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.
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.
operaramblings 