Apparently Kylie Jenner is one of those people who is famous for being famous which is usually a guarantee that I’ve never heard of him/her/they. But she’s famous enough to have inspired Jasmine Lee-Jones use her as a hook for a play; Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, that opened in the Studi Tneatre at Crow’s on Thursday night in a co-production between Crow’s and Obsidian Theatre.
Season announcements for theatre companies for 2024/25 are coming out fast and one notable thing is that a number of shows from Crow’s Theatre have been picked up by other companies. Both Pierre, Natasha and the Great Comet of 1812 and Fifteen Dogs have been picked up by Mirvish (as Uncle Vanya was this season). Soulpepper have picked up The Master Plan which will also be seen in Hamilton. I’ve linked to my reviews which are enthusiastic about all except Pierre, Natasha. That was a huge hit, especially with people who like Broadway musicals more than I do and, as the prologue warns, it wasn’t written for opera fans who have read War and Peace three times so my views should be viewed through that lens.
shaniqua in abstraction is a one woman show written and performed by bahia watson that deals with her search for identity as a (light skinned) Black woman in Canada. It starts with a casting call and works outwards from there. She sings, she dances, she runs on the spot, She interviews characters who aren’t there and gets caught up in banal daytime TV shows. If you can have a kaleidoscope in black and white it’s a kaleidoscope of experiences.
Here are some upcoming shows for April:
Music
Mohammd Yaghoubi’s Earworm, currently playing in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s, is a hard hitting story of what the Islamic Revolution has meant for Iranian women. Unfortunately it hangs onto to more ideas than the narrative can comfortably support which diffuses the impact.
Here’s a round up of February shows not previously mentioned; mostly straight theatre.
Here’s a look at the start of 2024 in Toronto.
On the 7th and the 9th OPUS chamber music, who feature some of Canada’s best young chamber musicians, have a pair of concerts. The first is at Trinity St. Paul’s and features music by Rebecca Clarke, Leo Weiner, Anton Webern and Robert Schumann. The second is at the Arts and Letters Club and includes music by Tcherepini, Klein, Wegener and Beethoven.
Seven years ago Tapestry Opera premiered Gareth Williams and Anna Chatterton’s Rocking Horse Winner at the Berkeley Street Theatre. Last night they opened an eight show re-run at Crow’s Theatre, once again directed by Michael Mori. There are lots of similarities and a some differences between the productions and I’m going to concentrate on the latter so if you aren’t familiar with the piece you might want to read my 2016 review.
Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning opened last night in a production by the Howland Company in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s. This is a play about a group of people who have assembled in the wilds of Wyoming for the inauguration of a new President at a small, extremely conservative, Catholic university. All of them, to greater or lesser extent, buy into the mix of ideas; an essentially pre-Vatican II Catholicism, traditional American Conservatism rooted in an idea of “Western Civilization:” and a kind of neo-Spartan survivalism, taught at the university in question. The play is a long (over two hours without a break) conversation between these characters about ideas and values. I strongly suspect these ideas and values are not shared by the author or the director (Philip Akin). but they are treated in the play on their own terms with no attempt at satire or parody. I don’t share those values either but I shall try in this review to keep my own feelings out of it as well.
Perceptual Archaeology (or How to Travel Blind), which stars Alex Bulmer assisted by Enzo Massara, is a show about blindness and coping with it. It opened in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s last night. Going to see it involved confronting my worst nightmare and so I sat near the door in case needed to escape (thanks Crow’s). So what’s it about and how does it work?
operaramblings 