Review — Kingston Theatre Alliance

The Harrowing of Brimstone McReedy welcomes you into the room with a few carnival games—one in particular, ‘fast and loose,’ asks audience members to make bets on a piece of rope. Pick a side, any side, and if the knot tightens around your finger, you win. If you’re not caught, you lose. This sets the tone straight away for the show about to be played: either you’re caught, or you […]

When you walk into Stupidhead! at the Central Public Library, the floor is covered in zig-zags of candy-coloured tape that suggest—thanks to a paper mâché brain that gets wheeled out when the show begins—the wavelengths of the brain.

In his song “We All Try”, the brilliant songwriter Frank Ocean echoes the sentiment, “you must believe in something”, because it is this belief in something that drives our need to try.

Strap yourselves in for a wild ride at Butcher by Nicolas Billon, the fall installment of Theatre Kingston’s 2018/2019 season. This strong and dedicated team of Canadian theatre artists, guided by seasoned director Kathryn MacKay, succeed in bringing to life this complex narrative and the even more complex themes that come along with it.  The first thing audiences see when walking into the alley space is Steve Lucas’s meticulously designed […]

Following the successful run of A Comedy of Tenors, Domino Theatre is back with the second instalment of their season: The Mouse House, a thrilling and timely play by Canadian playwright Robert Ainsworth.

Theatre in Picton, Ontario, audiences can watch Mimi (played by Christy Bruce) go on a blind date, and even have the chance to participate in the date. Blind Date is part improv, part clowning, part miming, and makes for a fun night out for audience members of all kinds.

Two Filipina nurses walk into Arborfield Memorial Hospital. You won’t believe what happens next! Marie Beath Badian was inspired to write Prairie Nurse by real people, including her mom, a nurse who immigrated from the Philippines to Canada, Penny, another Filipina nurse, and Pat Hackett, a candy striper at the hospital. Prairie Nurse is bright, energetic, and bears all the markers of a TV sit-com—wild misunderstandings, over the top characters, […]

A new Canadian farce! Playing in the Springer Theatre until August 18, The Canadian by this new whimsical physical comedy world premiered by Thousand Islands Playhouse – takes the audience through a whirlwind of events so calculated and carefully timed that they could all crumbling down upon an accidental early entrance or line fumble. Director Rob Kempson reflects upon this in his Director’s Note, equating a farce to a “complex […]

Upon entering the Firehall theatre, there was a sense of familiarity. The stage was dressed as a pub, complete with TV screens playing soccer games (or, since Midsummer is set in Edinburgh, “football” games) and the sound of chatter and dishes that blended smoothly into the sound of the audience talking amongst themselves. In his director’s note, Brett Christopher refers to the universality of the story that is about to […]

From TIP producing Ken Cameron’s Harvest, to Festival Players producing Michael Healy’s The Drawer Boy, there exists a trend in rural Canadian theatre of matching the type of theatre produced to the place in which it’s being produced, and the people for which it’s being produced. Both myself and audience members alike very much enjoy this trend, as it is a means of connecting to a theatre’s audience on a […]

The first glimpse that Kingston got of Beta’s Baby came one year ago, when creators Vanessa Smythe, Mitchell Cushman, and Nick Bottomley from the Toronto-based theatre company Outside the March held a free workshop as a part of the 2017 Kick & Push Festival. The goal was to devise an immersive theatre experience that paid homage to VHS rental stores. Smythe describes the show as a “love letter to the […]

I felt like I was witnessing a live version of a Black Mirror episode when sitting down to watch Flashing Lights in the Regina Rosen Auditorium in The Grand Theatre. This show is a  co-production of Ahuri Theatre & Bad New Days Theatre Company. Bad New Days is a company that concerns itself with creating and performing theatre of gesture that is contemporary and poetic. Let me break that down […]