Preview: You Can't Take It With You

Playing until the very end of June is You Can't Take It With You from the Soulpepper family. There are still a few pre-performance and post Q & A chats to check out over the next few months, and with a cast and director You Can't is boasting it kind of sounds like a dream, especially for all you theatre lovers.


Show Description:
The chaotic, eccentric lives of the Sycamore family are thrown into unaccustomed order when their sensible daughter Alice brings a prospective beau and his conservative parents home for dinner. Kaufman and Hart are at their frenetic best with this Pulitzer Prize-winning romp. 

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart

Playing at Soulpepper (Young Centre) in the Distillery District

Directed by Joseph Ziegler 
Featuring Brian Bisson, Derek Boyes, Raquel Duffy, Patricia Fagan, John Jarvis, Diego Matamoros, Nancy Palk, Krystin Pellerin, Eric Peterson, Gregory Prest, Brenda Robins, Sabryn Rock, Mike Ross, Andre Sills, Michael Simpson, Maria Vacratsis and Tim Ziegler.

What's on This Weekend. (That we'd recommend that is.)

Wondering what to see in the City this weekend?  Well worry not because there are tons of great shows on to see.  If song and dance sounds like a good time then West Side Story is your ticket.  Wednesday night Justin and I went to the opening.  A special evening because this is one of Dancap's final productions, and it's a good one.

Brought up from Broadway, this remount of West Side will impress all audiences, whether you've seen the show and film a hundred times or you've never even heard "I Feel Pretty."  Unlike the original production, the Broadway remount, on now at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, features a delicate re-working of the famous dialogue and music to include a lot more Spanish.  And considering that half the cast is supposed to be Puerto Rican, it's a great development from the original script.  Kudos to director  David Saint, who uses  Tony Award®-winning librettist Arthur Laurents’ Broadway direction for the tour.  West Side Story  purists my not appreciate hearing some of their favourite songs in Spanish, but it is well worth seeing.  If nothing else you'll spend your evening marvelling at the choreography of Jerome Robbins'.

If three hours of love, gangs and ballet aren't your thing, then head on down to the Harbourfront Centre for the final show in their 2012 World Stage series.  The Shipment, which we saw last night, is superb.   Truly.  I was skeptical that a Korean-American could really capture what it means to be black in America,  (who knows how I'd know,) but wow was I wrong.  Young Jean Lee may not be black but boy can she write a riveting show.  

This is experimental theatre at its absolute best.  The Shipment challenges the audience, makes them laugh and delights in a gripping ninety minutes of theatre.  With a hugely talented triple threat cast The Shipment  may be the best show we have seen all spring!  You never know what is coming next. Some of the show's scenes are truly soul touching and haunting.  Be advised The Shipment  is not your grandma's show*.  It is vulgar, confrontational and at times uncomfortable, but what else would you expect from a show about race.  This is definitely one to see.  Don't miss it during it's limited run at the Enwave Theatre.  Click here for more info.  The Shipment runs until May 12th.  

For all you opera lovers out there, tonight is only the second night for the COC's final opera of the 2011/12 season.  And we are hoping they have saved the best for last.  Semele, the sensuous Handel opera is re-imagined in Zhang Huan's astonishing and provocatively playful stage direction. We have been looking forward to this for weeks.  Semele runs until the 26th of May, and their is a special Ensemble Studio presentation of the opera on May 23rd.  (More on that later.) We can't wait.  Click here for tickets, and don't forget the COC has some of the best rush and young people discounts going, so don't miss it!

 So get out there and see some shows already!


*Unless your grandmother is like mine or Justin's.  They'd have loved it!

Preview: Dance Marathon

The 2012 World Stage season comes to a close with the return of the internationally-acclaimed immersive theatre show Dance Marathon. This exclusive engagement takes place at Harbourfront Centre’s Enwave Theatre on Friday May 18 and Saturday May 19, 2012. Described as part theatre, part contest and part social experiment, Dance Marathon is an interactive performance piece by Toronto’s award-winning interdisciplinary theatre collective, bluemouth inc.

“Beg, borrow or steal a ticket for this life affirming show.” – London Telegraph

“Part Cabaret, part dance class, part gladiatorial death-match...irresistibly good fun.”
- The Observer

“An intriguing immersive performance piece...bluemouth inc. are challenging and boundary pushing, they create intense, multi-layered experiences that at once question and bring people together.” – Metro (Scotland)

A massive hit at the 2011 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Dance Marathon is an interactive, duration-based performance event. Inspired by the desperately competitive and physically grueling spectator sports of Depression-Era North America, the show is also a nod to today's cult of celebrity and reality TV.

In the show, audience members of all levels of dance-floor comfort participate, learn and are judged in a series of challenges inspired by the endurance contests of 1920s and ‘30s America while a live band provides the soundtrack.  Audience members participate and dance-off with bluemouth inc. members under the direction of floor judges and the merciless movement of the clock to help shape the theatrical experience, or they can sit back and enjoy the fancy footwork.

bluemouth inc. is five artists trained in various disciplines, brought together by a common vision of sharing their training and forging a new language. Their goal is to reach beyond the boundaries of conventional performance practice to create site-specific interdisciplinary art that leads audiences and artists alike into new forms of play.
As a not-for-profit performance collective, bluemouth inc. continues to explore formal issues related to site-specific work: compositional counterpoint between the properties of film, movement, sound design and spoken word; a temporal installation integrated within a challenging setting; and an ongoing adjustment of the relationship of the performance to the spectator.
Toronto’s Dora award-winning theatre collective bluemouth inc. is dedicated to reaching beyond the boundaries of conventional performance practice, and with the support of Harbourfront Centre’s Fresh Ground new works commissioning program, debuted Dance Marathon in the World Stage 08/09 season. From there, the production’s playful integration of movement, text, music, video and audience interaction captivated viewers and critics around the globe, touring to Vancouver, New York City, Melbourne, Tasmania, Cork, Edinburgh and London.

Performance details:

Friday, May 18: 7pm
Saturday, May 19, 2012: 7pm

Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay West
Running time: 240 min. with breaks

Tickets: $35, $28 (seniors and artsworkers), $15 (CultureBreak – 18 to 25 years-old and full-time students of all ages) available at Harbourfront Centre’s Box Office. Call 416-973-4000, email tickets@harbourfrontcentre.com or visit here.

Preview: West Side Story

As a contrast to the unsettling news from Dancap last week we are excited to announce some good news as Liza and I will be joining Dancap on Wednesday evening for the opening of West Side Story which is premiering uptown at the Toronto Centre for the Arts. 


Show Description: 
More than fifty years ago one musical changed theatre forever. Now it's back, and mesmerizing audiences once again. From the first note to the final breath, WEST SIDE STORY soars as the greatest love story of all time.

Directed by David Saint, using Tony Award-winning librettist Arthur Laurents’ Broadway direction, West Side Story remains as powerful, poignant and timely as ever. The new Broadway cast album of West Side Story recently won the 2010 Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album. The Bernstein and Sondheim score is considered to be one of Broadway's finest and features such classics of the American musical theatre as "Something's Coming," "Tonight," "America," "I Feel Pretty" and "Somewhere."

The piece runs for 4 weeks so lots of opportunity to see it!

For more info or to purchase tickets please click here!

Review: Agwa/Correria

Compagnie Kafig made its triumphant return to the Harbourfront Centre  last night, at the opening of Agwa/Correria.  The high energy show featured two pieces by acclaimed hip hop choreographer and creative visionary Mourad Merzouki. It was a brilliant melding of Brazilian and French with street styles of dance. Correria, presented in the first act, means raid or foray in Portuguese and featured high energy and agressive battles and electrifying group choreography.  While the second act's Agwa,  meaning water was decidedly more graceful and elegant.  Both pieces played to the dancers' strengths.  Strong, athletic, men with washboard abs and cheeky grins, seamlessly moved from hilarity to intensity.

Although Agwa/Correria might not be the most sophisticated and cohesive dance, or even hip hop show, ever, it is certainly entertaining.  With creative choreography, athleticism and high energy these guys will engage and impress even the less interested audience member.  You can't help but watch engrossed by the sheer physicality and grace of movement.

The second act's Agwa  was decidedly more thematic, but perhaps a bit overstated.  Either way, who knew that plastic cups could be so beautiful?  Overall the staging, by Mr. Merzouki and Benjamin Lebreton and lighting design by Yoann Tivoli perfectly accentuated the talents of the performers and the creativity of the choreography.

This is a great show, and at just 75 minutes makes a perfect introductory or family dance affair.  Agwa/Correria runs at the Fleck Dance Theatre until May 5th.  Check out the trailer below.  And click here for tickets.

Preview: The Shipment

Award-winning Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company (U.S.) comes to Harbourfront Centre with THE SHIPMENT, as part of World Stage from May 9-12, 2012 at the Enwave Theatre. Young Jean Lee, a rising star of American theatre, dissects what it means to be black in America in this hilarious and shocking play.

“Ingenious . . . radical.” - New Yorker

“A fiendishly funny piece of neominstrelsy.” – Time Out New York

Brazenly theatrical and transcendentally lyrical, THE SHIPMENT starts with a stand up comedy act and moves from the urban dreams of would-be rappers to the sitcom realism of yuppie domesticity, proving that nothing is ever as it seems. With an ending guaranteed to leave jaws hanging, this is contemporary theatre at its biggest, boldest and most daring.

Young Jean Lee, a Korean-American playwright raises questions about race in an entertaining and unique way.  Referred to as “the most adventurous downtown playwright of her generation” by New York Times, Lee has a unique approach to playwriting: she starts a play by asking herself, “What’s the last play in the world I would ever want to write?” THE SHIPMENT stars a cast of five black actors, who developed this provocative play in collaboration with Lee.

The playwright was also a finalist for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for THE SHIPMENT in 2010 and recently named as one of the inaugural Doris Duke Artists. Young Jean Lee is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and was named by American Theatre magazine as one of the 25 artists who will shape the American theatre over the next 25 years.

Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company is an Obie Award-winning New York-based company that has creates and produces performances written and directed by Lee in collaboration with company members from diverse backgrounds, since 2003. Their work challenges audiences to think, rather than reaffirm their pre-existing beliefs. Lee has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world.  The company’s most recent work is the hugely successful THE UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW, which The New Yorker described as, “one of the more moving and imaginative works I have ever seen on the American stage.”

Performance details:

Wednesday, May 9, 2012: 8pm
Thursday, May 10, 2012: 8pm
Friday, May 11, 2012: 8pm
Saturday, May 12, 2012: 8pm

Enwave Theatre, 231 Queens Quay West, Toronto

Performance is 90 minutes with no intermission.
THE SHIPMENT contains strong language and content some may find offensive.
Click here for ticket info or call 416.973.4000.

A Word on Dancap's Demise

Sunday morning as I read Richard's Toronto Star article I could not help but feel truly sad that Toronto is lossing Dancap Productions.  The company, which began bringing shows to Toronto audiences five years ago, will wind down its operations after the summer season, and their wildly successful tour of Jersey Boys ends in the fall.

 By all accounts Dancap, and its novice founder Aubrey Dan were just too ambitious. His efforts to establish a second big brand musical theatre entity in Toronto simply failed to turn a profit.  Dan himself said in an exclusive interview with The Star that, "[Dancap] will be stepping back and re-evaluating our involvement in the theatre business."  It is a big loss,  but boy was it fun.

Over the years Dancap has had a few notable successes. No success was a big, perhaps, as Jersey Boys, which ran uptown at the Yonge Centre for two years. The show launched a Canadian cast, made a few stars, and went on to tour the country.  In fact, the tour of Jersey Boys doesn't wrap until October.  A fitting end for the company.

But their were other memorable moments as well. Seeing Next to Normal at the Four Season's with Broadway legend Alice Ripley, stands out.  As does the company's original tour of South Pacific.  But what sticks out most to me, was the excitement I felt five years ago when Dancap burst onto the scene and promised to bring more shows and more variety to Toronto audiences.

Now don't get me wrong Mirvish Productions IS Toronto theatre, and we couldn't be happier that they represent Toronto to the international theatre community, and bring amazing work to audiences here.  But I couldn't help feeling proud of my adopted city when Aubrey decided that Toronto was ready for more big budget theatre.  And I thought Toronto was too.

Unfortunately, Dancap could not make it work.  Who knows where the blame should lie for Dancap's failure, maybe there is no blame to be had.  But it is a sad day in a city that was once considered tops behind London and New York in international theatre rankings.  At this point it might be hard to place Toronto in even the top five theatre cities in North America. Certainly there have not been many out-of-town previews or development of new work with an international audience in the past several seasons.  Those are markers of a thriving theatre industry.  Of course there have been other successes recently.  Theatre 20, with its star power and unique mandate might prove lasting, and Angelwalk and  Studio 180 spring to mind as torch bearers, but they are both decidedly more low key than Dancap.

These are only my opinions,  but not many would argue that it was nice to see a bit more variety in the stuff coming in from out of town.  I don't think Mirvish would have brought Next to Normal or  American Idiot as Aubrey did. They certainly seemed to pass on Tony winner In the Heights  which Dancap produced this season.  Additionally having Dancap around made Mirvish better.  Would Mirvish have gambled on Spring Awakening if Dancap wasn't nipping at their heals? Who knows? Memories of their great shows and enthusiasm will have to sustain us until someone else brave enough comes along to challenge and diversify theatre in Toronto again.

Thanks for the memories Aubrey.