Gruesome Playground Injuries The Theatre Centre (1087 Queen Street West) May 2 to 13, Tuesdays to Sundays at 7:30 p.m., weekend matinees at 1:30 p.m. $20–$30 We’ve all had our scrapes and bruises from the playground, and chances are the words we used to describe them at the time were “gr-ooooss” or “awwwesome.” But imagine [...]

You Can’t Take It With You Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street) April 26–June 21, various dates and times $22–$68 The 2010s have Modern Family, just as the 1990s had Full House and Family Matters. All of those TV shows are comedies that celebrate the quirks and unbreakable bonds within families. In [...]

The Game of Love and Chance Bluma Appel Theatre (27 Front Street East) April 16 to May 12 Mondays to Saturdays at 8 p.m., Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m., Saturdays at 2 p.m. $24 to $99 The Game of Love and Chance is a 300-year-old farce made up of arranged marriages, mistaken identities, class dynamics, entrances [...]

Prisoner of Tehran Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Avenue) April 10–28, Tuesdays–Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. PWYC–$35 In rare cases, a piece of non-fiction can be more dramatic than an invented story. When Marina Nemat published her memoir, Prisoner of Tehran, in 2007, Canada discovered one such work. Nemat’s life story [...]

My Granny the Goldfish Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst Street) March 17 to April 15 PWYC to $40 The titular Granny in novelist and playwright Inosh Irani’s My Granny the Goldfish is a wise-cracking, tough-loving, tango-dancing senior from Bombay who is goldfish-like only in the way she drinks. If that sounds like a character from an [...]

Dying Hard Tarragon Theatre Extraspace (30 Bridgman Avenue) March 13 to 18, Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m., weekend matinees at 2:30 p.m. $20 to $25 The only thing hotter than the weather right now in Toronto seems to be documentary theatre. Okay, that’s a stretch, but still, it’s experiencing quite a moment in the [...]

The Happy Woman Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs (26 Berkeley Street) March 5–24; Monday–Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. $40 The Happy Woman, which debuted last week at the Berkeley Street Theatre, is as hard to stomach as it is easy to relate to. The new play, Nightwood Theatre’s latest production, is loaded [...]

The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman Avenue) March 7 to April 8 Tuesday–Saturday, 8 p.m.; Saturday (March 10, 17, and 24 only) and Sunday 2:30 p.m. $21 to $51 Much like Dr. Seuss stories, Disney films, and early ’90s pop songs, old folktales are pieces of childhood that [...]

Seeds Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street) February 18 to March 10; Monday to Saturday at 8 p.m., Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. $30 to $35 There are countless ways to interpret the headlines of the day: facts to weigh, context to understand, and, sometimes, sides to take. Documentary theatre is an [...]

Beckett: Feck It! Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley Street) February 17–25, Tuesday to Saturday at 8 p.m., and Saturday matinee at 2 p.m. $22 to $49 One of the first lessons we all learned as a wee toddler was “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well, the same must go for plays with immediately [...]

pomme is french for apple The Tranzac (292 Brunswick Avenue) February 13 to 18 $20 First, a lesson in vernacular: technically, yes, “pomme” is the French translation of the tree-born fruit well-suited for pies, cider, and bobbing—the apple. But its heterograph “pum,” short for “pum pum,” has quite an alternative meaning. Among West Indian cultures, [...]

Potted Potter: The Unauthorised Harry Experience—A Parody by Dan and Jeff Panasonic Theatre (651 Yonge Street) February 11 to March 25 $29.95 to $99.75 The final book in the series was published four-and-a-half years ago, and the last of eight movies hit theatres this past July, and so it seemed the Harry Potter saga was [...]