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.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from Oraculum at Buddies in Bad Times. I kew it featured a drag act and fortune telling but that was about it. On one level it’s a show about the relationship between a straight bimbo PR consultant; Kayleigh, and her gay male twink friend; Matt, who is hustling a product line called Gape. She’s about to get married and he’s doing all he can to undermine it including impersonating the on-line fortune teller she continually consults.
Erased; written and directed by Colleen Shirin MacPherson is currently running at Theatre Passe Muraille. It’s a surrealist black comedy about a post climate catastrophe capitalist autocracy. Unfortunately it doesn’t really hit the mark. To be fair, black comedy with a serious core is desperately difficult to do and about the only person I can think of who could bring off a successful treatment of this subject is Arnando Ianucci. This just isn’t in the ball park.
There was a certain amount of anticipatory buzz about Michael Ross Albert’s The Bidding War, directed by Paolo Santalucia, that opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night. Crow’s has built rather a reputation for punchy, darkly humorous, Toronto-centric plays. This time it’s basically a satire on the Toronto real estate market and the sharp practices of the real estate and property development industries and for the most part it hits the mark.
The Bee’s Knees is a new play with music, written and directed by Judy Reynolds, that opened at The Theatre Centre on Friday night. It’s set during and after WW1 and the main theme is women getting involved in politics in Canada and the often bizarre (by contemporary standards) opposition to that. It’s pure coincidence that it premiered a few days after the biggest setback for women’s rights in the western world in decades.
Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Case for the Existence of God, in a production directed by Ted Dykstra, opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday night. It’s a story about the somewhat unlikely friendship between two would be single fathers in a small town in Idaho. It’s mostly pretty sad but with some really funny moments. We can come back to the God thing.
Mark Leiren-Young’s Playing Shylock opened at Canadian Stage on Wednesday night. It’s a one man show featuring Canadian stage, film and TV icon Saul Rubinek and directed by the equally venerable Martin Kinch. And it’s back where it all started for both of them in what was then Toronto Free Theatre on Berkeley Street (once, appropriately enough, a gas works).
operaramblings 