TORONTO THEATER REVIEWS

Choosing to attend asses.masses at The Theatre Centre is a big commitment to an intriguing premise. The show, a collaboratively-played video game with a sweeping narrative about a donkey revolution, takes at bare minimum seven hours. It's a long ass show. But despite its outward silliness, with its ...

Spaciousness welcomes the audience to experience Toronto’s historic Fort York in a unique and interactive way. Actors portray fictional yet historically accurate characters of everyday people immediately affected by the War of 1812. Spaciousness asks the audience to consider the ramifications of c...

Unearthing a hidden gem is always intriguing- whether it be a true fossil, pirates booty, discarded musical manuscript, or perhaps a virtually unknown play. The Shaw Festival is the lucky producer who gets to produce a never before seen mystery by the celebrated author Edith Wharton. For the first t...

This year, the Fringe Festival returned more than half a million dollars to its talented, hardworking artists. Toronto Fringe may be over, but other festivals aren't! Our critic saw 59 shows in this year's festival. Here are some of her final comments as we look forward to Fringe 2024....

In a small, intimate office space near Queen and Dufferin, Riot King’s production of one of Tennessee Williams’ lesser-performed plays, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, feels like you’ve been invited into someone’s Southern Gothic living room....

A good story often bears repeating. Such is the case in Tom Stoppard's ON THE RAZZLE, currently playing on the Royal George stage of the Shaw Festival. It's storied provenance has beginnings dated back to the 1842 play  'Einen Jux will er sich machen'  by Johann Nestroy....

The  perennial festival favorite BLITHE SPIRIT is making a welcome to return to the Shaw Festival stage after 30 years. The result is a breezy romp that is sure to delight, thanks to the fine casting showcasing some of the company's best players....

In asking the persistent questions of how much of what we consider love, the personality, and even the soul is of our own making, and how much is just chemical, Mitchell Cushman’s searing production immediately gets under your skin, and it’s no placebo....

Before heading to Oshawa’s Regent Theatre for Mansfield Entertainment’s SPONGEBOB: THE MUSICAL, I had never seen a single episode of the cartoon series featuring the ubiquitous bright yellow sea creature with square pants that lives in a pineapple under the sea. It didn’t matter; the candy-col...

Reviews of Fatal Charade, Levels: The Play, Danielle Tea's Infernal Latte, Mail Ordered, All That Remains, and B-Max and the Re-Revolution at the Toronto Fringe Festival...

Reviews of Frankenstein(esque), Paz, Featherhead, Our Little Secret, All of Our Parents are Asian, and Constellation Prize at the Toronto Fringe Festival...

Four years after its Broadway premiere, Anaïs Mitchell’s Tony-winning musical HADESTOWN, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, has finally made its way down to Toronto. With a touring crew of powerhouses, both in the cast and in the band (led by Eric Kang), the retelling of Orpheus and E...

Reviews of BUNNY!, MAGGIE CHUN'S FIRST LOVE AND LAST WEDDING, and THE FAMILY CROW...

Reviews of THE FOURTH R, HERMAPHRODITUS, and HYMNS AND HEARSE...

Reviews of The Life Between Us, JUNE, Corporate Finch, The Woman Who Ate Falafel, and Ms. Titaverse #FringeTO...

It’s hard to be disabled in the world of the performing arts. Hours can be punishing, physical expectations are high, and remuneration is low. This is the provenance of CripCab, a new performance showcase that premiered at Buddies in Bad Times theatre. CripCab is an attempt to expand much needed a...

What did our critic think of X (DIX) at Streetcar Crowsnest?...

The joy of theatre is the same as that of travel: the ability to promote multiple ways of seeing and understanding, allowing us to look through another person’s eyes. PERCEPTUAL ARCHAEOLOGY gets us to think about the very way we perceive and move through the world, and, for the sighted, about the ...

Outside the March brings another innovative and interactive theatrical experience to Toronto audiences with No Save Points, playing at the Lighthouse ArtScape. Writer and creator Sébastien Heins had a rough time growing up with an ailing mother who suffered from a rare genetic disease that could ha...

'A Musical Fable.' This is the subtitle that author Arthur Laurents chose when writing his script for the blockbuster musical 'GYPSY.' And after a  delay of almost 3 years due to covid, the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake is presenting their version of this famed musical fable at the Festi...

It’s called KELLY V. KELLY, but Britta Johnson and Sara Farb’s surprisingly moving new 90-minute musical could be called CAGE V. CAGE. A mother and daughter, locked in a petty legal battle over the latter’s debauched behaviour in 1915 New York, are both looking for some sort of control over li...

The word Aalaapi is a term meaning “choosing silence to hear something beautiful,” and, as such, the show places much importance on the act of sitting and listening. Presented in three languages, it is a multisensory experience, including projections, recordings, throat-singing games, and the sm...

Rapp’s play, about a Yale creative writing professor facing down a terrible illness, and her relationship with a challenging student of whom she asks an impossible favour, has lived in my mind since I saw it. It’s a familiar story that goes in new directions; it’s mesmerizingly told, and acted...

What did our critic think of BOOM X at Streetcar Crowsnest? Born at the end of 1984, I'm a 'geriatric millennial,' only able to admire the sarcastic, too-cool-for-school slacker aesthetic of my slightly older peers from beyond the confines of artificial generational divides as I toil away at my side...

VACHES is a moo-sical that will have you moo-ving enthusiastically to its zany beat…even if the plot has more holes than Swiss cheese....