Tag Archives: theatre passe muraille

Opera 5’s 2026 Toronto Opera Festival

Posted on by
Reply

Following on from this year’s successful festival at Theatre Passe Muraille Opera 5 are once again running a sort of mini festival at that venue in June next year.  There will be two programmes.  There’s a Puccini double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi which, I’m guessing will be given with chamber ensemble accompaniment.  Rachel Krehm headlines as the theologically unsound nun while Gianni Schicchi has Greg Dahl in the title role.  Krisztina Szabó will appear in both operas as Princess Zia and Zita.  Jessica Derventzis directs and Evan Mitchell is in charge of matters musical.  This one runs June 3rd to 7th. Continue reading →

A Taste of Hong Kong

Posted on by
Reply

A Taste of Hong Kong is a one man show written by anonymous and performed by Derek Chan as Jackie Z.  Richard Wolfe directs.  It’s a sort of tragi-comedy about the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong from the British.  There’s a lot of audience interaction, especially at the beginning, so at first I thought it was going to be like a version of Monks but with fishballs instead of lentils but it gets much darker pretty fast.

Continue reading →

May 2025

Posted on by
Reply

Here are my top picks for May.

  • The Cunning Linguist opens at Factory Theatre on May 1st.  Previews are April 26th, 27th and 30th and it runs to May 11th.  A young queer Mexican woman, with her sidekick God, decides to move to Toronto…
  • Eugene Onegin in the Robert Carsen production opens May 2nd at the COC.  Runs until May 24th.
  • On May 3rd Confluence has a Teiya Kasahara curated show called Project T: Home Video (this is a change from the originally scheduled May 2nd/3rd show).

Continue reading →

February 2025

Posted on by
Reply

Before looking forward to next month I want to mention a couple of things this weekend that I haven’t previously noticed.  Saturday (Jan 25th) at 12.30pm there is a Met HD broadcast of new production of Aida with a pretty interesting looking cast.  Later, at 6pm there’s a rather special concert at the Arts and letters Club to celebrate the 100th birthday of Morry Kernerman (former assistant concertmaster of both the TSO and OSM).  The concert is presented by Canzona Chamber Players and wiull feature Trio Uchida-Crozman-Chiu. Continue reading →

Not a very funny apocalypse

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Kat Khan & Nancy McAlear- Henry Chung

Continue reading →

Reminiscencia

Posted on by
Reply

Reminiscencia is a performance piece created during lockdown by Chilean playwright Malicho Vaca Valenzuela.  Valanzuela is the sole live performer and from his desk on stage he taskes us through series of scenes and themes using AV material on his laptop projected onto a giant screen.  It’s ultimately about memory.  How we create a footprint in history and how that does and doesn’t endure.  His examples are all taken from his home town of Santiago de Chile.

reminiscencia

Continue reading →

Slug Meal

Posted on by
Reply

Slug Meal by Phil LatourSlug Meal, part of Summerworks, is a one woman show presented by Camille Huang at Theatre Passe Muraille.  It’s a sort of dance X performance art piece inspired by unfortunate childhood memories of her mother’s eggplant dish, Western ideas of immigrant food and the idea of “dirt” as “matter out of place”

The highly athletic Huang performs an hour long routine, occasionally talking to herself in (I guess) Chinese and accompanied by a soundtrack that ranges from body noises to a kind of Chinese muzak.  Along the way she: Continue reading →

McGill interns Turn the Screw

Posted on by
Reply

The second performance of Opera 5’s production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw on Thursday night was sung by the “apprentice” cast drawn from Opera McGill.  Curiously, it was an all female cast with women singing both Miles and Peter Quint.

Opera 5, The Turn of the Screw, Emily Ding Photography (Patricia Yates_ Peter Quint, Bri Jones_ Miss Jessel)

Continue reading →

A cunning Turn of the Screw

Posted on by
Reply

It’s always been a bit of a mystery to me why Britten’s chamber operas are not done more often by smaller opera companies.  They use a modest orchestra (13 players for The Turn of the Screw), have equally modest sized casts, no chorus and they are in English.  They offer the chance to perform a work as written at much lower cost than grand opera and without the compromises inherent in downscaling works written on a larger scale.

Opera 5, The Turn of the Screw, Emily Ding Photography (Asitha Tennekoon_ Peter Quint_Prologue)

Continue reading →