Results tagged “teddykstra”

The last time Birdland Theatre's production of The Last Days of Judas Iscariot came through town, it won five Doras and the reputation of being "the best show nobody saw." With only five performances at The Distillery District's enticingly named Fermenting Cellar, there wasn't much of a chance to. This time around, they doubled the number of performances, but sadly, this still doesn't mean a very long run, and if you didn't make the trip to Mill Street and Parliament last night, you missed your last chance at catching this fabulous show.

Each week, we take a look at Toronto's theatre scene and tell you which shows are worth checking out.

Michael Ondaatje, with Art of Time violinist Julia Wedman.

When Dylan Thomas began writing Under Milk Wood, his famous "play for voices" about the sleepy Welsh community of Llareggub and its inhabitants, he intended it to be performed as a radio play with a full cast of actors. Over the years, the play has been both recorded and performed for stage in a variety of productions (including a film version with Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole), sometimes with a cast as large as fifty. The Soulpepper version now playing at the Young Centre, a revival of last year's popular production, features a sole actor, Kenneth Welsh, performing every single role.

When it premiered in the 1980s, Fire, a "jukebox musical" set to the music of Jerry Lee Lewis and some Christian spirituals, was considered something of a sensation. Twenty years later, CanStage has decided to revive the show, bringing the multi-talented Ted Dykstra (pictured) back to the role of Cale Blackwell, a fictionalized stand-in for Lewis. While none of this sounds like a terrible idea, the current production of Fire which opened last night at the Bluma Appel Theatre, plays like the theatrical equivalent of a "you had to be there" joke. The story is inspired by the lives of rock-and-roller Jerry Lee Lewis and his televangelist cousin Jimmy Swaggart and their respectives rises and falls. The musical turns them into brothers named Cale and Hershel Blackwell, two men bonded by blood, sundered by religion and driven by a passion for Jesus, an eager audience and the just-post-pubescent temptress named Molly they both love.

In a strange moment of synchronicity, there are currently two musicals on the Toronto stage about a man who kills people and disposes of their bodies by feeding them to someone/something. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street has been playing at the Princess of Wales since early November, and closes on December 9. Sweeney tells the story (which we are all likely to become more familiar with after Tim Burton's film adaptation...

Some biggish news announced this week in regards to two of this city's major theatres: Passe Muraille and CanStage (oh, I'm sorry, I mean "The Canadian Stage Company"—more on that later). Let's start with Passe Muraille, the plucky underdog.

Canstage's heavily-hyped season-ending production of The Rocky Horror Show has finally opened at the Bluma. Last season, they finished things off with "revolutionary" 60s musical Hair, and this year they have opted for one of the 70s' key "revolutionary" musicals. Fortunately for the audiences, Rocky is an infinitely superior show to Hair in almost every way: the songs are catchier, the characters more memorable, the plot more engaging and Canstage's production, helmed by Ted Dyskstra (co-creator of 2 Pianos, 4 Hands and Toronto's Hedwig), is significantly more finessed.

. The featured performers for the evening are Alexander Toradze on piano and Andrew McCandless on trumpet. If you happen to be between the ages of 15 and 29, you can purchase a ticket for TSO performances (including this evening’s 8pm event) for the meager sum of $12 from the tsoundcheck website. If you are under 15 or over 29, tickets range from moderately expensive to more expensive. Tomorrow evening’s performance will be slightly altered as the TSO will play Shostakovich’s second piano concerto followed by the eighth symphony.