We've seen this script before with theatre opening up slightly last fall, particularly Crows' Nest being a bit more aggressive than most only for things to fall apart with Omicron. It looks as though the Province isn't going to shut down again, no matter what, but theatre is only going to be able to carry on if patrons, particularly the aged patrons that are still the bulk of their customer base.*
Anyway, I just watched Factory theatre's The Year of the Rat, which was digital but performed live. It was one of the better digital things I've seen. This week they are putting out an audio play called You Can't Get There from Here Vol. 2. I haven't generally been too impressed with audio plays, which seems to be Tarragon's entire slate, but it works a bit better when the pieces are conceived as audio-only from the beginning. After that, they are putting on two live performances: Among Men by David Yee, which is about Milt Acorn and Al Purdy, which will run in late April/early May. Then Wildfire runs in early June. I should eat up Among Men, as it is Can Lit squared, but it just doesn't grab me, though maybe I'll go if the reviews are glowing (not that I am on the same page as today's reviewers....). Wildfire sounds pretty interesting, and I plan on going to that.
Tarragon does have 3 live plays, beginning next week in fact, though none of them grab me. It's been a really long time since I've been interested in more than one or two of their shows, and this season is no exception.
That's the same with Canadian Stage, where I am completely out of sync with their artistic director, who is into spectacle above all. What a putz. Usually about half their season are dance pieces, which seems an unnecessary dilution of their brand. Anyway, the rest of their season is here, not that I plan on going to anything. Maybe next year.
Soulpepper is putting their audio plays back up, though I already listened to the ones that interested me. They probably have the most ambitious season of any company in Toronto. On paper I should like Dominique Morisseau's Pipeline, which is about a Black teacher who is struggling to keep her son out of trouble and finding that trouble follows him to an elite prep school upstate. However, I actually read the play and found it way too cliched. Erin Shields' Queen Goneril is basically a prequel to King Lear, showing how Goneril and her sister, Regan, ended up fairly distant to Lear even before the start of that play. Again, it should work better than it actually does, but in the end I found it disappointing. It borrows way too heavily from Lear, including a storm scene. I ended up leaving at intermission during a staged reading last fall. So I'll definitely be skipping that. They are doing a fairly traditional King Lear in September, and I imagine I'll go see that. (I'd like to take my son, though I expect he'll be up in Ottawa at Carleton by that point.) I may see Ins Choi's Bad Parent, playing at about the same time. Finally, after being postponed twice, they are putting on The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale in October, so that is something I'm looking forward to.
At the moment, Theatre Centre doesn't have any scheduled live performances, so I guess I'll just check back later. Nightwood is also struggling, not least because they lost their offices (and rehearsal space?) over in the Distillery. They are partnering with Canadian Opera Company to put on The Queen in Me, but that's pretty much it. However, I simply cannot sit through opera, no matter how many times I've tried, so this is also a hard pass for me.
Video Cabaret still seems dormant, though I don't think they've folded, which is what happened to East Side Players. Same thing with Shakespeare Bash'd. The Village Players in West Bloor have come through the pandemic (in better shape than East Side Players anyway) and have a live play (The Impossibility of Now) opening shortly. I think I'll probably go to this, maybe next weekend.
Red Sandcastle is under new management, mostly hosting eerie theatrical offerings by Eldritch Theatre, but they still book other events there. I may go to a couple of things in March.
Coal Mine Theatre has two plays in their truncated season: Baker's The Antipodes and D'Amour's Detroit. I have tickets to both. They were more or less sold out, but with the lifting of restrictions, they may now have more available. These may well be the best things still on this season.
The other main East Side theatre, Crows' Nest, is going to stick to half-capacity shows on Tuesdays and Wednesday and I think Thursday matinees. For the other shows, it will be at full capacity, which might be a little too much for me. I'll have to see how I feel. Anyway, the show I wanted to see the most was Rajiv Joseph's Bengal Tiger at the Bagdad Zoo, but it has been cancelled, maybe to come back next season but maybe not. Gloria has already opened, so I should get to that soon, and then George F. Walker's Orphans for the Czar follows immediately after. I'd rather this was one of his East Side plays, but it should be interesting. I see that Eric Peterson is in it, which does spark my interest a bit.
Just a few other things worth mentioning, the cancelled Assembly show Two Minutes to Midnight is coming back in April, and I'll almost certainly go to that.
Alumnae Theatre looks like it is still putting on Ruhl's In the Next Room in April, so I'll try to get to that as well.
Basically it looks like there are a few things to watch in March/April, then a bit of a lull, then more in June and over the summer, and then some end-of-season plays going on this fall. (I'm running late, so fairly soon I'll post on Driftwood's summer tour (back on -- yea!), Shaw and Stratford.) Not great, but not too bad, given what we have just come through. Fingers doubly crossed there are no more closures. Ciao!
* I guess we'll see what happens as the artistic directors continue to get more and more "woke." I've largely given up on Theatre Centre and Theatre Passe Muraille, as they really want to make a social statement with their work, rather than starting from entertainment first. And Buddies at Bad Times has completely fallen apart with the entire board quitting along with the managing director and then even the long-time bar manager was forced out. It's pretty awful to watch this place imploding after caving in to demands of the never-satisfied activists in their midst.
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