The fall theatre season is off to an incredible start, and October definitely has some delights in store! I’ll be attending the Next Stage Festival for the first time, and there’s plenty of great offerings from established and newer companies alike! It’s going to be a busy month folks!

Heroes of the Fourth Turning – The Howland Company and Crow’s Theatre

On a chilly night in the middle of America, one week after the Charlottesville riots in 2017, four alumni gather to toast their mentor Gina, newly inducted as president of their conservative catholic college. A daring look at the heart of a country at war with itself, their reunion spirals into spiritual chaos, clashing politics, and haunting revelations as they furiously grapple with their beliefs and sense of personal responsibility.

October 3 – 29

Crow’s Theatre – Studio Theatre – 345 Carlaw Avenue

Heroes of the Fourth Turning | The Howland Company (howlandcompanytheatre.com)

(EVERYONE I LOVE HAS) A TERRIBLE FATE (BEFALL THEM) – VideoCabaret and Crow’s Theatre

Cliff Cardinal and Karin Randoja are back collaborating for a third time on (EVERYONE I LOVE HAS) A TERRIBLE FATE (BEFALL THEM) which reveals a dark comedy about life, death, and what terribleness lives in between. Cardinal deftly performs multiple characters in this provocative and profound one-man-show, with Randoja’s darkly humorous twist on what it means to be human.

October 10 – November 4

VideoCabaret’s Deanne Taylor Theatre – 10 Busy Street

(Everyone I Love Has) A Terrible Fate (Befall Them) (crowstheatre.com)

Wildwoman – Soulpepper Theatre Company

Based on the shocking true story that inspired Beauty and the Beast, WILDWOMAN examines the lives of three very different women as they wrestle for survival and legacy in the 16th Century French Court of King Henry II.

Newly-arrived in France, Queen-to-be Catherine de Medici must contend with her unruly husband, a scheming maidservant and the king’s much-older mistress, as she struggles to give the kingdom what it needs most: an heir. But it’s Pete, the King’s pet wildman, a caged-oddity kept for amusement, who has the most surprising impact on their lives.

A viciously bold and sexy comedy, WILDWOMAN explores cyclical notions of gender, class and power, while asking what happens when we let the monster out.

October 5 – 29

Young Centre for the Performing Arts – 50 Tank House Lane

Soulpepper Theatre – Plays, Concerts & Musicals‎

The Wild Rovers – Terra Bruce Productions

The Wild Rovers is a mad-cap adventure that sees a famed band whisked away to a fantastical land of Athunia, not to be confused with their sworn enemy, Ethunia (and yes, they are pronounced exactly the same). These fictional countries find themselves on the brink of war and the loveable, hard-working band must help them find a path to peace through song! There will be puppets, there will be no intermission, and there most definitely will be no fourth wall.

October 14 – November 5

The Wintergarden Theatre – 189 Yonge Street

THE WILD ROVERS MUSICAL – Terra Bruce Productions

Bremen Town (Part of the Next Stage Festival) – Bremen Town Collective

After forty-five years of hard work and dedication, Frau Esel, the longest-serving housekeeper of Völksenhaus, has been fired and sent out to pasture. In a rage, she sets out on a winding journey to Bremen to live with her estranged son, meeting a host of trying characters along the way (and doing her best to avoid the stupid Kite Festival). 

Loosely based on a collection of folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, Bremen Town is greatly inspired and influenced by writer and director Prest’s time working in a seniors home in his hometown of Pictou, Nova Scotia and witnessing his grandmothers’ end of life journeys. Bremen Town picks away at our assumptions and fears about aging, survival, and the process of letting go. 

October 19 – 29

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street

BREMEN TOWN (brementownplay.com)

DEAD PARENTS SOCIETY: A DARK SKETCH COMEDY REVUE – Dead Parents Society

Good grief.

Dead Parents Society is a dark sketch comedy revue created by a group of comedians who each lost a parent at a young age.

Grief connects us to the most basic truth about humanity – everyone will experience loss in their lifetime. But the experience of navigating grief, in a society that teaches us to put our sadness away, taught us that the aftermath of tragedy can be funny AF. Directed by Canadian comedy award-winning director Kirsten Rasmussen, this is a show about love and loss with equal parts heart and humour.

October 18 – 29

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street

Dead Parents Society: A Dark Sketch Comedy Revue | Toronto Fringe Festival (fringetoronto.com)

ECHO – A Front Company

Echo and Narcissus lock eyes in a club – and the world begins to float. Heartbreak, love, sex, psychedelics, and an adorable dog all combine as the two relive their whirlwind relationship. In a modern retelling of the Greek myth, ECHO asks what place love has in a world in love with itself.

October 18 – 29

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street

ECHO | Toronto Fringe Festival (fringetoronto.com)

A Poem for Rabia – Tarragon Theatre in association with Nightwood Theatre and Undercurrent Creations

An epic journey across time, oceans, and tectonic shifts in political history. A Poem for Rabia weaves the stories of three queer women from the same bloodline: Zahra, a disillusioned activist in 2053, navigating a Canada that has just abolished prisons; Betty, in 1953 British Guiana, caught between her new secretarial job at the Governor’s office and the growing national independence movement; and Rabia, an Indian domestic worker in 1853, abducted by colonial ‘recruiters’ and sent sailing from Calcutta to the Caribbean on an indentured labour ship.

October 17 – November 12

Tarragon Theatre Extraspace – 30 Brigman Ave

A Poem for Rabia – Tarragon Theatre

Orpheus and Eurydice – Opera Atelier

Opera Atelier launches its 2023/24 season with the French 1774 version of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice, created expressly for Marie Antoinette. Gluck’s opera had already taken Europe by storm when he was invited to extensively rework Orpheus and Eurydice for the French public. A new French libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline was written to replace the original Italian libretto, and the role of Orpheus – originally created for a castrato, was rewritten for a stratospheric French tenor. The French premiere of Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice was an unprecedented success and changed the history of French lyric theatre.

October 26 – November 1

The Elgin Theatre – 189 Yonge Street

Gluck’s Orpheus And Eurydice | Opera Atelier

Dr. Faustus – Dandelion Theatre and Apothecary Theatre

This Halloween, Dandelion Theatre and Apothecary Theatre invite you to hell for Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, a play of dualities. God and Lucifer. Faith and Doubt. Loyalty and Betrayal. Good and Evil. Ambition and Regret. The play’s titular necromancer is split down the centre of his soul, between a desire for magical power and terror at what will become of his immortal spirit. Dandelion’ and Apothecary’s production strips Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy down to a personal interplay between Doctor Faustus and Mephistopheles, the demon he conjures to serve him. Once the deal is struck, and Faustus has surrendered heaven for worldly pleasures, the two figures become all things to each other: mutual servants, lovers, enemies and friends, trapped in a dance that will last for all eternity. The show explores themes of codependency, anxiety, art, and ambition as audiences are invited into a tour of one man’s very personal hell, and the demon he shares it with. What the audience knows but Faustus cannot is that he is already damned, and all of this has happened before and will happen again, forever.

October 25 – 31

Artscape Youngplace unit 101 – 180 Shaw St 

Our Media | Dandelion Theatre (dandeliontheatreto.com)

Love You to Death – Small but Mighty Productions

Small but Mighty Productions is thrilled to announce the premiere of “Love You to Death: An Original Canadian Murder Mystery Musical,” A thrilling and fabulously campy new production that promises to sweep audiences into a joyous whirlwind of intrigue, suspense, and love, celebrating the diverse spectrum of queer experiences and relationships.

October 25 – 29

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander St

Love You To Death: A New Canadian Musical — Buddies in Bad Times Theatre