Results tagged “tarragontheatre”

This has been a week for big announcements in theatre. First off, Brendan Healy has been appointed as new artistic director of Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, taking over from the departing David Oiye. And just this morning, Tarragon Theatre announced the winner of their inaugural Under 30 National Playwriting contest: Evan Placey for his play Mother of Him.

Claudia may be Canada's favourite official pre-teen. The star of Kristen Thomson's one-woman masterpiece, I, Claudia, has been delighting audiences for the better part of a decade. Since the play's 2001 premiere at Tarragon Theatre, it's toured the country, won multiple awards, been adapted into a wonderful film for CBC's (now defunct) Opening Night series, and, most recently, been performed by actors other than Thomson. Now, it's back to Toronto with a remount that opened last week at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

Here at Drama Club, we generally consider Mirvish shows to be outside our purview (although that certainly doesn't stop them popping up elsewhere on Torontoist). But when we heard that the much ballyhooed Broadway darling Spring Awakening was coming to the Canon Theatre, we couldn't help feeling...intrigued. Maybe it was our geeky theatre-school memories of the scandalous Wedekind play the new musical is based on. More likely, it was Lucille Bluth singing "Mama Who Bore Me" on 90210. Regardless, it was with a healthy amount of curiosity (and perhaps a soupçon of dread) that we went to the theatre on opening night.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Each week, Drama Club looks at Toronto's theatre scene and tells you which shows are worth checking out.

Drama Club is a new feature on Torontoist. Each week, we'll take a look at what's going on in Toronto's theatre scene and try to figure out which shows are worth checking out.

MUSIC: David Berman and the rest of his Silver Jews are stopping by Lee's Palace tonight as part of their North American tour. They're joined by Boston rock group Hallelujah The Hills. Lee's Palace (529 Bloor Street West), 9 p.m., $15.

Michael Frayn's play Democracy, currently playing at Tarragon, is not always easy to follow. For some reason, this doesn't particularly matter. The second political drama set in Berlin in Tarragon's current season chronicles the rise and fall of Willy Brandt, West Germany's charismatic leader from 1969 until 1974, and is crammed full of politicians, spies, treaties and references to the nuances of Cold War-era Germany that may occasionally go over your head. But it never for a second stops being absolutely fascinating. Frayn is known for his tightly-packed scripts, most famously for his smash-hit farce Noises Off, but also for his other political work, Copenhagen. This one focuses on the relationship between Brandt and his favourite aide, Gunter Guillaume, an East German ex-pat who also happens to be a spy.

There is a moment near the end of the first act of Maureen Hunter's play Wild Mouth when Oliver Becker, playing the tortured Ukrainian WWI vet Bohdan, grabs Sarah Orenstein as proto-feminist anti-war Englishwoman Anna (pictured, left), douses her in pig's blood, and then rubs the animal's heart all over her face and body. It's a shocking and highly provocative moment, and seems to foreshadow a very dark second act. But that's not quite what we get. The play, very capably directed by R.H. Thomson, has some fascinating scenes as well as something genuinely profound to say about humanity's compulsion to war. But the second act seems somehow weak in its conviction, flirting with a darkness that is the logical conclusion of the events preceding it, and then backing away from it. You begin to think we're heading into Miss Julie territory, but we instead wind up in a typical rural Canadian drama.

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...

Hannah Moscovitch's play East of Berlin is familiar territory for Tarragon's extra space. Remember Rosa Laborde's Léo, which was remounted last season? Well, here's another show in the same space that's set in South America, has political subject matter, spans the life of its main character, and features only two other actors, a man and a woman, both of whom he has sex with. This may be a bit of a tangent, but Torontoist...

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 delivered by a man who seems slightly unhinged, if shockingly energetic. The seminar details a multi-step plan to become a more successful salesperson based on the concept of "living tall," even if you aren't tall yourself. Wells prances around the stage like an acrobat who's had a few too many Red Bulls, using hilariously unhelpful transparencies on an overhead projector as visual aids.

Alon Nashman's one-man show Kafka and Son returns to Toronto for the Fringe. This is a piece he's been doing for some time, and it shows; it's one of the most professional-looking productions you're likely to see at the Fringe this year. In fact, sitting inside the Tarragon Theatre's mainspace watching the talented performer enact Kafka's famous "Letter to his Father," it's easy to imagine that you're seeing a show from the theatre's regular season.

Brown leaves outside and it's suddenly colder than a witch's tit. Hello, fall! But besides meaning a death to sun and happiness, the fall brings in the new season of independant theatre! Yay! Tarragon has just opened its season with Generous, a new play by Michael Healey.

"Goodness," a play by Toronto playwright and novelist Michael Redhill (pictured) has been picked as the best play at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The play was produced by Volcano and Tarragon Theatre last year but it shone at Edinburgh beating out over 1500 other plays to take the Carol Tambor Theatrical Foundation award.

On the whole, Torontoist stresses, it has been a good month for Salvatore Antonio.

Last October, Torontoist was at a rather boring mass book launch at Theatrebooks. Among the books being launched was York theatre professor Don Rubin’s Canadian Theatre History: Selected Readings. Rubin, in classic Trying-Too-Hard-To-Be-Cool Prof style, bounced up to the podium to say how happy he was to be included in an evening with so many Canadian playwrights, because Canadian playwrights were such great "shit-disturbers."

The reviews haven’t been very kind to the show about the misfortunate MacDonald clan of Cape Breton. "No great truth or inspiration" went the headline in The Globe and Mail, which pretty much sums up the overall critical reaction. This Torontoist theatregoer (TTT), however, thinks that it’s the best play to grace a Toronto stage so far this season, full of joyous soaring musical moments and soul-scritch-scratching quiet ones. R.H. Thompson is particularly fine as Alexander MacDonald, the play’s narrator-dentist. There’s also not one, but two fabulous performances by an actor named Jody Richardson as Alexander’s grandfather and California cousin. If the Torontoist were on the Dora jury, we’d be pushing for a nomination for this Richardson fellah who is making his Tarragon debut.

There is no lonelier soul than a freelance writer who discovers, belatedly, that he is no longer wanted by the magazines and the newspapers by which he has eked out his living. Angry, funny and cruelly accurate, the play asks the question: how can a man make sense of a life that has never been anything more than yesterday's paper? It’s interesting to track the evolution of the play through subsequent press releases.