SOUL: Toronto’s Elise Legrow, already well known locally as the livewire lead frontwoman for rock band Whale Tooth, has been steadily rising up the adult contemporary radio charts with her solo debut single “No Good Woman“, which is poised to crack the top 5 slot on Canadian charts. Legrow is performing her first Toronto solo [...]

Long Day’s Journey Into Night Young Centre for the Performing Arts (55 Mill Street) February 14 to March 31 $22–$68 The playwright’s personal history features prominently in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s landmark classic of American theatre. For Soulpepper’s production of the play, which opened February 23, there are multiple layers of history [...]

THEATRE: Last summer’s Fringe Festival hit, Kim’s Convenience, about a Korean quick stop corner store and the family that runs it, opened a second run last week to repeat rave reviews—including one from us. The first original production for Soulpepper Theatre, you’ll want to line up very early this evening if you want to snag [...]

FESTIVAL: The Young Centre and Soulpepper are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible with Word Festival, a weekend of readings and performances tied into the themes of the King James Bible and the works of Shakespeare. The festival opens proper this evening, but launched yesterday at 3 p.m. with a 76-hour-long continuous [...]

With Halloween comes all sorts of spooky spectacles and performances: haunted houses, risqué cabarets, and countless theme-party events. There are also plenty of theatre companies programming work in the spirit of the season—with spirits, perhaps—a mix of classic Halloween fare and new works. Few of these shows are happening in traditional theatres; many independent companies [...]

THEATRE: Soulpepper brings back their popular 2008 production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, opening tonight,  starring Albert Schultz as the slovenly Oscar and Diego Matamoros as the anal-retentive Oscar. All the original production’s poker pals are back—Schultz and Matamuros are joined by fellow founder Michael Hanrahan, associate artist Derek Boyes, and longtime Soulpepper favourites [...]

In today's Urban Planner: pen a note with other writers at the PAL-SAC meeting; be a gentleman (or lady) caller who drops in on Soulpepper's The Glass Menagerie; see local bands from the Reason for Hope compilation CD play live, in support of cancer research; and play bingo (and win prizes) among the oddballs at Bingo: the Show.

Diego Matamoros in The Aleph. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. The Aleph The black box theatre is bare—a curtain is draped across the back, and a lone, grey office chair sits idly in the middle. It’s only on-stage companion is Diego Matamoros, a man dressed plainly in brown slacks, a neutral jacket, and glasses, who [...]

Guillermo Verdecchia started chalking up playwriting awards over two decades ago; he earned his first Chalmers Award for i.d. in 1989, and went on to win three more (putting him in company with Michel Tremblay, George F. Walker, and David French)—one each with collaborators Daniel Brooks and Marcus Youssef (for The Noam Chomsky Lectures in [...]

Today in Toronto: a hands-on exploration of locavore fusion cooking, plus a couple of one-person plays about motherhood and omniscience.

Soulpepper Academy’s Gregory Prest is a bike courier with a secret, and Karen Rae straddles delightful and deranged in Window on Toronto. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann. It’s not often that a love poem is touching, romantic, hilarious, disturbing, sickening, eerie, fantastical, and just plain weird. All at once. Unless, of course, it’s a love [...]

In today's Urban Planner: images of, and new thoughts on alternatives to, oil pipelines in the Canadian wilderness at CONTACT; a new class of dancers, at TDT's Momentum 2011; Soulpepper introduces Guillermo Verdecchia's award-winning Fronteras Americanas to a new generation; and a new form of music from Ninja Funk Orchestra.