April was likely one of my most busy months to date, with fourteen productions viewed and reviewed! May is shaping up to be full of fantastic productions which I am so eager to witness and tell you all about!

True Crime – Crow’s Theatre presents the Castleton Massive Production

Clark Rockefeller is a real life conman of the highest order, now serving a near-life sentence in a California State prison. Iconic musician and provocateur Torquil Campbell wants to try him on for size. What does it mean for an excellent fabulator to embody an excellent fabulator? In the end, does an intricate con differ that much from a successful work of art?

Torquil’s dogged investigation and impersonation challenges us to find the truth in TRUE CRIME and confront our cultural addiction to a good story.

Entirely scripted or absolutely extemporaneous, TRUE CRIME is a mind-twisting encounter with an artist obsessed with how we all fake it, one way or another.  Don’t miss this one week special presentation!

May 1 – 7

Streetcar Crow’s Nest Guloien Theatre – 345 Carlaw Avenue

https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/true-crime-2023

The Chinese Lady – Studio 180 Theatre & fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company in association with Crow’s Theatre

The Chinese Lady tells the story of Afong Moy, purportedly the first Chinese woman to set foot in the United States. Brought to the U.S. from Guangzhou Province in 1834 at the age of 14, Afong Moy is put on display for the American public as “The Chinese Lady.” As the decades wear on, her celebrated sideshow comes to define and challenge her very sense of identity. Alternatingly dark, poetic, and whimsical, the play is a searing portrait of Western culture seen through the eyes of a young Chinese woman.

May 2 – 21

Streetcar Crow’s Nest Guloien Theatre – 345 Carlaw Avenue

https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/thechineselady

The Elephant Man – Wren Theatre

The Elephant Man is based on the life of John Merrick, who lived in London during the latter part of the nineteenth century. A horribly deformed young man – the victim of rare skin and bone diseases – he becomes the star freak attraction in traveling sideshows. Found abandoned and helpless, he is admitted to London’s prestigious Whitechapel Hospital. Under the care of celebrated young physician Frederick Treves, Merrick is introduced to London society and slowly evolves from an object of pity to an urbane and witty favorite of the aristocracy and literati, only to be denied his ultimate dream – to become a man like any other.

May 5 – 28

The Attic Studio – 1402 Queen st east

https://wren-theatre.ticketleap.com/the-elephant-man/

Boom X – Kidoons and WYRD Productions in association with Crow’s Theatre, Theatre Calgary, and The 20K Collective

Welcome to the age of Pac-Man, Star Wars and MTV! Rick Miller follows up his hit show BOOM with the Toronto premiere of BOOM X, the Gen X stand-alone sequel that explores the years 1970–1995. It’s the second in Miller’s trilogy of solo multimedia shows, which collectively span 75 years of music, culture, politics, and technology on our planet.

BOOM X takes us from Woodstock ’69 to 1995, when the internet began to dominate our lives. Over 100 minutes, Miller gives voice to more than 100 colourful characters from the days of punk, disco, the FLQ crisis, the Cold War, and more. After performing BOOM X on three continents, one of Canada’s most celebrated international theatre artists returns home to Toronto with this astounding spectacle that has blown away audiences of all generations.

May 10 – 28

Streetcar Crow’s Nest Guloien Theatre – 345 Carlaw Avenue

https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/boomx

The Sound Inside – Coal Mine Theatre

THE SOUND INSIDE tells the story of Bella Baird, an isolated creative writing professor at Yale who begins to mentor a brilliant but enigmatic student named Christopher. As the two form an unexpectedly intense bond, their lives and the stories they tell about themselves intertwine in unpredictable ways, culminating in Bella making a shocking request of Christopher that neither knows if he can fulfill. Brimming with suspense, Rapp’s riveting play explores the limits of what one person can ask of another.

May 7 – 28

COAL MINE THEATRE, 2076 Danforth Avenue

https://www.coalminetheatre.com/the-sound-inside

The Sacrifice – Harbourfront Centre

Inspired by Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, South Africa’s award-winning choreographer Masilo roots her powerful rendition of this ballet classic in the rituals, rhythms, and sounds of Botswana – including the traditional dance of Botswana called Tswana.

Masilo is renowned for infusing her works – often inspired by balletic classics such as Giselle and Swan Lake – with contemporary and southern African dances, speaking to Black identity and feminism.

In preparation for The Sacrifice, Masilo and her company explored what sacrifice meant and still means to the Tswana people, resulting in a “deeply moving and astonishingly fresh” (The Observer) narrative rich in culture, tradition, and meaning.

May 16 & 17

Fleck Dance Theatre in Queen’s Quay Terminal

https://harbourfrontcentre.com/event/the-sacrifice/

The Rage of Narcissus – The Expandido Theatre Group

Playwright Sergio Blanco is preparing for a conference about the Narcissus myth in Toronto. Inside a hotel room, he goes over his speech’s last details, when he notices a bloodstain on the carpet, and starts a journey into the labyrinth of the self and the darkness within us all.

The acclaimed play The Rage of Narcissus is an intriguing blend. Part gripping thriller, fascinating and brilliant, part a beautiful intellectual examination of the Narcissus’ myth and an investigation of the self. It’s styled as ‘autofiction,’ the genre that centres the author’s subjectivity, creating dramatic reflections.

The queer Franco-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco writes himself into this play from multiple mirror angles. Blanco uses real details from his own life and mixes them with absolute fiction, and modern philosophy concepts to add impact to his increasingly disturbing narrative.

May 18 – 28

Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace – 16 Ryerson Ave

https://ca.patronbase.com/_TheatrePasseMuraille/Productions/4M/Performances

Inge(new): In Search of a New Musical – Theatre Myth Collective

Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? On the eve of her 40th birthday, Bridget finds herself at an audition with no available role for her. In come 3 other auditionees and together they must navigate their way through where past and present collide in absurd and mysterious ways in a “No Exit” meets “Six Characters in search of an Author” meta theatrical world. The piece interrogates ageism, misogyny, gender roles, internal programming, and more as it deconstructs musical theatre tropes while playing with form and structure. All coated and coded in musical theatre comedy!

May 25 – June 4

Red Sandcastle Theatre – 922 Queen Street East, Toronto

http://redsandcastletheatre.com/tickets/

Kelly v. Kelly – The Musical Stage Company and Canadian Stage

Set in 1915 New York against the backdrop of the rising suffragette movement, KELLY v. KELLY tells the true story of a mother and daughter divided by passion, money, and values. When 19-year-old heiress Eugenia Kelly becomes tangled in an affair with a seductive tango dancer, her distraught mother Helen has her arrested and charged with incorrigibility, but despite her life becoming a public scandal, Eugenia is prepared to put everything on the line for love. Inspired by the court case that scandalized a nation, KELLY v. KELLY is an engrossing battle between mother and daughter and an unraveling of what it means to be a woman in America on the cusp of enormous societal change.

May 26 – June 18

Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St.

https://www.canadianstage.com/shows-events/season/kelly-v-kelly