Review — Kingston Theatre Alliance

“Can I give up being a good daughter to become a better mom?” Written by Sophia Fabiilli and directed by Evalyn Parry, Why It’s imPossible is a one-person show starring Zoë Sweet as Beth, a single mom struggling to raise her kid while working on her career. However, while Sweet is phenomenal in her role, “one-person show” is a bit of an understatement—taking four years to put together, the show […]

Amid the bustle of back-to-school season, a new local theatre club offers a charming take on an old collection of stories. Full of thought-provoking subject matter and peppy performances, The Spire’s Seniors’ Theatre Group presents All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Conceived and adapted in 1992 by Ernest Zulia with music by David Caldwell, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten is based […]

Mayhem, by the name of Mr. Marmaduke, comes to call at Mumberley Manor and chaos ensues. The Mumberley Inheritance, written by Warren C. Graves, staged at Domino Theatre with director Sara Beck and assistant director Christian Milanovic, is a fun romp that lampoons the conventions of melodrama.  Patriarch Sir Roger Mumberley (Phil Perrin) has, unbeknownst to his children Jack (Ben Hudson) and Daphne (Emily Kelly), frittered away much of the […]

What parts of yourself are you hiding? What do you filter out? Is it safe to be heard? Listen, I’ll be honest—things weren’t going too well for me last Friday. After forgetting my glasses, taking the bus to the wrong venue, and discovering that the lone ballpoint pen at the bottom of my purse had run dry, I almost gave up on seeing What Brings You In.  Luckily, the Kick […]

Hysterical Historical Improv delivers on its promise of making history hysterical. From local group Improv Kingston, local history comes to life in a way you haven’t seen before. Dan Walmsley directs, writes, and performs, with the help of additional performers Jon Britton and Henry Korba-Babcock (as well as occasional promised special guests, although none appeared in the performance I attended).  The premise of this “historical improv” is that Walmsley has […]

A stage set with only a wooden cross draped in lingerie, Christian Slut puts the sexual content right back into a Christian upbringing. The show is a one-person “confessional” (not the Catholic kind), written and performed by Erik Karklins, about their experiences as a self-identified slut while also being a devout Christian. They tease (literally) out the nuances between these two seemingly conflicted identities, critiquing restrictive religious doctrine. Despite its […]

Taking the “sketch” in sketch comedy perhaps a little too literally, A Sketchy Kind of Show is a performance by Collected Novellas, who are self-described as focusing on “subversion, quirkiness and social commentary.” Unfortunately, I found the show itself a little lukewarm on all three counts.  The performance held potential with its interesting start—it begins with a framing device of God flipping through Netflix on the seventh day of rest […]

From singing goddesses to living sculptures, strange and striking works of art have been appearing downtown as the 2024 Kick & Push Festival rolls out its summer programming. Specializing in one-of-a-kind, immersive theatre experiences, the festival’s tenth season offers a range of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it performances from July 25 to August 18.  Corpus Dance Projects’ Divine Interventions made a brief appearance at the start of the festival, bringing celestial wonder to three […]

Listen to the wind whisper the story of The Cape as Red as Blood—a loose retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood folktale as a folk musical. Written by Kathleen Greening, this is a contemporary version of the story with a powerfully feminine vibe—soft and caring, but not weak by any means, and not to be underestimated. The five storytellers—Nightingale (Syd Chinnick), Crow (Meg Gibson), Phoenix (Hailey Hatfield), Bluebird (Elsa […]

With 23 characters, including two animals, Circus Gothic is a unique one-woman show. Jan Kudelka plays all the roles in a truly incredible performance, as might be expected given that she’s had fifty years (yes, fifty) of performing this particular show in order to perfect it. This fact alone makes it worth seeing and informs a really powerful performance.  The story is a memoir of Kudelka’s experience joining the circus […]

A self-identified bitch and a boss—Crazy Bitch/Boss Bitch is a one-woman show written by and starring Thea Fitz-James, and centering around a millennial woman’s experience of being a corporate worker. She has 18 people directly reporting to her and is on the executive track but lately, she’s been wondering if she might be a bit crazy. The show follows her struggles with work and the prospect of a promotion, while […]

“I was in the car the other day, listening to music and thinking about loss.” So begins Threshold Theatre’s ABD with Mark the C, a gently humorous memoir of the 60s and 70s delivered from inside a DJ booth. Written and performed by Mark Cassidy and directed by Hume Baugh, the show traces Cassidy’s journey through small-town Ontario as a child of hotel entrepreneurs.  Let’s tackle the title letter by […]