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......

Leave it to CanStage to somehow, in the midst of extreme internal upheaval what is maybe their darkest financial hour, be simultaneously running two of their strongest shows by far in recent memory. In fact, Palace of the End (which closes tomorrow night) and The Clean House (which runs until March 8) aren't just good shows for CanStage, they would be amazing shows for anywhere. Hopefully, they can win the audiences they deserve, but......

Reg Hartt, everyone's favourite dude with a movie theatre in his basement, is promoting the new(ish) film version of off-Broadway tittilator Naked Boys Singing by screening a mini Queer Film Festival at the Cineforum over the next few weeks. Each Thursday night for the next four weeks, he'll screen Naked Boys (which is exactly what it sounds like) at 9, with a different gay movie as a lead-in at 7. While the main attraction......

Toronto seems to get its annual dose of legendary outsider filmmaker John Waters around this time. A couple of years back he was hosting the TIFF gala of his latest film, A Dirty Shame, then in late 2006, he could be found gallivanting around Roncesvalles overseeing the transformation—for good or ill—of his 1988 comedy, Hairspray, into this year's hit family-friendly musical starring John Travolta (based more on the 2002 Broadway remake than on its original......

As Torontoist reported yesterday, the Hummingbird Centre is changing its name to the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, marking the second change in corporate naming rights during the venue's half-century existence. Support of the site has ranged from a philanthropic brewer (O'Keefe Brewing head E.P. Taylor) to a multinational media company. As today's ad promised, Yonge and Front has seen a wide range of performances since the O'Keefe Centre officially rolled out the......

Last night, the seats of Harbourfront Centre's studio theatre were packed with a mix of middle-aged art aficionados and well-coiffed hip, young homos all dying to see Francesco Vezzoli give a lecture and screen his notorious Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's Caligula. Vezzoli is an Italian artist known for his work in video and embroidery (yes, embroidery) who set the art world ablaze a couple of years ago with his re-imagining of the......

We don't know about where you are, but it seems like spring can't decide whether or not to happen. Some days are warm, some days are cold, and sometimes you aren't sure which. Baseball may have started up (and soccer/football winding down) but it still seems cold out there. Unless it's not. Anyway, onto the -ists. Austinist happily anticipated fall's Austin City Limits, even though they're not fully recovered from South By Southwest. In other......

Almost 200 men auditioned to be the new faces of Harlequin romance novels at a Toronto casting house on Saturday. Studies showed that Harlequin's main readership (female in their mid-40's) were "upset when slight, young cover models clashed with the brawny, mature heroes described within [the books themselves]." Canada's Next Top Harlequin Cover Model, anyone? Hosted by Fabio? Quebec began its provincial elections this morning. Who's gonna win? Nobody knows! CSIS has decreed that "Islamic"......

Toronto theatre crowds like to think of themselves as pretty brainy; quick to criticize stiff performances and dead box office sales, but if you're of the lowbrow type, then wait no morgue: Evil Dead: The Musical has risen again for another run—or slow walk—at the Diesel Playhouse. When it opened originally in our fair city, the musical (co-directed by Canada's Christopher Bond and Tony Award-winner and Buffy alum Hinton Battle) was expected to be......

Yesterday's Star had an interesting article that shed some light on the inner workings of Tourism Toronto, now famous for its embarrassing (and perhaps plagiarized) Toronto Unlimited campaign. Especially of interest to us was the contrast between New York's and Toronto's approaches to attracting visitors with external offices:NYC & Company spokesperson Chris Heywood said the Toronto office will mainly promote leisure travel. But Andrew Weir, vice-president of Tourism Toronto, said his agency finds external......

Ah, "beautiful music." A term rarely attached to current radio formats, this middle-of-the-road mix was the mainstay of many powerhouse radio stations in the 1970s. Two versions of the format tended to exist: • Stations that played mainly light instrumentals, covers of popular tunes, Mantovani and Percy Faith, all to be used as inoffensive background music. • Stations that mixed these tunes with Broadway selections, crooners, lighter pop acts and heavy servings of news, sports,......

Tobogganing: Canada's deadliest backyard winter pastime. Vaughan Councillor Sandra Yeung Racco is campaigning for a helmet law in Ontario to prevent sled-related injuries amongst children with a need for speed. Okay, but quid pro quo, Mom and Dad. If you want us to wear safety gear while tobogganing, I want a more bad-ass sled. Like a double-length GT Snow Racer...with flamethrowers. "Stéphane Dion is not a leader": The Conservatives release an ad campaign attacking......

Once a month Torontoist would like to encourage you to drag yourself off the couch and across the room to that nice, comfy swivel chair in front of your computer, to experience something from the wonderful world of streaming. Anyone who's visited YouTube or eBaum's World knows how gratifying watching two Asian kids lipsynch to Jessica Simpson can be! So in the interest of expanding your horizons (or at least giving you some way to......

Sure, we all know John Travolta's in town after the notorious man-kissing episode at Hamilton Airport two weeks ago. But he's not here for the film fest. Instead, he joins Queen Latifah, Christopher Walken, Amanda Bynes, and Michelle Pfeiffer as part of the cast of Hairspray, a 2007 remake of the 2002 Broadway musical remake of the original 1988 film comedy. (Whew! We recycle the past quickly, don't we?) Torontoist went to see the......

After all that Torontoist has heard about Welcome To Eden, Population 2 (a divine musical), I knew I was in for a treat. With so many layers in the story of Eden, so much that can be explored. What better place to do it than the Fr!nge Festival, a venue to break boundaries and experiment with theatre? The production started off pretty good. How good? Very good. Adam (brilliantly played by Mark Allan) appears......

What began in Toronto as a bachelor party gift, then a Fringe Festival production, then a Mirvish produced play several years ago, has turned into a Broadway hit! Leading the pack, it garnished thirteen Tony nominations, the most of any play this year. The New York Post even predicted it as the big winner. Well, after last night's Diamond Tony Award ceremony, Toronto born The Drowsy Chaperone came home with five awards! Best Book......

Torontoist would like to extend our congratulations to the creative team of The Drowsy Chaperone, which just garnered a truckload of Tony Award nominations. The Drowsy Chaperone was written by the hilarious Torontonian team of Lisa Lambert, Greg Morrisson, Bob Martin and Don McKeller. The show got its start at the little old Toronto Fringe Festival back in the day, followed closely by a run at Theatre Passe Muraille, and it has been growing ever......

Frank over at OMG Blog passed along this ludicrous looking poster that he spotted along Queen West. It's yet another condo development with yet another silly marketing slogan, this time the Bohemian Embassy. Frank goes on to critique the co-option of the word bohemian by various things including Broadway musicals, and now really really inept condo marketers. David Brooks invented a word to describe the trend of the moneyed class aping poor, edgy, artist......

One of Toronto's larger theatres will soon be dominated by singing, dancing knights, killer Rabbits and farting Frenchmen. Yep, Spamalot will be making a quick jaunt up to Toronto sometime next year as part of Mirvish's 2006-07 season. We were happy to see the Monty Python inspired musical do very well on Broadway, winning three Tony's and going on a fairly solid run, especially after reading the hilarious Dave Eggers piece in the New Yorker......

They’re finally making some decent use of that Fascist-looking slab of concrete otherwise known as Dundas Square this summer with free screenings of classic Hollywood musicals every Tuesday night at 8:30. Tonight’s offering, to both Glenn Sumi's and our delight, is one of our favourite cinematic renderings of our other favourite city. West Side Story, a modernized Romeo and Juliet with a stunning score by Leonard Bernstein, marked the beginning of Stephen Sondheim's career as......

"I'm a Conservative with a strong social conscience and a sense of civility that hasn't just manifested itself since I entered provincial politics." - John Tory in the National Post, March 5, 2005 "I'm sorry [Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey riding], but I am for reeeeaaal." - If John Tory re-wrote the OutKast hit "Ms Jackson" While the Dufferin-Peel-Wellington-Grey riding always seems overflooded with ultra-conservative a-hole politicians, John Tory contends that he isn't one of them. According to ultra-Postie......

The Blue Man Group tours with a vengeance, like your typical overextended Broadway show with touring casts in Takoma. But, as the Blue Men prepare to invade Toronto, the unions aren't having it. Both the Canadian Actors' Equity and the Toronto Musicians' Association picketed outside the Blue Man media show yesterday, lighting flame to the heretofore-held possibity that anyone could pull a "Tobias," and freely audition for the non-union shop show the way comedian David......

For the past two and a half months, actress Hilary Doyle has been playing Matt Damon in Matt & Ben, which is closing for good this Sunday at the Poor Alex. The little off-Broadway play that could has been a surprise success in its Toronto incarnation this fall, playing to solid houses and being extended twice. Last week, National Post theatre critic Robert Cushman wrote of this celebrity-hilarity that it is "still the best in......

When he puts it on in the U.S., he calls it Bigger than J. But here in the Great Heathen North, Rick Miller calls it by its full sacrilegious title: Bigger than Jesus. Funnyman Miller’s new one-man show – his most famous is a decade-old, still-touring Fringe hit called MacHomer – opens in previews tonight at Factory Theatre. The lapsed Catholic’s play, co-created by uberdirector Daniel Brooks, explores the various things done in Jesus’s name......