Back in July I saw a crazy clown show called Monks at the Fringe. It’s back playing at the Theatre Centre. It’s basically the same show with Veronica Hortigüela and Annie Luján playing a pair of delinquent Benedictines on their one day off every five years. TL:DR it’s hilariously mad.
Blind Dates is an hour long one woman show written and performed by Vivian Chong and directed by Marjorie Chan. It’s a kind of odyssey in which Chong explores aspects of living with blindness via her experiences with dating and dating apps.
It’s the rub that makes the difference, not the sauce. Or so we are told by Fancy’s stepfather and uncle who now runs the family BBQ restaurant somewhere far south of Elsinore in James ljames’ Fat Ham which opened on Wednesday at Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street. Director Philip Akin describes it as an “overlay” on a well known play by Shakespeare and that’s probably as good a way of looking at it as any.
Duncan Macmillan’s play People, Places and Things opened last night at Coal Mine Theatre. It premiered in London in 2015 and has now been adapted to relocate the setting to Toronto and to customize the movement elements to the small, intimate space at Coal Mine. It’s a play about addiction, addiction treatment, theatre and how we construct and cope with “reality” (whatever that is). It’s long, intense, disturbing and, ultimately, very thought provoking.
After five seasons of TV shows it’s easy to forget that Kim’s Convenience started life as a play at the Toronto Fringe in 2011. It’s now playing in it’s original stage form at Soulpepper in a production directed by Weyni Mengesha and with playwright Ins Choi this time playing the Appa (father) rather than the son Jung.
Edward Albee’s 1962 classic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? opened at Canadian Stage on Thursday evening in a production directed by Brendan Healy. It’s a long (not far short of 3.5 hours with two short intervals) and complex play; heavily dependent on quick-fire dialogue and with occasional outbreaks of absurdism. An older academic couple invite the “new man” and his wife back for drinks after a faculty party at a small New England college. George, a historian of modest distinction, is married to Martha, the daughter of the college president. The newcomers are Nick, a biologist, and his wife Honey.
Roland Schimmelpfennig’s play Winter Solstice in an English translation by David Tushingham opened at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre on Friday night. It’s directed by Alan Dilworth of Necessary Angel theatre Company in collaboration with Birdland Theatre and Canadian Stage.
Liz Appel’s play Wights was premiered at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night in a production directed by Chris Abraham. It’s a complex satire on Academia and academic relationships with a touch of comedy/horror; Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf with just a smidgeon of Shawn of the Dead. And it takes place in the immediate run up to the 2024 US Presidential Election. with all the hopes and fears for the future packed into that.
Adam Paolozza’s Last Landscape opened at Buddies in Bad Times on Tuesday night. It’s an experimental piece about environmental collapse. It’s not exactly a “play”. There are no words. What there are are puppets, movement and sound.
Michael Healey’s The Master Plan is currently playing in a collaboration between Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper at the Michael Young Theatre. It’s basically the same production and mostly the same cast and creative team as at Crow’s last year so I’ll not repeat everything I said in my rather long review of opening night at Crow’s. There are two cast changes; Rose Napoli comes in as Kristina Verner and others and playwright Michael Healey replaces Peter Fernandes (who is off at Crow’s playing, appropriately enough, a dodgy real estate broker) as the Tree etc. It’s still staged, very effectively, in the round and the lighting and projections haven’t changed. What I want to concentrate on is how well does the piece stack up on a second viewing and in the light of other stuff that has happened/is happening in Ontario.
operaramblings 