Wayne Leung (1981-2019)
Wayne was the Managing Editor of Mooney on Theatre from 2012 - 2019 and will be sorely missed. His death from an apparent heart attack was a loss not just to Mooney on Theatre, but also to the Toronto Theatre Community at large. You can read our publisher Megan Mooney's tribute to him here here.
Wayne was a writer, editor and corporate communications professional who was thrilled to be a part of the Mooney on Theatre team. Wayne loved theatre ever since his aunt brought him to a production of Les Misérables at the tender age of ten . . . despite the fact that, at that age, the show’s plot was practically indiscernible and the battle scenes scared the bejeezus out of him. Wayne’s current list of likes ran the gamut from opera, ballet and Shakespeare to Broadway musicals, circus and Fringe theatre. Outside of the theatre Wayne’s interests included travel, technology and food.
Cirque Éloize brings a unique blend of circus and dance to the Toronto stage with Cirkopolis
Cirque Éloize is the other theatrical circus troupe from Quebec. A younger cousin to the juggernaut Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Éloize is known for creating more intimate shows staged in proscenium theatres. What Éloize may lack in scale and technical complexity they more than make up for in artistry. Evident in their show Cirkopolis, now being presented in Toronto by the Sony Centre and Canadian Stage, they bring a level of craftsmanship and attention to detail that surpasses that of their bigger, more famous peer. Continue reading Review: Cirque Éloize – Cirkopolis (Sony Centre for the Performing Arts/Canadian Stage)→
Mirvish presents a play about Queen Elizabeth II by the creator of Netflix’s The Crown, in Toronto
Writer Peter Morgan has built a career writing biographical scripts about Queen Elizabeth II, including the 2006 film The Queen and the current Netflix series The Crown. Morgan wrote his play The Audience between these two projects.
The title is a reference to the weekly private meeting or “audience” given by the Queen to the sitting British Prime Minister. The Audience details the Queen’s weekly audience with the PM from her ascension to the throne in 1952 through to 2016. Continue reading Review: The Audience (Mirvish)→
Each night of the Next Stage Theatre Festival , three Toronto theatre artists, Graham Isador, Helder Brum and Rhiannon Archer, will take over the Factory Theatre’s Antechamber and each will impart an outlandish tale. Two of them will be telling true stories from their lives and one will be telling a story that’s made up. The fun for the audience is in guessing which one is fiction. Hence, their new half-hour show Two Truths and a Lie.
Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston, members of the writing team behind some of the most-acclaimed musicals to come out of the Toronto Fringe in recent years (including Summerland and The Fence) bring the latest incarnation of Blood Ties, a darkly comedic musical the duo has been honing for several years, to the Next Stage Theatre Festival.
Keen-eyed observers may recall that the musical was featured as part of the storyline on season 2 of “Orphan Black,” the Toronto-based BBC America/Space cult hit science fiction thriller starring Tatiana Maslany. A musical about a bunch of friends tasked with cleaning up the bloody mess in a bathroom following a relative’s suicide on the eve of their friend’s wedding, Blood Ties is the kind of quirky dark comedy that has the potential to also achieve cult hit status some day but at this point I still think it needs some more work. Continue reading 2017 Next Stage Theatre Festival Review: Blood Ties (Edge of the Sky)→
Toronto’s Outside the March takes on love, sex, technology & the future in a new immersive show
Think back ten or fifteen years ago and remember what dating was like. Who could’ve predicted that today, we’d be able to use apps to swipe and match with dozens of people (whom we subsequently never message), or use geolocation to find someone to hook up with in a set radius, or snap and send nude photos of ourselves that disappear after they’re viewed.
Disruptive technologies have profoundly changed the sociological nature of relationships. Projecting forward, what might the nature of dating, love and relationships look like in the future? That’s the question that playwright Rosamund Small explores in her new play TomorrowLove™, currently being staged in an immersive, site-specific production in Toronto by Outside the March. Continue reading Review: TomorrowLove™ (Outside the March)→
Cirque Éloize brings a unique blend of circus and dance to the Toronto stage with Cirkopolis
Mirvish presents a play about Queen Elizabeth II by the creator of Netflix’s The Crown, in Toronto
Toronto’s Outside the March takes on love, sex, technology & the future in a new immersive show