News & Reviews — Kingston Theatre Alliance

“All families are dysfunctional,” proclaims the poster for Assumption: a Comedy. “Some are just better at hiding it.”  Assumption is a new play co-written by Jo McAlpine, Christie Jefferson, Cathy LeSage, and Anna Sudac. Presented by the Not So Amateur Amateurs and directed by Anna Sudac, this play was brought to life under a unique set of circumstances. Starting with a spontaneous idea by McAlpine and Jefferson to co-write a […]

At Hilda’s house, nobody uses the front door. Set in 1956, Hilda’s Yard follows an afternoon of mild chaos as empty nesters Hilda and Sam Fluck find their adult children hopping the fence in an unannounced—and uninvited—return home. Jokes are made, relatives are nagged, and heartfelt conversations are had. Hilda’s Yard, a comedy by Norm Foster, premiered in New Brunswick in 2012. This month, it appears at Kingston’s Domino Theatre […]

This review mentions sexual violence. You can tell a show is going to be a riot when the venue posts a list of what not to bring. If you’re going to the Brockville Arts Centre this weekend, their website has a long catalogue of forbidden items, including rice, dry toast, toilet paper, open flames, confetti, and supersoakers. If this list sounds familiar, you might already be humming the “Time Warp.” […]

I have a terrible secret: until Friday night, I had never seen Funny Girl. Not the show, not the movie. I’d never even borrowed the CD from the library, which I did with every other cast album I could get my hands on as a show tune-saturated tween. I have a foggy middle school recollection of hearing Lea Michele sing “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in Glee, but that’s it. […]

Smoky, sensual, and unsettling—welcome to Cabaret. This weekend, St. Lawrence College, showcasing students from the Music Theatre Performance program, presents the classic musical in all its doomed, debauched glory. Set in interwar Berlin, Joe Masteroff’s Cabaret (music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb) depicts the insidious creep of fascism into everyday life. Based on the play by John Van Drulen, which in turn is based on the work […]

An immersive student production transforms the Isabel Bader Centre’s studio theatre into a site of divine reckoning. Branden Jacob-Jenkins’ Everybody is a contemporary adaptation of the 15th-century morality play Everyman. A popular genre in medieval and early Tudor theatre, morality plays typically feature personifications of abstract concepts alongside angels, demons, and an ordinary human protagonist. In Everyman, one man—representing all of humanity—goes on an allegorical journey through the afterlife, addressing […]

The perennial City of Wine offers its first full bloom with Harmonia, a tale of forbidden love between a goddess and a mortal. Harmonia is the first in the nine-play cycle by local playwright Ned Dickens, which the Grapevine Theatre Project plans to produce as a series over the next five years. After an enormous effort by a network of over 300 theatre lovers, Harmonia is the magnificent fruit of […]

1922: Catherine, Frances, Charlotte, and Pearl are the four shining faces of the factory workers at the Radium Dial Company. For eight hours a day, they paint tiny numbers on pocket watch after pocket watch, laughing and talking as they dip their brushes in radium-laced paint.  When she first joins the company, Catherine is put off by her coworkers’ habit of licking their brushes to make the ends pointy, but […]

It’s a classic clash of generations: Canadian high school grad Tanya arrives in Ireland and is flabbergasted by her grandmother’s seemingly backwards lifestyle. Mary, Tanya’s Nan, is set in her ways— she prefers to cover the electric stovetop with a tablecloth and cook her meals on a fire, so-called progress be damned. Over a long summer filled with uphill bike rides, intercultural misadventures, and cups of tea with a mysterious […]

A combination of shadow puppetry, singing, hurdy-gurdy drones, cackles, moans, and good old-fashioned solstice sorcery brings a crowded living room to near silence on a cold December night. This is Birdbone Theatre’s Broom Dance, a show that has enchanted me twice this winter. The first time was at the Department of Illumination’s Firelight Lantern Festival in November, followed by a house show in Kingston’s Skeleton Park neighbourhood just before the […]

Like many, the idea of an online theatrical experience doesn’t excite me like it did pre-pandemic.  The anticipation of being involved with new technology has been dimmed by having to creatively engage with it out of necessity rather than curiosity for the last two years. This was the unfortunate attitude that I held when I went into the PXR (Performance and Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality) Conference. Immediately I felt […]

At the Domino Theatre, a by and for family Christmas meditation on what it means to believe is showing. Miracle on 34th Street as it exists onstage was adapted from the 1947 film of the same name. The premise of the show sees a stranded Kris Kringle (Phil Perrin) as he tries to spread Christmas spirit around New York City, encountering the unlikely trio of Doris Walker (Jennifer Tryon), her […]