by Colin Thomas | Jun 25, 2022 | Review
Something is out of focus here. Maybe it’s me. Djanet Sears’s 1997 script Harlem Duet riffs on Othello — and it takes on a lot. The action of Sears’s play unfolds in three time periods. In the core narrative, we’re in Harlem in 1997. In the event that triggers the...
by Colin Thomas | Jun 24, 2022 | Review
Playwright Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime provides a rewarding and unique theatrical experience. How often do I get to say that? In the first scene, we meet Marjorie and her husband Walter. She’s 85. He might be 30. She has significant memory loss. If he hears...
by Colin Thomas | Jun 19, 2022 | Review
In Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, an urban street corner is also a slave plantation and Egypt — because Moses and Kitch, the two Black friends who are hanging out there, can’t leave. Nwandu is taking inspiration from both the Bible’s Book of Exodus and Samuel...
by Colin Thomas | Jun 18, 2022 | Review
Star power, baby! Stewart Adam McKensy, who plays Lola, the drag queen at the centre of the Arts Club’s mounting of Kinky Boots, has so much of it he’s like a constellation. And McKensy isn’t alone: there are many, many bright lights in director Barbara Tomasic’s...
by Colin Thomas | Jun 17, 2022 | Review
Bard on the Beach in general and director Scott Bellis in particular have a bad habit of obscuring Shakespearean texts by slathering on coarse physical comedy. In Bellis’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, there’s a lot of very enthusiastic slathering. Yes,...
