Results tagged “berkeleystreettheatre”

Gossip no longer, culture vultures. We've finally got confirmation on CanStage's upcoming season. Like it or not, it looks like the rumours are true. As we reported before, the Bluma Appel Theatre's rather commercial lineup is entirely free of any Canadian-written shows, which has some folks in quite a tizzy. And as we suspected, CanStage is getting its CanCon through co-pros at the Berkeley Street Theatre. They're calling it The Berkeley Street Project, and it seems intended to supplement the Bluma's playing-it-safe season with "edgier, more provocative works." The first show, Wild Dogs (a co-production with Nightwood Theatre), is a stage adaptation of Helen Humphreys' eponymous novel. Up next, Studio 180 co-produces the Canadian premiere of Blackbird, a West End and off-Broadway hit by British (and consequently not Canadian) playwright David Harrower. The final co-production (with Necessary Angel) is the Toronto premiere of HARDSELL, a new work by Bigger Than Jesus team Daniel Brooks and Rick Miller. (Although, the only reason CanStage can claim "Toronto premiere" status is that the workshop presentation Brooks and Miller were going to present at Passe Muraille a month ago was cancelled due to illness.)

Palace of the End, Judith Thompson's most recent play, is not only her most political work, it is also her best. As most auditioning actors in this country have discovered, Thompson's greatest strength has always been her monologues, and in this piece, she uses that strength to its full advantage. In fact, she dispenses with character interaction altogether and breaks her show into three long monologues, each spoken by someone who has been greatly affected by the political situation in Iraq from Saddam's rise to power to the present. Interestingly, while Thompson has created the text for the show, she has not created fictional characters. Though they are not credited as such in the program, the following becomes clear: Maev Beaty's "American Soldier" is none other than Abu Ghraib's favourite dishonourable dischargee, Private Lynndie England; Julian Richings' "British Microbiologist and Weapons Inspector" is WMD whistle-blower and Thom Yorke muse David Kelly; Arsinée Khanjian's "Iraqi Mother" is the less notorious Nehrjas al-Saffarh, a woman who was tortured along with her children during Saddam's reign and died in the first Gulf War.

American playwright Tony Kushner is one of the most important playwrights of contemporary theatre. He also remains conspicuously under-produced in our fair city. His landmark play Angels in America (since adapted into a popular HBO miniseries) has received only one Toronto production in CanStage's 1996 season, noticeably absent from any season at Buddies. It's unsurprising then, in a way, that Mercury Stage's production of Homebody/Kabul at the Berkeley Street Theatre, a play that caused quite a stir in New York and London about six years ago is its Canadian premiere.

Canstage opened its new season at the Bluma Appel with a much-ballyhooed production of Of Mice and Men (scooping Stratford's 2007 season), which resulted in Torontoist's inbox becoming full of e-mails requesting that we audition our dogs for the show (we declined). Things recommenced rather more innocuously at the Berkeley Street Theatre with the world premiere of The Story of My Life, a self-labelled "small musical." The two-hander is all about friendship and death. Or something.

Ronnie Burkett has long been the patron saint of puppeteers - living proof that one can make a living by pulling strings. His marionettes are consistently beautiful, complex characters peering out of their carved faces, and his multi-faceted storytelling is always well-served by his theatrical ingenuity.

, which has its official opening tonight (we caught a preview yesterday). It's great to see Albee on Toronto's stages, and given the respect of a stellar cast. R.H. Thompson is great as Martin, a successful architect who, the week of his fiftieth birthday, admits to his best friend that he's been having an affair with a goat (the eponymous Sylvia) for the past six months. This news wreaks havoc on his relationship with his wife, Stevie but seems to bring him closer to his son, Billy, whose homosexuality Martin has been having difficulty dealing with (a fact that seems somewhat ironically hypocritical, given the circumstances).

Dear Theatre Dude,

Une oeuvre du dramaturge Michel Tremblay, Impératif Présent, est présenté du Théâtre Français de Toronto (TfT) du 5 au 15 mai.

Guy Mignault, directeur artistique du TfT affirme à l’Express de Toronto : «Le personnage du bourgeois gentilhomme, est une espèce de nouveau riche. Actuellement, c'est l'argent qui mène le monde. Ce bonhomme-là est en train de s'acheter une noblesse. Il est entrain de prendre un théâtre qui s'appelle Pantages et de l'appeler Canon. Il est en train de prendre un Skydome et de l'appeler Rogers Centre.»