Evil Dead: The Musical is everything you want it to be: blood, zombies, horny teens, and more, at Toronto’s Randolph Theatre

Let’s be frank: you already know everything you need to know about Evil Dead: The Musical. (Playing at the Randolph)

If you like the idea of a campy musical about zombies and horny teenagers and chainsaw violence, you’ve probably already bought about six tickets. And you should! This show will deliver on all your expectations, and you’ll have an amazing time.

And if you don’t, you’re already sprinting in the opposite direction. And you should! This show’s every inch as campy and (comically) violent as you’ve been told. If that’s not your cup of tea, stay far, far away from the Randolph.

I think it’s highly unlikely that there’s anyone between these extremes: this is a love-it-or-not sort of show. But if you are on the fence, let me nudge you off.

Continue reading Review: Evil Dead: The Musical (Starvox Entertainment) →

Vampires, goths and Jews in Kat Sandler’s Halloween-themed play Sucker at Toronto’s Storefront Theatre

Sucker (at the Storefront) is presented as a Halloween entertainment–and coming away from it afterwards, this is an extremely apt description.

There’s blood. Lots and lots of blood. People die excruciating, humiliating deaths. There are vampires and occultists and murderers and attorneys. The story is warped and twisted, and–as with all good haunted houses–there’s a damned good scare right at the very end.

But, eventually, the party has to wind down. The lights come on, and suddenly, things crystallize. The creatures are constructed of makeup and papier maché; the blood comes from a gallon jug bought at a party store. Underneath all these gruesome masks are five very ordinary people pretending to be monsters.

At least, we hope they’re pretending.

Continue reading Review: Sucker (Blood, Sweat & Blood Collective) →

Stunning performances fill Soulpepper Theatre’s The Norman Conquests playing at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts

At first blush, The Norman Conquests (playing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts) would be easy to confuse with any number of tacky 1970s British sex farces;  the sort of play in which horny middle-aged men chase scantily-dressed women in and out of constantly-slamming doors while dodging various wives, ministers, tax inspectors, etc.

Ayckbourn’s script is a child of this genre: the philandering husband, the impotent cuckold, the ice queen and the frustrated virgin all make their mandatory appearances, complete with a furtive shag on a truly appalling hearthrug.

But while they’re filled to the brim with sex and raunch, bedroom farces lack intimacy: we laugh at the jiggle and wiggle and the slap and the tickle, but that’s as good as it gets. People over thirty having sex, haw-haw-haw.

What sets Conquests apart from its seamy brethren is in escaping this inevitable descent into laughing at middle-aged people fucking; in finding clever and innovative places to insert moments of insight, of love, of trust and of intimate feeling. Conquests is a clever, hilarious, unflinching and playful adventure through the shadows and crannies of adulthood, and more than lives up to its billing as one of Ayckbourn’s greatest–and most challenging–projects.

Put it in the hands of Soulpepper, and you know you’re in for a real treat.

Continue reading Review: The Norman Conquests (Soulpepper) →

Tavistock Art’s Tempo is a show full of jaw-dropping performances not to be missed at Toronto’s Storefront Theatre

Ibsen didn’t write Tempo (presently at the Storefront Theatre), so it was necessary for Michael Batistick to do the heavy lifting. And it’s a damn good thing he has.

Tempo is one of those marvellous plays that sneaks up behind you. On the surface, we’re watching a comic tragedy unfold: Jim, an unlovely drug rep, swings wildly from scene to scene, mood to mood, watching his life unravel before his eyes. And the train-wrecky aspect of this show is what draws an audience in.

We don’t feel pity for this guy. He’s quite possibly the most repulsive and atrocious manifestation of psychopathic greed this side of Glengarry Glen Ross, tolerable only because he’s so bad at exploiting others. This is a man so pathetic that he can’t even succeed at being a shitty human being.

Yet he’s the fulcrum over which this entire show flips. And flip, it does.

Continue reading Review: Tempo (Tavistock Arts) →

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, which played at Toronto’s Al Green Theatre, is a show with a lot of heart that is both frivolous and insightful

There’s something marvellous about small town spelling bees, and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (which played the Al Green Theatre) captures it beautifully.

Spelling, in the format used for the bee, is a useless skill: nobody over the age of 14 will ever be asked to stand up and spell a word in front of an audience. On the list of weird things we do to children, it ranks quite high. But in this middle-school gymnatorium (“THIS IS A BULLY-FREE ZONE!”, shouts the poster on the wall), nothing could possibly matter more. The lives of these students revolve around dictionaries and all-night drill sessions–and the bee itself, for this afternoon, may as well be the Thunderdome. Ten kids enter. One kid leaves.

Continue reading Review: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Easy Street Productions) →