MONDOmagazine

Miss Toronto Gets a Life_in Parkdale
Directed by Antje Budde
Featuring Eve Wylden and Art Babayants
Runs until July 25 @ The Theatre Centre

By Jen Handley

As if to assure us that it’s not a documentary, Miss Toronto Gets a Life_in Parkdale begins with an exaggeratedly earnest discovery-channel-type documentary segment about the performer that plays various beauty queens throughout the show.  Although the material seems to be thoroughly researched, the play doesn’t subject Miss Toronto itself to this level of scrutiny. The history of the beauty pageant and its contestants functions as more of a chronological frame of reference than a subject of exploration. The DitchWitch Brigade’s collective of writers and researchers, who along with performers Eve Wylden and Art Babayants have created the show, use the contest as a starting point for an exploration of the way the role of women has evolved over the twentieth-century in North America.

The show is divided into a dozen or so scenes, or vignettes, or presentations, or “segments” Read the rest of this entry »

Miss Toronto, 1926. The picture that inspired the mural at the Rhino.

By Kerry Freek

You may have seen her. Trapped in time, she resides in a weathered mural on the wall at the Rhino in Parkdale. It’s Miss Toronto 1926, holding a trophy and wearing a headpiece and dress made of flowers. She’s flanked on either side by her runners-up. None of them look too happy.

Inspired by the mural, the members of the DitchWitch Brigade have assembled a new show: Miss Toronto Gets a Life_in Parkdale. Last week I had a chat with Eve Wylden and Antje Budde (performer and director, respectively).*

MONDO: From 1926-1991, Toronto celebrated “beauty” with its own Miss Toronto pageant. Your website says that, while researching the pageant, you found “truths stranger than fiction.” What’s the deal here?

EVE & ANTJE (paraphrased, from now on): Well, one thing we discovered is that the Toronto Police ran the pageant. We found out that it ended in 1991 due to “pressure from outside sources.” What does that mean? We have our theories. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Jitters
Directed by Ted Dykstra
Written by David French
Featuring Kevin Bundy, Diane D’Aquila, Oliver Dennis, C. David Johnson, Abena Malika, Jordan Pettle, Noah Reid, Mike Ross, and Sarah Wilson
Runs June 24 – July 24 @ Young Centre for the Performing Arts

By Jeff Maus

To hear actors like Diane D’Aquila, Oliver Dennis, and C. David Johnson delivering lines about paranoia over forgetting lines, the anonymity of theatre acting in Canada, our desire for American validation, professional successes and failures, and criticism of their work, I couldn’t help but wonder how strange it must be for these seasoned professionals to reflect on these things off-stage as well as on.

First produced in 1979, Jitters is a funny show about a cast and crew opening a play in Toronto and is based, in part, on David French’s experiences writing for the Tarragon Theatre in the 1970s — and the satire hits home. Read the rest of this entry »

Reviews by Kerry Freek

The Big Lie

The Big Lie
By Warren MacDonald and Ryan Sero
Presented by Audeamus

Royal St. George’s Auditorium
Fri, July 9 4:30 PM – 355
Sat, July 10 3:30 PM – 362

Danny Bell’s (Ryan Sero) recent turn from hardened journalist to entertainment columnist isn’t sitting well with him, and he’s anxious for a good exposé. Enter the Magnificent Bugiardo (Jack Clift), a magician/spiritualist/con artist with a curvy assistant looking to make the big reveal, uncovering his fraud once and for all. Make the right links and you’ve got a story. Of course, there’s a twist. Read the rest of this entry »

Stagehands. Photo by Ashlea Wessel of Revolver Photography.

Reviews by Kerry Freek

The Silent City
By Stagehands
Presented by Stagehands

Bread & Circus
Wed, July 7 6:45 PM
Thu, July 8 5:00 PM
Fri, July 9 8:30 PM
Sat, July 10 6:45 PM
Sun, July 11 5:00 PM

Have you seen Rocky Horror Picture Show? How about Tommy? Jesus Christ Superstar? If so, don’t bother with The Silent City. You’ve already seen it.

Starting with the talented outcast leaving the small town to hit the bigtime, this cliché-ridden production steals from basically every rock musical ever written or conceived — and without an ounce of originality. Our hero, Stan arrives in the big city only to find that, at the command of the career-making Read the rest of this entry »

The Tempest
Directed by Des McAnuff
Starring Christopher Plummer
June 11- September 12 – Opens June 25 @ Festival Theatre

By Jeff Maus

Depending on the quality of a production, Shakespeare’s reputation is usually necessary to carry his plays to varying degrees. Even if a version is light, it always has the words to give it some weight.

The Bard was given the night off during a Saturday preview, his script and ideas in very good hands. Des McAnuff, Christopher Plummer, and company, owned the play. Read the rest of this entry »

By Kerry Freek

Rufus Wainwright: All Days are Nights / Songs for Lulu
June 15 and 17 @ Elgin Theatre

Act One:

The sombre face in the picture above should give you a pretty fair indication of how the first act of Wainwright’s one-man show went down. Before the curtain opened, an unidentified man came out, greeted us on Rufus’ behalf, and brought tidings of Wainwright’s requests of us for the next half-hour or so, which included refraining from applause until his imminent “song cycle” had come to a complete end. We’d even have to wait until Wainwright left the stage entirely, as we were told even his exit would be “part of the performance.” Read the rest of this entry »

Via luminato.com

The Infernal Comedy
Written and directed by Michael Sturminger
Featuring John Malkovich
June 11-12 @ Massey Hall

By Daina Valiulis

“The first thing I learned was to lie — or, to be economical with the truth.”

One of the first confessions of the notorious Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger, played by John Malkovich, reveals both his charm and duplicity. A bloodthirsty wolf in sheep’s clothing, Unterweger carried out a prison sentence of fifteen years for murder in 1976, Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Jake Ehrenreich’s
A Jew Grows in Brooklyn
Runs until June 13 @ The Panasonic Theatre

By Jeff Maus

A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is easy to enjoy. It tells the story of 54-year-old Jake Ehrenreich, who grew from being a boy to a man, throughout his life surrounded by survivors of the Shoah. He was a moderately successful musician from a young age, working with Richie Havens and auditioning for KISS. He married late in life, and happily his survivor father lived to see his wedding in the mid-1990s. Ehrenreich’s marriage produced a young son and a happy family. Near the end of the play he mentioned in a sentence or two that he didn’t get a lot of joy from booze or drugs, and is a very happy man.

That’s it. I left the theatre thinking, “this is an off-Broadway hit?” Read the rest of this entry »

Mamma’s Boy
Ghostlight Projects
Written by Randie Parliament
Featuring Sky Gilbert, Randie Parliament, Kris Skjellerup and Briana Templeton
Runs until June 12 @ Factory Theatre Studio

By Jeff Maus

Before the house went dark, the songs “To Know You is to Love You” and “You Belong to Me“ played to set the ambiance. They’re songs that sum up a lot of the parent-children dynamic in Mamma’s Boy. The play is full of beautiful details like that, and like a picture slowly developing, you don’t appreciate it all until it is finished. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Jackson Hinton.

Frankenstein
Production conceived by Jonathan Christenson and Bretta Gereke
Directed by Jonathan Christenson
Production design by Bretta Gereke
Featuring Nick Green, Andrew Kushnir, Tim Machin, Sarah Machin Gale, Nancy McAlear, Dov Mickelson, Tracy Penner, George Szilagyi
Runs until May 29th @ the Bluma Appel Theatre

By Daina Valiulis

“Unhappy man! Do you share my madness? Have you drunk also of the intoxicating draught? Hear me; let me reveal my tale, and you will dash the cup from your lips!” – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Based very closely on the classic Shelley tale of isolation, woe and desperate longing for companionship and human connection, Catalyst Theatre’s Frankenstein alternates between achieving great success and falling into common traps of adaptations of literature — presenting some much exposition that the emotional undertones have no time to take root. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Kathleen Finlay

Wingéd
Whetstone Productions
Written and performed by David Tomlinson
Runs until May 8 @ DeLeon White Gallery, 1139 College Street

By Gabrielle Charron-Merritt

Wingéd, a new piece written and performed by David Tomlinson, presents adaptations of the stories of Icarus, Lucifer, and Phoenix. Linked by their (in)ability to fly, all three characters are played by an ever-changing Tomlinson and given their own monologue. The stories are unexpectedly and originally transformed. Through series of anecdotes, David Tomlinson provides witty back-stories and deadly accurate observations about humanity. Read the rest of this entry »