Tag Archives: theatre passe muraille

Parélios is an ethereally gorgeous journey to nowhere

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Parélios; music by Cecilia Livingston, words by Duncan McFarlane, opened at Theatre Passe Muraille on Friday as part of Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival. It’s an intensely cerebral and very, very beautiful work but it’s unrelenting and quite dark. Basically a group of refugees; perhaps fleeing some environmental catastrophe, are on a journey to who knows where. They have survived the winter but the summer brings no real relief. It’s a bit like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road but vastly more intellectual and poetic.

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Enjoyable Puccini double bill opens Opera 5’s Toronto Opera Festival

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Opera 5 opened the Toronto Opera festival on Wednesday at Theatre Passe Muraille with a Puccini double bill; the rarely seen Suor Angelica and perennial crowd pleaser Gianni Schicchi. Both were presented fully staged in productions by Jessica Derventzis with accompaniment by a chamber ensemble (string quartet, bass, harp, piano) conducted by Evan Mitchell.

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Karma with a twist

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Karma, by Aksam Alyousef, is the latest in what seems to be a genre of plays about second generation Canadians or people who came to Canada at a very young age needing to return to their ancestral homeland to discover/resolve some mystery.  See, for. example, The Green Line at Buddies last year.

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Opera 5’s 2026 Toronto Opera Festival

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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

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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.

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May 2025

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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).

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February 2025

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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

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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

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Reminiscencia

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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

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