Review — Kingston Theatre Alliance

By: Malobi Elueme Five years ago, in the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, the King’s Town Players closed their doors. There was no send-off, no emotional goodbyes or one last show due to the pandemic.  The past weekend, the King’s Town Players celebrated their 10-season anniversary in bold and hilarious fashion: with a brand new production presented by Scurra Sacra. The Complete Works of the King’s Town Players (abridged) is […]

I went into the Kingston Theatre Alliance’s Artistic Council Meeting not quite sure what to expect. I had imagined something like a long boring board meeting: agendas, motions, votes. What I found instead felt more like a creative co-working space, where artists, administrators, and theatremakers gathered around a shared table (this time, a virtual one) to swap updates, brainstorm solutions, and ground ourselves in the state of Kingston’s theatre scene. […]

Warning: This article contains some spoilers for The Crackwalker. This article also contains reference to Substance Use, Child Abuse, Systemic Neglect, Sexual Assault, Domestic Violence, and Mental Illness.

A dark comedy, Morris Panych’s 7 Stories follows an unnamed protagonist, Man (Aaron Manier), as he prepares to jump from the seventh floor of his apartment building. However, his various eccentric neighbours interrupt him with stories from their own chaotic, comedic lives in ways that are often metatheatrical, leaving audiences to reconsider what we perceive as performance. Panych’s commentary is embedded into the humour of the play, in a way that may go undetected. It’s etched into each character’s incorporation of how they are perceived or the way they perceive others, tying into the ultimate idea that performances as we know them are more frequent than we may believe. 

Two farmers, a folksy artist, a collective theatre project, and a secret between friends kept for decades: what could go wrong? The Drawer Boy, an award-winning play by Brockville’s Michael Healey, tells the story of two old friends in 1972 rural Ontario. Angus (Tom Barnett) and Morgan (Patrick McManus) live and work alone on their farm, but their lives change when Miles (Stephen Jackman-Torkoff), a young actor from Toronto working […]

A wedding is widely regarded as the “happiest day of your life” but the stains of actually achieving that blissful status often turn the festivities sour. Bonnie (Emily Lukasik) and Brad (Henry Beasley) are throwing a stag and doe in preparation for their wedding. Unfortunately, after a terrible storm, Rob (Kyle Brown) and Mandy (Romi Shraiter) have had to relocate their wedding, and the only venue in town that can […]

Jake MacNeil (Pat Larkin) has long been in charge of the A.G. MacNeil woolen mill, but now is in the early stages of dementia. As Jake’s mind fades, so does his company, leaving his children Judith (Liz Simpson) and Ned (David Baker) to grapple with how to salvage their father’s life’s work. With an offshore company offering to buy the business, the future of the mill as well as the […]

When the TK Fringe began this year and I received my press pass I found myself thinking: “How much can I abuse this power?” Each of the KTA’s three summer critics were assigned five shows to review, so I knew not everything would be covered and I would not be assigned to see every show I was interested in. So rather than simply abuse the power of the press pass […]

A beautiful wedding has been ruined by the murder of the groom. The crime has eight suspects, and rather than bother a judge with the issue, Vic Vanderspank (Shanique Peart), the evening’s host, has assembled a collection of jurors (the audience) to decide by vote. The jury is not voting on who is guilty though: the trial is broken up into rounds with someone being voted off as innocent each […]

Whether you are familiar with the original novel by Kenneth Grahame, the stop motion film, the Disney animated short film, or the more recent 2016 musical, it is hard to deny The Wind in the Willows as one of the greats in children’s literature. The adventures of Mole (Liv Hendy) and Rat (Essie Latimer-Scahill) as they try to help the infamous Toad (Kai Kerr) out of his nasty habits have […]

Being a teacher is difficult: parents demanding the world for their children regardless of the effort being put in on the student’s end, a complete lack of social life because of all the time needed for marking, and to top it all off there’s the endless torment of your unenthusiastic pupils. Samantha Twiggs (Eleanor Daly) embodies all of these struggles and shows what happens when just about everything goes wrong for […]

It’s 1969, the Vietnam war is at its peak with more than 500,000 American soldiers overseas and to protest the war and advocate for peace, John Lennon and Yoko Ono are staging a bed-in at a Montreal hotel. Enter Micheline (Lilli McDonald) and Suzie (Gia Silva), two Canadian teens trying to hitchhike their way to Montreal to allegedly join the protest efforts. They soon meet Sammy (Kieran Chenier), a young […]