Fringe: Day 3 review round-up

2009/07/03

Rave reviews for Moving Along, The Sicilian, Lysistrata, As You Puppet and more. Check www.eyeweekly.com/fringe every day throughout the festival for more reviews.

Of the Fields, Lately

2009/07/03

Soulpepper plus David French adds up to yet another great evening of theatre. For Of the Fields, Lately (1973), French’s sequel to his breakthrough play Leaving Home (1972), Soulpepper has brought back Jeff Lillico, Kenneth Welsh and Diane D’Aquila to play the same roles of Ben Mercer and his parents Jacob and Mary that they did for Soulppeper’s superb staging of Leaving Home in 2007. Adding to the realism, the action of Fields takes place two years after that of Home, so we and the actors have aged exactly as much as the characters.

Fringe Best Bets

2009/06/30

Featuring: Red Machine — Part One, The Fever, The King’s Conscience, Moving Along, Chicken Licken, Politically Correct Bedtime Stories, Artifacts, and Head First

Screen Play

2009/06/30

The Bloor Cinema joins the Fringe with their shadow-cast program, The Silver Stage

It’s Different For Girls

2009/06/30

EYE WEEKLY's 2009 Fringe Festival coverage kicks off with Aurora Stewart De Peña’s intriguing entry, an existential opus on femininity without the vagina monologues. Plus: Fringe Festival Best Bets, Silver Stage Series preview and our annual Fringe review site, where we'll be assessing every single Fringe production and giving you the opportunity to write your own.

Scene, not herd

2009/06/24

Looking for an art-kid hideout during Pride? Try P/E/D

The Burning Bush

2009/06/23

Jackie Mason has already given Tracey Erin Smith a thumbs-up on her concept for this one-woman show about a rabbi-turned-stripper, and no wonder: the result is both polished and provocative.

Loot

2009/06/22

Soulpepper’s production of Joe Orton's Loot (1965), though still set in the 1960s, proves to be surprisingly contemporary in its critique of unbridled authority.

Awake and Sing!

2009/06/19

Soulpepper’s current production of Clifford Odets’ Awake and Sing! (1935) would do well to follow the exhortation of its title. The play is now recognized as one of the great American family dramas, but under Miles Potter’s direction none of the multiple tensions the play explores lights up the stage.

Papa don't preach

2009/06/17

At first, Tracey Erin Smith’s obsession with Jackie Mason seems a little creepy. She’s in her 30s. The stand-up comedian, famous for his appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s and his one-man shows on Broadway, is 73. On a visit to Toronto, Mason agreed to meet over coffee and she told him she was working on a show called I Want to Marry Jackie Mason.

Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's 20th Century

2009/06/15

Morphine addiction, torment and persecution at the hands of Hollywood’s elite — Peter Lorre something like the Sid Vicious of his generation: both were fucked up miscreants with nothing to lose. And Friday night, we were ready to throw up the horns and salute Brooklyn punk band The World Inferno/Friendship Society's theatrical tribute to the cult icon. Instead, we almost fell asleep standing up.

5 O'Clock Bells

2009/06/12

At its simplest, Sleeping Dog Theatre’s 5 O’Clock Bells (playing as a part of Luminato 2009) is a warning against the dangers of child prodigies rising too quickly. At its most complex, it’s a one-man spectacular infused with live guitar and highly nuanced lighting. On the whole, though, this work about the life and unsolved death of Jazz legend Lenny Breau walks the high end of a middle road, almost tripping over its own structure.

Peter Lorre: punk icon?

2009/06/10

Jack Terricloth and Jay Scheib present a new play about the legendary character actor

Body & Soul

2009/06/09

Say what you will about Body & Soul being sponsored by the “real beauty” hucksters at Dove — it’s unlikely that director Judith Thompson could have assembled her disparate group of performers without the power of her sponsor’s mass-market reach.

The Children's Crusade

2009/06/09

R. Murray Schafer’s latest opera The Children’s Crusade, now having its world premiere as part of Luminato, proves to be a disappointment. What seemed to be so fascinating in the abstract turns out to be less exciting in practice. Schafer’s insistence on presenting the work in promenade style in an unconventional venue is a major impediment to its enjoyment.

Zisele

2009/06/08

Christian children learn about guilt from God, their father. For the Jews, however, that’s mama’s territory. Exploring the relationship between Jewish mothers and their children, Beit Lessin Theatre’s Zisele offers a light hearted look at this complex (and comedic) kinship but does so though a kind of theatre-lite, the experience as a whole feeling somewhat unsatisfying and a bit thin.

Lipsynch

2009/06/08

Robert Lepage’s epic multilingual drama Lipsynch is having its North American premiere in Toronto as part of the Luminato Festival. Audiences have the choice of seeing the nine-part play over the course of three evenings or in an all-day marathon lasting from 1pm-9:30pm including four intermissions and a 45-minute meal break. For devotees of Lepage and of experimental theatre this unquestionably a must-see event.

The New Waves Festival

2009/06/08

You’ll never know it from a Soulpepper production, but the Young Centre is cavernous and deep, with brick-lined walls beckoning from both floors. Saturday’s “artistic treasure hunt” known as the New Waves Festival (presented by Luminato), showcases the various spaces of the Young Centre, allowing audiences to interact with the art — or in some cases, make their own.

Scene change

2009/06/03

R. Murray Schafer’s warehouse-staged The Children’s Crusade leads opera’s hot Canadian renaissance

All the World’s His Stage

2009/06/03

Robert Lepage’s Lipsynch spans languages, continents and nine hours

Cowboys & Indians

2009/05/28

Presented as a part of diaspoRadicals’ inaugural Dishoom South Asian Performance Festival, Anand Rajaram’s Cowboys & Indians is less a play and more a theatrical happening. Sure, it’s all contained inside the Factory Studio Theatre but only barely, the experience realizing itself as one of the most in-your-face (not to mention most off-the-wall) presentations onstage right now in Toronto.

Play Grounds

2009/05/27

While most of Toronto’s main theatres remain closed until fall, there is still a bevy of summer alternatives to keep you warm

Eternal Hydra

2009/05/22

“Writing is a very small part of being an author,” admits the ghostly presence of deceased writer Gordias Carbuncle. The literary truth behind the 999-page titular tome is Eternal Hydra’s great enigma, as the play questions the meaning and responsibility of authorship.

The Shadow

2009/05/22

Taking inspiration from a dark, debt-collecting figure from Spanish history and a Carl Jung archetype based around the desires locked in our unconscious mind, The Shadow is lighter fare than it may first appear. A clever mix of comic opera and high melodrama, this humorous and heightened world premiere seems designed to be enjoyed by opera aficionados and lay-folk alike.

The Book of Judith

2009/05/21

Labeled as a “healing crusade,” Michael Rubenfeld’s The Book of Judith is part public service announcement, part choir-fueled, faux-Christian church service, and part personal exorcism — of Rubenfeld’s own inner difficulty in facing another individual’s disabilities head on.