Always a theatre lover Sam realized in middle age that there's more to Toronto theatre than just mainstream and is now in love with one person shows, adores festivals, and quirky venues make her day.
I wish I’d taken someone with me to see Good People Bad Things – playing at Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace as part of SummerWorks. I really wanted to talk about the play and about some of the questions it raised but I was alone and had to make do with interior dialogue.
Daniel Thau-Eleff wrote and performed Good People Bad Things, a monologue that isn’t nearly as dark and heavy as you might expect given that it deals with “the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and his encounter with a couple whose relationship becomes abusive.”
7 Important Things – part of SummerWorks – opened last night at Theatre Passe Muraille. Opening nights can be tricky. Sometimes the cast isn’t quite as comfortable with the piece as they will be later on. The audience can sometimes be loaded with friends and family and that can provide an immediate bias.
Last night, as I was waiting for the show to begin, I noticed how many people in the audience knew each other and – from my limited eavesdropping – seemed to be theatre people. I never know whether that makes a tougher audience or an easier audience.
The Ballad of Weedy Peetstraw – playing at Theatre Passe Muraille as part of SummerWorks – is a bluegrass opera by Peter Anderson and John Millard. As the show opened there were 4 people on stage and the theatre was filled with beautiful singing. I assumed that it was recorded because, even though it had the feeling of live singing, the sound was so big I couldn’t imagine that there were enough people left in the cast to make it.
Alzheimer That Ends Heimer – part of SummerWorks – opened last night at Factory Theatre and played to an audience about 30 years older than the typical SummerWorks audience. We have aging parents, some of them demented, and are struggling to find the ” lighter side of dementia” promised in the SummerWorks’ program blurb.
Writer Jay Teitel narrates the show which is based on his experience with his father’s Alzheimer’s. The show is billed as a musical but I think that’s a bit misleading. There’s a show within a show that has a few musical numbers but don’t expect catchy songs about dementia.
There are lots of different reasons to pick a show to see at a theatre festival like SummerWorks. I decided to see How to Disappear Completely because I was already seeing something else at Factory Theatre on Thursday and I didn’t want to have to move from one theatre to another. (I didn’t say they were all great reasons…)
7 Important Things
Alzheimer That Ends Heimer