The Wizard of Oz: The Toto-ly Awesome Family Musical - Theatre Review

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The Wizard of Oz: The Toto-ly Awesome Family Musical - Theatre Review

Confession time; I love Christmas. I love the lights and the carols and the shiny wrapping paper, I love the cookies and the pine boughs, and I even love the inevitable crowds and the self-indulgence of sky-high prices for a mug of mulled wine at one of the many Christmas markets around the city.

When I talk about the Christmas miracle that is the revived Ross Petty / Canadian Stage holiday pantomime, The Wizard of Oz: The Toto-ly Awesome Family Musical, the festive spirit will very much be in the room with us. After all, we don’t go to those Christmas markets to eat the mediocre food or shop for tchotchkes. We go for the experience of being swept away in a tide of good cheer with a host of other lovely strangers brimming with good will, and right now, warm and fuzzy is a metric I’m ready to consider.

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The Master Plan - Theatre Review

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The Master Plan - Theatre Review

There’s a particular kind of joy that comes from a Wikipedia or TedTalk rabbit hole. Social media like TikTok feels more passive, with a single swipe bringing us an endless carousel of amusement. But when a question sparks your curiosity, like “Why did Target fail so catastrophically in Canada?”, you become a scholar, digging through piles and piles of information, sifting, parsing, learning. It’s the same drive that leads many of us to podcasts and documentaries on history or science. Calling it “edutainment” feels a bit reductive, but a true story can be fascinating.

The revival of The Master Plan, a Crow’s Theatre/Soulpepper joint production, is a testament to this. It is a true story, an ongoing story, and it’s a story about us, about Toronto. It is heartbreaking and hilarious. And it’s all about land use planning. But I promise you that it’s absolutely fascinating.

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Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical

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Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical

The Toronto Fringe Festival is back in all its beautiful, messy, enthusiastic creative energy. What a joy! Here’s the second of two Fringe reviews for shows seen within a 24-hour window. We’re finishing with Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical.

Have you ever known that you were witnessing something that was destined to get real big, real fast? There have definitely been Toronto Fringe shows like that; The Drowsy Chaperone at 1998’s festival went on to win five Tony awards, and in 2009 My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding graduated to a full-budget Mirvish production, a Canadian tour, and a little follow-up show you may have heard of called Come From Away.

We’re overdue for another Fringe sleeper headed towards monster stardom, and it’s here. Our Little Secret: The 23&Me Musical has all the hallmarks of a hit. Stand in whatever line you need to, do whatever you can to catch this show before it goes nuclear. You’ll have bragging rights that you were there at the beginning.

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Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding - Theatre Review

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Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding - Theatre Review

The Toronto Fringe Festival is back in all its beautiful, messy, enthusiastic creative energy. What a joy! Here’s the first of two Fringe reviews for shows seen within a 24-hour window. We’re starting off with Maggie Chun’s First Love and Last Wedding.

I’ve got a friend who introduced himself to me by cheerfully asking “So, what small Ontario town are you from?” The fact that I am not from a small Ontario town and did in fact grow up in Toronto makes me an anomaly, he claims. Toronto is full of people from small towns looking for something different. Not necessarily better, he says - just different.

Maggie Chun doesn’t think she’s looking for different. It’s the morning of her wedding day in tiny Windser, Ontario (yes Windser with an e). Her dress is lovely, her best friend/wedding planner has every detail down to the cherubs sculpted from butter on lock, her intended has a bright career ahead of him working in the combination mayor’s office and deli. And yet (there’s always a yet), when her childhood crush walks through the hotel lobby dressed in a Wes Anderson-esque pink bellhop’s uniform, different starts to look a lot more interesting.

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Theatre Review

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Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat - Theatre Review

Do you remember the first musical you ever saw? I do. Vividly. It was 1993 and my parents took my sister and I to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, starring Donny Osmond (ok, technically we saw his understudy, but to be honest I think my mom was a lot more excited about Donny Osmond than I was). The point is, that day 30 years ago sparked a love of musical theater that I’ve carried with me my whole life. And I know I’m not the only one who had that experience.

If you’re not familiar with the story of Joseph and his fancy coat, let’s start there. This story is actually taken from the Bible (what Jewish people call the Torah and what Christians refer to as the Old Testament), an idea likely sparked by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s previous success with Jesus Christ, Superstar. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat tells the story of a young man named Joseph who lived in ancient Canaan with his father Jacob and his eleven brothers. It chronicles his unlikely rise to prominence thanks to his uncanny ability to interpret dreams; something he actually predicted in his dreams during his youth. The story of Joseph and his brothers has been told for thousands of years - and the musical itself has been around since the 1970s - but somehow this story remains timeless.

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