The Eco Show is a new Necessary Angel co-pro currently playing at Buddies. It's also the latest work written and directed by Daniel Brooks, so it would seem to go without saying that it's one of the most visually striking plays of the season, with masterful use of sound, lighting and A/V. It tells the story of a mysterious, insular family presided over by the sanctimonious and wheelchair-bound patriarch Hamm (yes, ha ha). Put-upon......

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......

Necessary Angel has just announced a totally cool event planned to take place on March 3, 2008. Three playwrights will be given the opening lines for a new play. Each playwright will have 4 hours in which to write said play, after which three different teams will have 5 hours to rehearse the works. When those 5 hours are up, the plays have to be performed at Necessary Angel's annual gala at the Capitol......

It's true. Torontoist fave Daniel MacIvor has given up doing those kinds of plays. You know, those one-man marvels directed by Daniel Brooks and chock-full of magic realism, gorgeous minimalist design, and MacIvor's own captivating performances? He's had enough of those and has moved on to "play plays." You know, linear narratives with multiple actors, realistic locations and resolvable conflicts? And that's exactly what we get with How It Works, which is being performed......

Living Tall is basically an entirely perfect one man show, and it's only playing at the Tarragon Extra Space until Sunday, so you'd better get your act in gear. The script by Mike Geither is tight, hilarious and fascinating, Karin Randoja's direction is focused and inventive and Ker Wells' performance is astounding and completely compelling. The show, which was quite successful at this year's SummerWorks festival, is structured as a pop psychology sales seminar......

What's that you say? You were out of town last fall when Daniel MacIvor's Here Lies Henry got remounted at Buddies and was the best thing since sliced bread? You were clinically dead in January when Monster, the second awesome remount of the one-man shows MacIvor created with Daniel Brooks went up? Well, cancel your trip to the Sea of Tranquility, because you have exactly 14 more chances to see the final remount, House,......

A lot of the Big Ticket shows in town these days are shows that we've had the chance to see before. This is not a bad thing. There's nothing more exciting than seeing a brand new play that blows your mind, but it's also good to know that if a play is good enough, it can have a life that extends long after its initial run. Probably the highest-profile of these remounts is John......

Another month, another Daniel Brooks show at Buddies. Technically, this remount of the Daniel Brooks/Guillermo Verdecchia-written show that last appeared in Toronto in 1998 is directed by Chris Abraham, but it has Brooks' fingerprints all over it. And what that means is a masterful use of lighting and sound that is almost worth the price of admissions alone. Insomnia is a strange sort of show. The plot centres on John F., played by Brooks,......

Are you excited to see this fall's Hysteria Festival? Gearing up for Rhubarb! in February? Well, stop already, because they aren't happening. Buddies in Bad Times, Toronto's favourite theatre/gay dance party, has scrapped its entire usual season in favour a series of performance creations, put into groups called Wave One, Wave Two and Wave Three (reminds us a little of what Passe Muraille did last season with Stage 3). But don't worry! This is......

The Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations were announced yesterday at the top of First Canadian Place. And for once, there is little to argue with… (Well, there's always something to argue about, so feel free to go at it in the comments here.) The two most-nominated shows were Urinetown and Hairspray, but given that there are separate Dora categories for musicals and a heck of a lot fewer of them than straight theatre productions, they......

Half Life, the new play by mathematician/playwright John Mighton that opens in previews tonight at the Tarragon, is not a memory play – but it is a play about remembering and forgetting. It takes place an old folks home where an elderly man is reacquainted with an old flame from before the war. The couple falls back in love, but their respective children are sceptical that the two ever knew each other at all before......

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......