Looks like April is going to be another busy month this year! You won’t be hearing much from me the first week as I’ll be away on vacation, but after that I’m hitting the ground running to bring you reviews of the most exciting productions in the GTA!

All is Love – Opera Atelier

ALL IS LOVE is a brand new thematically based program celebrating love in all its splendour through the juxtaposition of music of the French Baroque with French 19th and 20th Century repertoire. Opera Atelier invites you to experience a world where Amour – Love itself – propels the action and emotions, for better or for worse, of all of the protagonists.
Starring tenor Colin Ainsworth, soprano Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, Tenor Jesse Blumberg, soprano Meghan Lindsay, mezzo-soprano Danielle MacMillan, soprano Cynthia Smithers, soprano Karine White, and bass-baritone Douglas Williams.

April 11 – 14
Koerner Hall at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning – 273 Bloor Street West
https://www.operaatelier.com/season-and-tickets/2023-2024-season/all-is-love

shaniqua in abstraction – Crow’s Theatre in association with paul watson productions and Obsidian Theatre Company

An intrepidly daring one-woman play, the action follows an actor as she responds to a casting call and slips into a musing multiverse of narratives. With a sinuous poetic style and interweaving perspectives, watson brings her razor-sharp humour, vaulting imagination, and piercing cultural critique to a kaleidoscopic explosion that spins you into a big, black hole called: shaniqua.

April 9 – 28
The Studio at Crow’s Theatre – 345 Carlaw Ave
https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/shaniquainabstraction

The House at Poe Corner – Eldritch Theatre

Celebrating the 10th deathiversary and woeful return of Eldritch Theatre’s dreadfully dour Kindergoth Masterpiece, we welcome you back to the Grim Woodland of Weir, where the terrifying tales of Edgar Allan Poe are performed in petrifying perpetuity by twisted little toys that bear a striking, yet non-copyright infringing, resemblance to a certain “stuffy old bear” and his forest- dwelling companions.
Narrated by two lost souls, Edgar (Eric Woolfe) and Allan (Mairi Babb), and performed by a creepy cabal of table top puppets, aided with some truly horrifying parlour magic, these chilling fables are sure to send audiences into paroxysms of despair, madness and mirth. Dedicated to the dead child in all of us.

April 11 – 21
Red Sandcastle Theatre – 922 Queen St E, Toronto
https://eldritchtheatre.ca/poecorner/

Women of the Fur Trade – Native Earth Performing Arts in Association with National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre & Great Canadian Theatre Company, Ottawa

In eighteen hundred and something something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for twenty-first century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel.
This lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.

April 9 – 21
AKI STUDIO – 585 Dundas Street East, Suite 120
https://www.nativeearth.ca/shows/women-of-the-fur-trade/

Mad Madge – Nightwood Theatre in association with VideoCabaret

Meet Margaret Cavendish, 17th-century philosopher, poet, playwright – a scandalous Jill-of-all-Trades and mistress of none. In her unapologetic pursuit of fame, Madge ditches her dysfunctional family to join the court of an unruly Queen and leave her mark on history.
Paying homage to Jane Austen and Tina Fey in the same breath, this laugh out loud contemporary-period mashup suggests that perhaps a woman’s hunger for unbridled attention is not so shallow, after all.

April 9 – 21
The Theatre Centre – Franco Boni Theatre – 1115 Queen St W
https://theatrecentre.org/event/mad-madge/

A Public Reading of An Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney – Outside the March and Soulpepper Theatre

Fresh off the heels of Disney’s 100th anniversary, two of Toronto’s leading theatre companies Outside the March (Jerusalem, The Flick) and Soulpepper (Sizwe Banzi is Dead, The Seagull) team up to ‘reanimate the Head of Disney.’ A true joyride of a play, A Public Reading of An Unproduced Screenplay about the Death of Walt Disney is by Obie Award-winning playwright Lucas Hnath (Dana H., A Doll’s House Part 2), one of the funniest and most formally daring playwrights of our moment. The production stars Canadian theatre titan Diego Matamoros as Walt like you’ve never seen him before, and is directed by OtM’s Artistic Director Mitchell Cushman (multi Dora-Award winner for Jerusalem and Sweeney Todd). True to form for Outside the March, the intimate and immersive production will offer a radically different experience of Soulpepper: the entire audience will sit up on stage, with a very limited seating capacity.
A 70-minute, intricately orchestrated merry-go-round written in a style akin to a “hypercaffeinated David Mamet” (The New York Times), the piece will receive its Toronto premiere just as the original 1928 Mickey Mouse animated short “Steamboat Willie” has entered the public domain. Hnath’s play toys with such far-fetched concepts as: what if a powerful billionaire pursued his own immortality at the expense of the world around him? What if Elon Musk could doodle? And what if a melting world is no place to keep a frozen head from thawing?

April 13 – May 5
The Yonge Centre for the Performing Arts — 50 Tank House Lane
https://outsidethemarch.ca/the-experiences/a-public-reading-of-an-unproduced-screenplay-about-the-death-of-walt-disney/

TRAP FOR A LONELY MAN – Scarborough Theatre Guild

In a remote chalet in the French Alps, Daniel Corban, has reported his wife’s disappearance to the police. Soon after, a young priest delivers his wife alive and well. But is she his wife? Daniel doesn’t recognize her. Who is this woman? Why does no
one believe Daniel’s story? Is this a conspiracy to drive him mad? Why? Just who is telling the truth and to what lengths can a person go to distort the facts?
Recommended for age 14 and up.

April 12 – 27
Scarborough Village Theatre – 3600 Kingston Road, Scarborough
https://theatrescarborough.com/scarborough-theatre-guild/productions/trap-for-a-lonely-man/

Falsettos – Bowtie Productions

A seamless pairing of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland, two acclaimed Off-Broadway musicals written nearly a decade apart, Falsettos is the tale of neurotic New Yorker, Marvin, who leaves his wife Trina and young son Jason to live with his lover, Whizzer. Hilarious, heartbreaking and utterly unique, Falsettos is a contemporary musical about family, relationships, bar-mitzvahs, baseball and AIDS.

April 19-27
The Annex Theatre – 736 Bathurst St.
https://bowtieproductions.ca/falsettos

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – zippysaidproductions

In WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, we take you on a wild ride back to 1962. The post-war boom is in full swing, “progress” is taking place at the fastest pace in human history, what more could anyone want?

One night in the midst of this heady time, two couples in a quiet college town get together for drinks. And more drinks. As their personal dramas play out, the bright, shiny future suddenly loses a whole lot of its gloss. Fears ramp up with every top-up, and by dawn, confidence on all sides is in tatters. And yet… and yet… is there still a glimmer of hope…?

Deborah Shaw and David Agro of zippysaid productions are joined by two new faces on the Toronto theatre scene to bring this generational look backward and forward to vivid life.

Join us in the intimate Red Sandcastle Theatre and be a part of one of the most unforgettable social gatherings you’ve ever experienced.

FOUR MINUTES TWELVE SECONDS – Studio 180 Theatre in association with Tarragon Theatre

Di and David have devoted their lives to giving their son, Jack, every opportunity they never had. But a startling incident outside the school grounds threatens to ruin everything they’re striving for. As events begin to accelerate, Di and David begin to question whether they can trust Jack, his closest friends, or even themselves.
Studio 180 Theatre returns to Tarragon with the North American premiere of James Fritz’s taut, darkly comic, and deeply provocative Olivier Award-nominated drama. A thrilling exploration of issues of consent, privilege and the insidious opportunities new technology offers.

April 20 – May 12
Tarragon Theatre Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Avenue
https://studio180theatre.com/productions/four-minutes-twelve-seconds/

Tyson’s Song – Pleiades Theatre

Bryan and Tyson are two best friends out on their last boys night out, but when the evening goes awry, the two Black men are compelled to examine their pasts, and the true bonds of their friendship. Tyson’s Song examines the dominant thoughts surrounding Black masculinity, and mental health.

April 24 – May 19
Factory Studio Theatre – 125 Bathurst St
https://www.pleiadestheatre.org/tyson-s-song