Far be it from us to conflate professional sports with Bill Shakespeare—but the Toronto Maple Leafs’ actions before, during and after Tuesday's NHL trade deadline recall Macbeth’s famous words: full of sound and fury, yet ultimately signifying nothing. Charges of heresy will be duly acknowledged. In the end, the promised blow-up never materialized. None of the five big-money, no-trade-clause-holding players could be moved. Pavel Kubina was apparently ready to be shipped off (to San......

The history of Michael Hollingsworth's "epic play-cycle" The History of the Village of the Small Huts is almost as storied (and confusing) as the events they represent. Many are familiar with the plays only since 2000, when VideoCabaret's residency began in the back room at the Cameron House. Since then, they have produced a new Hollingsworth play every year (with the exception of 2004), making the currently-running Laurier the eighth play in the cycle.......

Soulpepper, that scrappy little theatre company from The Distillery, just released their 2008 schedule. If you haven't seen a Soulpepper play before, you've been missing out on some of the best theatre this city has to offer. This past season was one of Soulpepper’s greatest. Among other fantastic shows, the company put on an astounding rendition of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera and a hilarious staging of William Saroyan’s Time of Your Life. They also......

Why Not Theatre's production of Hamlet, currently playing at the Winchester Street Theatre, bills itself as an interpretation of everyone's favourite tragedy so new and different that it has taken an alternate title: The Prince Hamlet. But rather than some from-Mars production full of black leather and dance-breaks you might expect to find at the Fringe, The Prince Hamlet is a relatively straight-forward adaptation of the original work, yet staged interestingly enough to keep......

Words, words, words! Tongues get tied and language pulls a muscle in Terminating, a work by Tony Kushner (Angels in America), mounted in Toronto for the first time by Jordan Pettle. Inspired by Shakespeare's "Sonnet 75," this 30-minute play is classic Kushner in its robust tirades against everything from human ambivalence and existential paradoxes to window curtains and the smell of anal sex. At the centre of the production is Michael Healey's tour de force......

For those readers who do not happen to be massive Shakespeare geeks, it is worth noting that his high comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream finishes with a brief monologue delivered by the mischievous fairy Puck, which begins, "If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended, that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear." It is from this quotation that the SummerWorks play Offensive Shadows derives its titled.......

Much like the budding romance between Hero and Claudio in the play itself, Wednesday night's open-air premiere of William Shakespeare’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing was threatened by the malevolent influence of outside elements, in this case a light drizzle that foreshadowed an impending downpour. As the skies darkened, it seemed likely that this year's Canopy Theatre premiere in Philosopher's Walk would be postponed for a day. But the actors seemed impervious to the rain......

Veteran stage actor William Hutt, famous for his many seasons playing all the great Shakespearean roles at Stratford, died today of leukemia at Stratford General Hospital at the age of 87. As a founding member of the Stratford Festival, Hutt acted and directed in 130 productions. He officially retired from the festival in 2005 playing Prospero in a remount production of The Tempest, where his performance was universally acclaimed, but as Torontoist reported in October......

This week, the already-awesome Dufferin Grove Park is absolutely ablaze with awesomeness, with tendrils of wicked cool billowing through its leafy canopies and filling the lungs and hearts of theatre aficionados everywhere. The Cooking Fire Theatre Festival, which runs from June 20-24, is a presentation of five short plays, accompanied by a spectacular organic meal and infused with a spirit of collaboration and comraderie from start to finish. This is not your ordinary trip......

In this piece in yesterday's Globe, Ivor Tossell waxes intellectual on the cultural wasteland that is Wikipedia. He explains "wikigroaning," the phenomenon experienced by self-righteous smartypantses like himself upon finding that one topic, "useless to everyone but a small coterie of fans," has a longer Wikipedia entry than another topic of "genuine historical relevance." His first example: that Lost character John Locke has a longer entry than the philosopher John Locke. And it’s all the......

Sam the Record Man is closing its Yonge Street store on June 30. Remember when Sam's was the only place you could get a cassette of The Lowest of the Low's Shakespeare My Butt? Remember cassettes? Two high profile cases got their day in court yesterday. Wing-Piao Dumani Ross and Alexander Ryazanov, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving causing the 2006 death of cabbie Tahir Khan. The pair were sentenced to house arrest for a year,......

It was only inevitable; indeed, they would say we asked for it. The Secret, the latest in a long line of mega-selling self-help phenomena, is on its way to Toronto. Several "teachers" featured in the original film and the subsequent book will be holding forth on April 14th and 15th at the Westin Harbour Castle. The promotional literature is distinguished by its modest proposal: "The Secret to everything—the secret to life filled with joy, good......

For the first time ever, blogs were invited to come to the announcement of the Stratford Festival's new season, and Torontoist was there, chillin' like a villain. The press conference was held at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art for some reason, upstairs where the swanky new Jamie Kennedy restaurant is (free breakfast for bloggers!). The press release for the event issued the following warning: "Needless to say, in addition to announcing the 2007......

The Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. is still in turmoil. The Corp. has been without a board chair since the summer. What's worse, Queen's Park, Ottawa and the City couldn't decide who should be appointed to the chair. What's worse Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has been meddling in the affairs of the TWRC. The city is getting a new $29 million arena. It's the first new arena built in the city in 25 years. The......

Shakespeare in the Rough's production of Antony & Cleopatra (directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones) is taking place in Withrow Park from Saturday August 5 to Labour Day, Monday, September 4. But if you can't wait for your dose of the Bard, you can catch a preview tormorrow and Friday evenings at 7pm. Shows run Wednesdays through Saturday at 7pm and on Sundays and holiday Mondays at 2pm. Admission is pay what you can, with a......

Sure New York based writer Jonathan Ames looks like a badass in this photo, with his fists up in the air like he's ready to deck Torontoist. But after reading his collection of essays I Love You More Than You Know we know that Ames, can be a big softie (he dedicates the book to his great-aunt and the title of the book is inspired by something she said to him). Heck, Ames even describes......

Torontoist was walking past This Ain't The Rosedale Library (obviously not pictured here) and noticed that it had been tapped by Canadian ex-pat Jeremy Mercer in the Guardian (the best paper in the English speaking world, sorry NYT) as one of the top 10 bookstores in the world. TATRL clocked in at eighth place and had some truly mindboggling competition. Shakespeare and Co. in Paris (no. 2 on the list) is a "a socialist utopia......

Sketch comedy troupe Better than Shakespeare may not really be superior to our man Shakes, but they are damn funny. This Montreal-based quintet rocked the Tim Sims Playhouse this fall and now they're back again Friday and Saturday at the Poor Alex. Torontoist e-mailed ringleader Dan Beirne (who used to write the Waiting for Nathan column at tangmonkey) to ask a few pertinent questions about the dark, dry stylings of BTS. How long has......

The Winter’s Tale has never been Shakespeare’s most popular play – not even his most popular late-period romance. It does contain his most popular stage direction, however: "Exit Antigonus, pursued by a bear." Reviews of Theatre Kingston’s production of The Winter’s Tale currently running at the Harbourfront Centre have been positive (see Now, Eye), so if you see one tale this winter, you should probably make it this one. Director Craig Walker has set the......