Best Theatre of 2023

I use these theatre round-up pages to list everything that was meritorious rather than trying to limit the list to 5 or 10 best productions.  Just compiling the list is useful, as many of these in the first half of the year had slipped out of my memory banks completely.  But with some prompting, some of the details are coming back.  It doesn't appear I saw or did too much in Jan., so this upcoming Jan. is going to be quite a change!

Feb.
Things I Know to Be True (Mirvish)
Yerma (Coalmine)
King Lear (Shakespeare Bash'd @ Theatre Centre)
The Prodigal (Crow's Theatre)

March
The Baltimore Waltz (UT production at Factory Theatre)
“I love the smell of gasoline” by Claren Grosz (Lee Daniels Spectrum)

April
Vierge (Factory Theatre)
Low Pay? Don't Pay (George Brown)

May
Boom X (Crow's Theatre)
The Sound Inside (Coalmine)
She's Not Special (Tarragon)
Sizwe Banzi is Dead (Soulpepper)

June
I went to some poetry events like the Griffin Prize Awards ceremony and a reading at the Tranzac club.  I did see a show at Alumnae that was like a warm up for the Fringe but it doesn't quite make the cut.

July
Toronto Fringe - I saw so very many Fringe shows this year.  One of the better ones was a musical about the Zodiac and then one about a mail-order bride-to-be.  The Gay Agenda was good, as well as Good Old Days and Miss Titaverse.  I wrote up some mini-reviews at the time.

August
Midsummer's Night's Dream (Canadian Stage @ High Park)
Edward II (Stratford)
Les Belles-Soeurs (Stratford) - ok but sadly not as good as a community theatre production I saw in Peterborough!
Grand Magic (Stratford)
Gilgamesh (Soulpepper) - the great musical numbers were the real reason to see this production
Living with Shakespeare (final show out of almost 25 years of Driftwood's Bard on the Bus tours)

Sept.
The Master Plan (Crow's Theatre)

Oct.
Speaking of Sneaking (Buddies)
Spaciousness (site specific show at Fort York!)
Wildwoman (Soulpepper)
A Terrible Fate (Videocab/Crow's)
Doc Wuthergloom's Here There Be Monsters (Eldritch Theatre @ Red Sandcastle)

Nov.
Arden of Faversham (Shakespeare Bash'd @ Monarch Tavern) - a staged reading
The Lehman Brothers Trilogy (Canadian Stage)
Withrow Park (Tarragon)

Dec. 
Arcadia (Bedlam Players in NYC)
Monster/Here Lies Henry double-bill (Factory)
Hypothetical Baby (Tarragon)
Angels in America, Pts 1 & 2 (Buddies)
Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Crow's)

I did not like a number of "edgy" productions that the critics raved about, particular Fairview and Topdog/Underdog (both at Canadian Stage) and The Land Acknowledgement (at Crow's and later Mirvish), which Karen Fricker just raved about but I found dishonest and fairly tedious.

I truly disliked Howland's production of Heroes of the Fourth Turning.  I can't think of anything I actually liked about this, starting with the fact it was 2 hours with no intermission.  But mostly I didn't want to spend any time, let alone two hours, with a bunch of hard-core Catholic anti-abortion agitators.  I truly don't see any point in understanding their point of view.  I fully get where they are coming from, but I reject their attempts to impose their worldview on others who don't accept their moral precepts.  Understanding them better will not actually lead to some sort of hard-won consensus around abortion and abortion rights.  Instead the only thing to do is reinforce the political structure so that it rejects, with prejudice if necessary, those who claim the right to interfere with a woman's bodily autonomy in the name of religion.  (Incidentally, Hypothetical Baby was a much better piece of theatre that grappled with moral choices around abortion in a way that was thought-provoking and empowering; in other words, the reverse of Heroes of the Fourth Turning...)

I was a bit disappointed in Arcadia, mostly the contemporary scenes, which felt a bit shout-y at times.  But it is such an intricate play that I need to see it whenever it is produced.  Interestingly, it was playing in Raleigh, NC around the same time as the Bedlam production.  I likely would have preferred going to Raleigh and also seeing some relatives down there.  The flipside is I saw world-class museums in NYC, including stumbling across a compact Max Beckmann show at the Neue Gallerie.

Max Beckmann, The Bark, 1926

The most ambitious production was surely the two-part Angels in America at Buddies in Bad Times.  I thought they really pulled it off, though not everyone agreed.  Perhaps the single best thing I saw was The Master Plan at Crow's, followed by Sizwe Bansi is Dead and then perhaps Angels in America.  The Baltimore Waltz was surprisingly solid for a student production.  Wildwoman was quite good, and seeing it as a full production (not just the staged reading they put on mid-pandemic) really brought it to life.  I also liked Vierge quite a bit at Factory, and then the back-to-back monologues (slightly tweaked by the author Daniel MacIvor) with Here Lies Henry being the stronger of the two.  In general, I liked almost everything Factory put on (aside from Armadillos where I actually left at the intermission) and most of what Crow's Theatre put on, aside from Heroes of the Fourth Turning.  At Canadian Stage, it was basically a 50-50 split with a few strong pieces and then a couple I really disliked/hated.

I'm sad that Hart House Theatre really hasn't committed to putting on its own season, and I don't really know what the hold-up is.  I also was disappointed that Videocab didn't do The Cold War Part II in 2023, but I hold out some hope that they'll stage this in the summer of 2024.  My biggest personal disappointment is that Sing-for-Your-Supper never actually kicked off again.  There are hints it might restart in Jan., but I'll believe it when it actually happens...

I might circle back with more comments later, but this gives a pretty good flavour of my year in theatre.