SANDSPRITE: TWO ACTS, NO AND YES
I’m a 74-year-old gay man, so many of the terms of Peter Zednik’s new play Sandsprite are familiar to me. Sandsprite is about the potential rekindling of a romance between two old gay men. Although they were lovers in small-town Ontario when they were 16, Si has spent...
JORDAN: GRATITUDE
I have nothing but gratitude for Geordie Theatre’s production of playwright Yvette Nolan’s Jordan. Not too far into this performance, I asked myself if I’d be happy about my grandchildren, especially the Indigenous ones, attending this production, and the answer was...
DRACULA: A COMEDY OF TERRORS – I’D RATHER BE VACUUMING
The actors were clearly having fun and, gauging by the laughter the night I was at the show, lots of people in the audience were enjoying themselves. I'm not here to yuck anybody's yum, but my personal reaction is that I was bored. So bored. I would rather have been...
EPIGONE: THE PLEASURES OF DISRUPTED REALITY
I loved being in it. Kevin Kerr’s play is so unpredictable — narratively and stylistically — I never knew what was going to happen. And, working with the show’s designers, director Jonathon Young’s mounting of the piece is so immersive that watching it is like being...
NUNCRACKERS: FIZZLES
The material is irredeemably weak. Let’s zoom out for a minute. Nunsense, the musical revue that has spawned six sequels, including Nuncrackers, this Christmas-season variation, is thin at best. In Nunsense, a small group of nuns from the Little Sisters of Hoboken...
MARY JANE: EVERYWOMAN
Despite its subject matter, which might sound daunting, Mary Jane is not depressing. In fact, it’s often very funny. It’s so ambitious that it will open you up as a human being. And Mitch and Murray Productions’ presentation of the script does a superb job of...
BIG STUFF: YEP
This show is bigger than it looks and exactly as big as it feels. The set-up for Big Stuff is straightforward. Married comedians Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus tell us that, with the death of the last of their parents, they’ve found themselves with a lot of things....
TIME STANDS STILL: AND IT DID, OFTEN (IN A GOOD WAY)
As I was watching Act 1 of Curious Cats Theatre Collective’s production of Time Stands Still, my gratitude for the show was so intense it almost moved me to tears. I had more difficulty with David Margulies’s script in Act 2 but believe me when I tell you that this...
SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE: YOU DESERVE THIS GIFT
The first act of this production of Sunday in the Park with George is transcendent. Truly. I have never been so moved by such a subtle combination of aesthetic pleasure and emotional resonance. To get a grip on what I’m trying to say here: there are plot shifts as we...
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