The attraction of the In the Soil Arts Festival is the valuable exposure it provides for local artists and collectives. This weekend, St.Catharines’ very own Twitches & Itches theatre company graces the Robertson Hall stage at the First Ontario Performing Arts Centre for the first time with their new adaptation (by the…
Simon (Devin Mackinnon) and Jake (Edmund Stapleton). Photos by Barsin Aghajan. Hannah Anderson writes: Laughing and learning – what more could you want from a children’s show? These are just two things that you will do while watching Carousel Players’ Spelling 2-5-5, directed by Jessica Carmichael, which played in Robe…
Johnathan Clancy writes: Four little girls dare each other to enter the home of a deranged, reality-bending clown. What could go possibly wrong? Such is the premise of the big budget recital that is Zacada Circus School/Zacada Entertainment’s Circus Labyrinth, which offers a wealth of impressive moments of spectacle. T…
This review has been written in the context of the 2015-2016 Brock University Department of Dramatic Arts’ Theatre Criticism course. You can read another point of view on this production here. Peter Hinton’s 2015 Shaw Festival production of Pygmalion casts a new light on a classic script by festival namesake George Be…
The November Ticket: there’s something gloomily appropriate about the title the Theatre Centre has given its mini-season, co-presented with Why Not Theatre, surface/underground, and Butcher’s Block Collective. Seeing the season’s three plays is a thoroughly sobering experience, as chilly and raw as the skin on my face…
The title Love + Hate sums up my feelings towards the brightly costumed but darkly delivered doomsday pop-musical at SummerWorks this season. Performing in the Factory Theatre Mainspace, The PepTides deliver their upbeat take on what is wrong with humanity in the form of a five-part harmony interspersed with quick, qu…
Is Shrödinger’s rapist still a rapist if the box hasn’t been opened yet? That’s the question the red light district is looking to answer in their updated take on Heinrich von Kleist’s 19th Century short story, the marquise of o-. Playing in the Factory Theatre Mainspace during Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival, marquise i…
Immersion at its best. That Syncing Feeling features two outstanding, stand-alone “experiments” that link strangers together with the use of text messaging, probing the nature of technology and how it’s affected our interactions as human beings. Outside the March Theatre Company showcases Tethered Together by Simon Blo…
Tough Guy Mountain needs an overhaul in order to become the innovative company it wants to be. Self-titled, Tough Guy Mountain: A Play by Iain Soder is about a strange and eccentric branding company that manages premium quality brands for various companies. The audience follows Lisa’s (Jessica Brown’s) first day as an…
What happens when the uncertain future does not comply with our ideal way of living? Eda Holmes, director of The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures at the Shaw Festival this season, tackles this and other questions in Tony Kushner’s four-hour epic. IHO is a riveting…
