most prolific designers in midcentury Hollywood: her costumes appear in over a thousand films, and on several of the biggest stars of the era–Grace Kelly, Bette Davis, Natalie Wood, Barbara Stanwyck, and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor–who requested her by name. Over her 54-year career, she pinned, sketched, fitted and darted non-stop: ten hours a day, six days a week. For her efforts, she won more Academy Awards (eight) than any other woman to date, and made both friends and enemies among the Hollywood in-crowd.

She died in 1981, but for the last several years, Susan Claassen has been bringing her back to life in a one-woman tribute show, A Conversation with Edith Head, and by grace of CAFTCAD, Ms. Claassen has brought this production–which sold out at Edinburgh, broke records in New York, and has played for ages in cities all over the world–to Buddies in Bad Times.

Continue reading Review: A Conversation with Edith Head (Invisible Theatre / Buddies in Bad Times) →

Piety collides with extravagance in Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary playing at Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times

The trouble with seeing a show at Buddies in Bad Times is that the audience is often more interesting than the performances.

The woman with the frizzy grey hair, ranting about how her new girlfriend has been fucking her yoga instructor for years. (“I mean, Jesus Christ, I know dykes are meant to be incestuous, but SERIOUSLY?”) The bald man dishing about the atrocious denim jacket someone else is wearing. (“I thought we stopped wearing that shit in the ’90s.”) The confused-looking francophone woman, who exclaims–in an aside to her companion–“Mille tonnerre, y’a des tapettes partout!” (“Good lord, they’re all faggots!”)

There’s a quality of reunion in the place: of a community coming together. Rings to be kissed, clothing to be judged, old friends to greet, new friends to impress. The theatre–the putative purpose for the visit–is almost secondary by comparison.

But not tonight. Michel Tremblay’s Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary, freshly-resurrected after decades of obscurity, swallowed the room whole. Simultaneously warm, incisive and savage, his Manon embraces us, welcomes us, warms us, and invites us to confess our sins–our excesses, our assumptions, our identities –then leaves us as little more than vanquished children before the communion rail.

Continue reading Review: Manon, Sandra and the Virgin Mary (Pleaides Theatre / Buddies in Bad Times) →

The wild wild west meets well-executed improv in Sundown playing at Toronto’s Comedy Bar

Part of me doesn’t like calling Sundown (which plays the Comedy Bar) improv. It’s an improvised show, set in the classic Old West (gunslingers! sheriffs! snake-oil salesmen!), but then it twists. Rather than a string of vignettes, you get a whole, coherent, singular story from start to finish, with a busload of recurring characters, callbacks and brick jokes to reward your attention. And it’s all accompanied live by Devon Hyland, who conjures up chain gangs, dust storms, disastrous craft fairs and water-tower fistfights using only a guitar.

In short, this is improv plus: improv framed around a lengthy, meaty story; improv with a cast who know how to build and develop, rather than just go for easy laughs; improv which feels like somewhere, off in the wings, there’s a director whispering cues and instructions to the performers. And the effect is delicious.

Continue reading Review: Sundown (Bad Dog / Sex T-Rex) →