news
Your Cheat Sheet to SummerWorks 2010

Photo by Lodoe-Laura Haines-Wangda/Torontoist.
SummerWorks is like the Fringe Festival’s more polished older sibling: a bit wiser, a bit more put together, and a little less rambunctious. The juried festival began its life devoted to theatre, but in recent years has expanded to include music, walking tours, and other fun stuff. Plays remain at the heart of SummerWorks though, and while the overall quality of the shows is a bit more consistent than Fringe, the schedule is still packed enough to seem a little daunting. With more than forty productions, it can be hard to find your way around.
Enter your intrepid Torontoist reviewers, who have seen almost every play on the roster. Over the past week, Hamutal Dotan, Steve Fisher, Kelli Korducki, Suzannah Showler, and Ryan West have taken in most of what SummerWorks has to offer, and we’ve culled our list of can’t-miss shows down to the very essentials. Forthwith, your guide to SummerWorks 2010…
![]() AftershockWhy reality TV may be bad for the soul. |
![]() All of HimA bombshell surprise brings a piece of interactive theatre to life. |
![]() Biographies of the Dead and DyingNot your average ghost story. |
||
![]() Haunted HillbillyA gothic southern musical. Really. |
![]() Iphigenia at AulisNoble warriors and sacrificial virgins. |
![]() I Was BarbieStrike a pose! |
||
![]() The Kreutzer SonataMusic has charms to soothe a savage breast. |
![]() Me HappySaving the Irish town of Muff, one letter at a time. |
![]() OR,Madcap spying and other lascivious behaviour. |
||
![]() Post-EdenPress up against the border between urban and wild. |
![]() Ride the CycloneQuirky musical numbers and witty, ostracized children. |
![]() TheoryWhen censorship isn’t purely an academic issue. |
||
![]() The WITCH of EdmontonSupernatural betrayal. |
Aftershock

All of Him

Biographies of the Dead and Dying

Photo by Julien Lafleur.
Set on the atmospheric west coast of Vancouver Island, this new show from British Columbia’s MachineFair follows a one-hit chick lit author’s effort to find inspiration in an allegedly haunted house. Far from your average ghost story, Andrew Templeton’s script is a clever exploration of the creative process and the tribulations faced by writers in several mediums. Aviva Armour-Ostroff channels pure frustration as the struggling novelist, while Jeff Meadows slips seamlessly between the characters of her insufferably talented poet ex-husband and her earthy landlord and neighbour. There may be no rattling chains or spectral visitors in this ghost tale, but there are plenty of astute observations on the craft of writing itself. RW
Haunted Hillbilly

Photo courtesy of Alexis Taylor.
For this performance, we were fortuitously seated near author Derek McCormack, whose novel is the basis of this gothic southern musical, and we can report that he wholeheartedly approves of the show. “It’s cheerier than the book,” he remarked to us after the curtain call, “but it’s probably more entertaining on stage that way.” Of that we have no doubt: this musical is obscenely fun, reveling in the sinister charm of Machiavellian “couturier” Nudie (Greg Kramer), the golly-shucks naiveté of protagonist Hyram (Matthew Raudsepp), and the note-perfect affectations of the rockabilly cast (all of whom get a chance to shine). Matthew Barber’s original songs are period and genre-appropriate gems, and while The Rocky Horror Picture Show is an obvious influence (there’s even a tall, ghoulishly pale manservant), this story of an amoral (and possibly immortal) genius’s corruption of everyone he meets is more deliciously wicked sleaze than cheese. As for McCormack’s hope that it’ll inspire a fresh wave of readers, that’s probably assured. (We’ll be picking his book up just as soon as the festival is over, at least.) SF
Iphigenia at Aulis

I Was Barbie

Photo courtesy of Nina Arsenault.
Transgendered performer Nina Arsenault, who’s undergone sixty plastic surgeries to attain an idealized female body, seized the role of a lifetime when she was offered the chance to personify Mattel’s Barbie for the doll’s fiftieth anniversary party, during Fashion Week 2009. Arsenault’s description of the surreal night she spent mingling (as Barbie) with fashion and celebrity elites is devastatingly candid as she describes floating through the evening in a haze of wish fulfillment and Ativan tranquilizers, dealing with ego bruising and eye-opening encounters (most notably with TV personality Ben Mulroney, whom she implies has disappeared into his Ken doll–like shell). The highlights of the show are her observations of how partygoers reacted when she approached them and offered them cupcakes: a potentially humiliating experience that Arsenault subverts into a rapturously spiritual one—the baked treats almost become pop culture communion wafers. The most revealing moment is when she sits on the floor, becoming truly vulnerable for the first time, and we realize what a prodigious effort has gone into maintaining the various doll-inspired poses she’s been striking. SF
The Kreutzer Sonata

Me Happy

OR,

Photo courtesy of Seventh Stage Productions.
We’re happy to report that OR, which toplined our Summerworks preview, delivers on all the promises director Kelly Straughan made in our interview: the show contains plenty of slamming-door farce, lascivious behaviour, and perfectly imitated Restoration-era lyricism. Sophie Goulet’s cunning and headstrong playwright Aphra Behn, who dabbles as a spy, is the devious anchor of the play, which builds slowly from her clandestine (and fictional) meeting with an amorous King Charles II (Damien Atkins), to a madcap pace for the final third of the show. Both Atkins and Melissa Jane Shaw change quickly between multiple roles; Shaw’s comic timing is spot-on, particularly as the lusty and uninhibited actress Nell Gwynn, while Atkins’s turn as a sweetly domineering noblewoman theatre producer earned an enthusiastic outbreak of spontaneous applause at the matinee we attended. SF
Post-Eden

Ride the Cyclone

Photo courtesy of Atomic Vaudeville.
Ride the Cyclone, Atomic Vaudeville’s sequel of sorts to smash hit Legoland, takes the successful elements of that show—the quirky musical numbers, the witty, ostracized children—and expands on them. Instead of a couple of musical numbers, we now get a full song cycle, and instead of two children, there’s a half dozen (plus a motorized soothsayer and a giant bass-playing rat). Six choir geeks died in a tragic carnival mishap, and Uranium City, Saskatchewan, has become a ghost town, populated only by the spirits of the restless disaster victims, including one nameless girl with the creepiest eyes and demeanour. The children each sing a song to encapsulate their short lives and dreams, and there’s not a weak link (or tune) in the bunch. The cast is perfect alchemy, the dance numbers are side-splittingly funny, and the children’s sad stories are quite poignant; this one’s an immensely enjoyable treat (though due mainly to one rap-inspired song, it’s definitely not for actual kids). SF
Theory

The WITCH of Edmonton

SummerWorks showtimes, ticket and pass information, venue maps, and more are all on the festival’s website.
All photos provided by SummerWorks unless otherwise noted.