Dennis Kucherawy - Page 2

One of the last times I heard Toronto singer-songwriter Stephanie Martin in concert, she brought down the house performing before more than 2,000 people at Toronto's lavish and vast Elgin Theatre at the venue's 100th anniversary celebration. With her customary charisma, she performed a duet as Josephine (I've long forgotten the guy) from the Canadian musical "Napoleon," co-written by her husband, lyricist Andrew Sabiston with composer Timothy Williams.

Toronto's best holiday family show is actually in Hamilton at Theatre Aquarius. It's Disney/Cameron Mackintosh's "Mary Poppins," featuring a stellar cast of Shaw, Stratford and Charlottetown Festival vets. It also stars Broadway vets award-winning Steven Sutcliffe and Chilina Kennedy as the beloved, magical nanny. This fabulous, fun-filled production runs until Dec. 28th.

Many people in Toronto's arts communities, especially theatre, are still grieving the loss of TheatreBooks after the venerable bookstore closed its doors forever this July after 39 years. Now, many are lost when needing scripts or monologues for auditions. And others feel the same who just love to read about the performing arts.

Did you attend Acting Up Stage Company's recent 'Uncovered-Billy Joel and Elton John' concerts? If not, you missed a sensational performance by Jackie Richardson. But fear not, you'll get another chance to experience our national treasure when she performs with some of our most accomplished musical theatre talents this Monday, Dec. 1st.

Following a triumphant, New York City debut earlier this month, the popular trio - comprised of three of Canada's best singer / musicians - returns to Toronto's Jazz Bistro for a special, three-night run.

Listening to Rita Carrey's debut CD Around Each Christmas Tree, it's obvious baby brother Jim, one of filmdom's greatest and most successful comic-actors, didn't get all the talent in the family. This is a wonderful, fun-filled celebration of seasonal classics with performances so infectious you are tempted to toss away your holiday stress and just sing along. The star capping this Christmas pine of musical pleasure is Rita's own, original song that gives the CD its title ... Around Each Christmas Tree. It's the rum in your egg nog with a catchy, pop-rock, maybe even country, melody and lovely lyrics celebrating the true meaning of our Yuletide season.

It's unlikely anyone leaving a performance of 'The Motherf**ker With the Hat' (MOFO) will be indifferent. That makes actor Juan Chioran happy. 'To be indifferent is the biggest crime in theatre,' he says on a day off from the popular show now playing at the new Coal Mine Theatre on the Danforth. He demands to be engaged, he adds, every time he attends a production.

Simply put, Juan Chioran, with his at times hilarious, at times heartbreaking, performance as Cousin Julio, is the reason to see the Toronto premiere of Stephen Adly Guirgis' 'The Mother f**ker with the Hat.' (MOFO).

Shove over, Jim Carrey. You better watch out, you better not cry. You better not pout I'm telling you why. Your vivacious big sister Rita Carrey is coming to town. She's arriving to claim her share of the spotlight and spread joy to the world with her Toronto singing debut 'Carry On' on Saturday, Nov. 15th at Cabbagetown's Flying Beaver Pubaret.

At the Shaw Festival in its record-breaking 2013 season, all performances of Tom Stoppard's 'Arcadia' sold-out before it opened. With its current revival engagement at Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre (with the original Niagara-on-the-Lake cast), many disappointed theatergoers will finally get their chance to enjoy this exceptional production of what is generally regarded as the playwright's most brilliant work... and his most moving.

On Tuesday, Nov. 18th, two weeks after Remembrance Day, Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox will present one of Canada's greatest ... and rarely seen anti-war movies - Robin Phillips' adaptation of Timothy Findley's The Wars, (a Canadian-West German co-production.) It won the 1978 Governor General's Prize for literature. Findley also wrote the screenplay.

In just over two weeks since she wowed crowds at Soulpepper's Global Cabaret, the great Jackie Richardson joins some of Canada's finest musical theatre talent to celebrate the ;music of Billy Joel and Elton John. Following last year's sold-out Sting concert, 'Uncovered: Billy Joel & Elton John,' this is Acting Up Stage Company's eighth annual concert dedicated to the musical catalogue of a pop star. And for the first time this year, the company has added a second concert to meet demand. The concert will take place Wednesday and Thursday Nov. 12th and 13th at Toronto's Koerner Hall in the Telus Centre for Performance and Learning, aka the Royal Conservatory of Music. Show time is 8 p.m.

Without a doubt, Soulpepper Theatre Company's Global Cabaret Festival is my favorite Toronto arts festival. It's like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get. Forrest Gump would dig it. Each year I'm tempted to bring my sleeping bag and just camp out for the weekend.

The award-winning one-man play 'The Art of Building a Bunker' now on at Factory Theatre Lab, is about a desperate outsider named Elvis Goldstein who is incapable of experiencing love and the consequences that follow. His namesake, of course, was the King of Rock n' Roll. This homunculus is the King of Pain. He is also a vicious bigot.

While reviewing What Makes a Man (WMAM), now playing at the Berkley Street Theatre, it's tempting to comment on what's not there, what could and should be there, rather than what is there. What is on display is a marvelous musical stage portrait of Charles Aznavour, the world renowned French singer/songwriter, actor and political activist/diplomat. A man of the world, he is capable of singing in five languages. One of the last surviving 'showmen,' he still is capable of filling the world's most prestigious concert halls. For example, a year ago he performed for the first time in 25 years at London's Royal Albert Hall. Demand was so great, a second concert was booked there for this past June.

'Helen Lawrence,' now playing at Toronto's Bluma Appel, theatre, is an entertaining, multi-media presentation of a 1940s film noir story hampered by a thin script by Chris Haddock (co-written with Stan Douglas.) During the first five minutes, you tend to be overwhelmed by the show's blue compositing technique in which the live action onstage is enhanced by its larger-than-life, black-and-white close-up projection on a scrim in front of the actors. But the technical ingenuity shortly wears off, and you're left with a complex plot, heavy on exposition and light on action and tension.