Toronto – For those who keenly feel the bite of Winter, even during one as mild as this has been (no snow on Christmas? C’mon), and despair that summer is further away than it’s ever been, it will comfort you to know that everyone’s favourite annual summertime fest of theatre and wackiness, the Toronto Fringe, is bringing the Next Stage Theatre Festival to a stage near you once again.

Now in it’s fifth year, Next Stage brings you a selection of remounts of shows from recent Fringe’s and beyond to warm your hearts and minds in the dead of Winter from January 4 through the 15th. Plus there’s an outdoor beer tent, which may not warm you that much, but the tent is heated, so at least you won’t get too cold. The Panic Manual will have at least a couple of reviews, baby permitting (I think this is going to be my new catch phrase. “Yes, I’ll be at your house party – baby permitting, of course”), but until then here are some projected highlights of the festival.

Uncalled For Presents: Hypnogogic Logic

A hit not only at last summer’s Toronto Fringe, but an award winning show in Montreal’s Fringe as well, I reviewed Uncalled For’s offbeat show last summer. It’s funny, inventive, and polished sketch comedy from a seasoned troupe who really know what they’re doing. Watch for the sketch about the “Falling Wish Foundation,” who’s hardboiled officers won’t grant your wishes for money or power but will happily bring Freddy Mercury back to life in your body if you ask.

Living With Henry and Tiki Bikini Beach Paradise Party A-Go-Go

Two shows that were also hits of the 2011 Fringe, though two I didn’t see myself, both these shows are musicals but slightly different in tone. Living with Henry is about living with HIV/AIDS; Tiki Bikini is a parody of 60′s beach party movies. So yeah, one is likely a bit heavier than the other, but they both got five N’s from NOW in the summer, for whatever that’s worth. See them both in the same evening and you might gain some insight into what it’s like to have a manic-depressive episode!

Love is a Poverty You Can Sell and Morro & Jasp: Go Bake Yourself

Next Stage is trying something new this year, staging a couple of shows in the Factory Theatre “Antechamber.” I don’t know exactly where that is, but I think it must be in the small bar space they have at the top of the stairs, near the entrance to the Mainspace. At the very least, it’ll be cozy. Anyway, Love is a cabaret show that apparently had a cast of eleven at the 2010 Fringe, so you’d have to think this is a somewhat scaled back version. Morro & Jasp are one of the city’s favourite recurring Fringe acts; this appears to be a new show, so if the space is small you might want to get advance tickets. Both should be worth checking out just to see how they use the space.

LoveSexMoney

There is significant buzz at the moment around Theatre Brouhaha, who’s playwright/artistic director Kat Sandler won the Fringe’s 2012 New Play Contest. This is noteworthy, because last year’s New Play winner, Kim’s Convenience, was a runaway Fringe hit. LoveSexMoney is not the play that won that contest, which was a work called Help Yourself, but rather is a show that had a brief run last February at Factory. Based on a 2009 news story about a woman in Nevada who attempted to sell her virginity online, it’s said to be a comedy that explores “intimacy in the Information Age,” which sounds like a name for a line of really bad romance novels. Anyway, sounds like it could be good, and if you see it and Help Yourself is good next summer, you can be all “well, I heard of Kat Sandler WAY before you did” to somebody.

For a full listing of shows and the festival schedule, check out Next Stage’s website, and watch for a couple of reviews this weekend.

Toronto – Remember when Green Day was just a smartass punk band who wrote songs about masturbation and named their breakthrough album after a slang term for poop? Yeah, I know, it’s kind of hard. After winning Grammys, penning ballads, having said ballad sung by a character on ER, they’re no longer a little punk band but full on rock stars and as such, have moved into the next stage of their career – transforming their American Idiot album into a musical. Now I will admit right off the bat that I’ve always been a little skeptical of the so-called “juke box musicals,” or as Ted Leo put it, “those half-assed musicals that cheapen (the) music and embarrass everyone involved.” However, unlike shows like Mamma Mia!, We Will Rock You or Rock Of Ages, American Idiot is based around an album that already was a concept album so it has that going for it. And so, despite my prejudices, I went in with a relatively open mind in hopes of being dazzled by the production.

First, here’s what was good about American Idiot – the music, of course.  After watching this show, I was reminded of how strong these songs were and noticed how well they worked as showtunes of sorts.  The cast were all likeable and good performers.  Van Hughes in particular was quite good in his role as Johnny, the lead character.

And now for what I didn’t particularly like.  As good as Hughes and the rest of the cast were, I felt that they didn’t really have a lot to work with.  Sure, Hughes really sold the role with the right amount of snotty attitude and a bit of charm, but really there wasn’t much to his character other than “stereotypical rebel punk guy.”  The rest of the cast also didn’t have that much to work with.  In fact, other than a few main characters, the rest of the cast is basically just nameless people singing bits of Green Day songs.  As far as exposition, there was little in the way of dialogue with the songs taking up the bulk of the time onstage and probably rightfully so.  I realize that many musicals rely largely on the songs themselves to tell the story, but I felt that the story itself was a little sparse.  And I will admit that I forgot many of the characters’ names and had to look them up afterwards.  

That said, it was an enjoyable production, albeit one that veered slightly into cheese every now and then (particularly the “Extraordinary Girl” scene involving wire-flying that just made me think of the “Streetcar Named Marge” episode of The Simpsons).  If you’re a fan of Green Day and/or musical theatre, you just might like this. 

So was it a half-assed musical that cheapened the music and embarrassed everyone involved?  Not quite.  If anything, seeing the songs in this setting improved my opinion of them.  Also, that Ted Leo video is even funnier now after seeing this.  That alone makes it worthwhile.

American Idiot plays at the Toronto Center for Arts until January 15th, get tickets here

2012 has begun. Deal with it.

We’ve looked into our crystal ball and come up with a few things we think would happen this year, besides you know, the apocalypse.

Here we go!

Seeing the success of Kanye and Jay-Z’s Watch The Throne collaboration, Canadian rappers Shad and K-os will collaborate on an album as well, only to realize that Ni**as in Paris,Ontario doesn’t have the same power

The declining American economy forces Ke$ha to change her name to K€sha

Doctors are shocked when Beyonce does not give birth to a baby while in labour, instead, they pull out 9 pounds of gold wrapped in a silk blanket.

Desperately trying to reclaim her place on top after a so-so showing from her most recent album, Rihanna releases another track about protective rain gear -Poncho. While the track is a hit in Central and South America, it fails to chart in USA.

Metric finally breaks up once Emily Haines realizes that she cannot fulfill her “each new album requires shorter shorts” rule, since it is not possible for her to find shorter shorts.

Jack White forms a super super band, consisting of all the members of the Raconteurs, Dead Weather and White Stripes.

The Strokes unveil their newest member – Kirsten Wiig, much to the chagrin of everyone not named Fabrizio Moretti. Band breaks up in front of a live audience on the season premiere of SNL

A newly divorced Sarah McLachlan launches a game-changing Lilith Fair, featuring John Mayer, Jason Mraz, Jack Johnson and all the other guys she’s been meaning to bang.

Despite raving success, Foster The People officially break up, because it really was just their school project and now they have to graduate.

Radiohead releases an album consisting of Thom York farting to dubstep, Pitchfork gives it 8.9

Happy New Year!

The gorgeous Toronto Centre of Arts was home to the opening of the award winning Broadway musical Memphis Tuesday night. Now as you know, I don’t general find myself in a theatre setting (or North York) but the lure of watching a Tony winning musical named after a city I am about to visit next March was just too great for me to miss out on.

Memphis is a play loosely based on the life of DJ Dewey Phillips, one of the first DJ’s in America to play black music on white radio. The musical plays out over a course of a few years and chronicles Dewey (renamed Huey…where’s Louie?) as he struggles to play black music on white radio and in the process, he meets and falls in love with a black female singer named Felicia.

The play starts off with Huey strolling into an all black night club, where Felicia is singing and the people in the club are doing crazy dancing (like you used to see in the Gap commercials). I personally, have never entered a club to see people doing choreographed dancing – maybe I am going to the wrong clubs. Anyways, as you would expect, all the black people in the club immediately stop what they are doing and tells Huey to leave (although I would have preferred if one of them said “You get gone, son”). Recognizing the racial tension within the space, Huey proceeds to tell them he is in love with their brand of music (if this happened in 2011, it would obviously be dubbed ‘blackwave’ or something) and that he wants to promote it on the local radio. The club’s owner, and Felicia’s brother has doubt about his character.

The rest of the show plays out like the movie Honey, where Huey struggles to gain acceptance from the black community and at the same time, struggles to put the music on the air. Soon enough he does play some black music on the air and of course, things start rolling. The youth start listening, people start dancing, haters start hatin’ and so on. I won’t spoil the plot but as you would expect, there are struggles, drama and ultimately redemption for the characters involved.

I’m not particularly sure how to review a musical so here are some short notes about Memphis. This way I don’t have to make any attempt in tying them together in some grand scheme.

- If I wasn’t so sure that Memphis took place in Memphis in the 1950s, I woulda swore that everyone on stage was a hipster based on their wardrobe. Cardigans, colorful plaid, skinny trousers, thick rimmed glasses, side parts, sun dresses – it’s like a stroll thru Trinity Bellwoods on a summer afternoon.

- Can’t believe they couldn’t of worked in Ebony and Ivory but for most part, the music was quite good. Who would have known Bon Jovi founding member David Bryan was capable of writing catchy doo-wop tracks. One of the things I liked a lot about the music was that it was catchy and told a tale without treading into typical show-tune territory. Like a night at shake-a-tail, with better dancers.

- Speaking of dancing, everyone on stage was fantastic. The choreography was a nice blend of what I imagine dancing would have been back then mixed with the physicality of dance shows these days. What I mean by that is that everyone on stage was completely too fit and can pull off moves that would normally break a person’s neck.

- One of the things that constantly amaze me at these musicals are the sets. It’s like watching a low grade Transformers movie. It might be a box one minute, but the next thing you know, they pull a few levers, press a button and that little box becomes a freakin piano. I kinda want whoever designed these theatre props to make all the furniture in my house.

- I also appreciated the story of a DJ struggling to play what he wants. As someone who has DJ’ed on various occasions, I can understand the frustration one goes through when you are not allowed to play what you want although in hindsight, I probably shouldn’t of cued up 2Pac’s Hit ‘Em Up at my friend’s wedding.

At a running time of over two hours, the musical might have seemed long for the casual musical goer like myself. However, with funny modern day jokes, good music, a nice story and exceptional dancing, Memphis was quite an enjoyable time. Those looking to dip their toes into this theatre world find Memphis to be a welcoming experience.

Information:
Memphis
Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge Street
December 6-24, 2011
Tuesday – Saturday @ 7:30pm * Saturday and Sunday @ 2pm
Wednesday, December 7 & 14; Tuesday, December 20;
Thursday, December 22 and Friday, December 23 @ 2pm
Saturday, December 24 @ 1pm

Tickets can be purchased online at www.DancapTickets.com

Toronto – Anyone who know me probably knows that I am kind of obsessed with the show Community.  One of Community‘s defining characteristics is that it gets quite meta at times.  So in the interests of paying tribute to the show now that it’s going off the air for awhile, but mostly because this idea just snowballed out of a joke between Ricky and I, I will be doing a review of Ricky’s review of Austra’s Dec. 1 show at The Phoenix.  See?  So meta.  And in doing so, I hope that my review of his review will eclipse the original review in importance, much the same way that Hearts Of Darkness is way better than Apocalypse Now.  And yes, that was another reference to Community.  I may be a little too obsessed with that show.  But enough about me.  Here’s what I thought of what Ricky thought.

Any good review needs to have a hook, a story of some sort that will snag the reader and draw them in.  Ricky accomplished this nicely with the old “discuss how the artist has undergone an image change” trick.  This also works nicely as an introduction for people who don’t know who Katie Stelmanis and/or Austra is.  Who are these people and why are they reading our blog?  That’s not important.  What’s important is they’re reading.  Or at least looking at the pictures.

Also notable is Ricky’s trademark use of adjectives to coin a turn of phrase such as “platinum blond midnight electro goth sexpot.”  I know I’m excited when I see all those words strung together.  Who wouldn’t be?  Why it’s almost as good as his recent review of Lana Del Rey where he described her persona as “mysterious DIY meets James Dean meets Vogue magazine.”  Why was that description better?  Because it rhymed, people.  Description is important.  A good review needs to be descriptive, but not too descriptive.  Much like Ricky’s concert photography, you want to leave something to the reader’s imagination.  Look at that photo.  Are you certain that it even is Austra?  Doesn’t the mystery make it better?  Of course it does.

Despite the fact that Ricky “felt rather disconnected from the show” for whatever reason, he still wrote up a solid review of the show while resisting the temptation to describe what he ate for dinner and avoiding copious spelling mistakes.  This is the sign of a great reviewer.  Ricky, I anxiously await your review of my review of your review.  The ball is in your court, sir.  

The first time I heard about CBC’s satire This Is That, I wasn’t sure what to think. I had jumped into the middle of an interview with a man from the “Toronto Arts Alliance” who thought that all Canadian Arts institutions should be moved to “Canada’s artistic capital – Toronto”. As absurd as the proposition was, the man was so convinced in his Toronto-centric thinking. He felt so darned believable in his absurdity that I did a mental double take. Combine this with the fact that this is coming through the CBC and you can’t help but laugh at being momentarily duped.

Seeing the show performed live at the Lower Ossington Theatre as part of Toronto’s Sketch Comedy Festival was a great opportunity to get a peak at how the show is put together. All characters are played by Pat Kelly & Peter Oldring. They fluidly move from segment to segment and juggle the roles of interviewee and interviewer like a hot potato. Their ability to step into very different and yet still believable characters is almost uncanny.

There was a Molson Canadian ad rep who wanted to rename the Northern Lights to the “Molson Canadian Northern Lights” and a Victoria-based cat lover who was campaigning for a cat park. One of my favourites was the head of the Canadian mint who announced an upcoming move to a completely paperless economy because “knowing how much money you have by weight is fun” and that going to the ATM would be like winning at the slot machines every time.

Although the situations were preposterous, the satire was biting. You could almost imagine knowing a person just like that. This was amazingly fun. I only wish Kelly & Peter would have interacted with the crowd a bit either before or after the show.

Last Thursday Kids In The Hall veterans Scott Thompson and Kevin McDonald played the Lower Ossington Theatre as part of Toronto’s Sketch Comedy Festival. They joked about how they’ve got their careers backwards. Most comedians start in sketch comedy, and with luck and talent move onto television or movies. Here we have two of Canada’s most accomplished TV-based comedians “regress” towards sketch comedy with their show Two Kids One Hall. Since the Kids grew up in Toronto, it felt like a big hilarious and occasionally racy homecoming.

Before I dive into the show itself, I’d like to point out that the Lower Ossington Theatre kicks ass. At least during the comedy festival, the theatre itself is licensed. This means that you can casually drink a beer while watching a show. Amazing! If I had only known this I wouldn’t have chugged my wine before getting into the theatre proper. Lesson learned for next year: get sauced slowly at sketch festival.

“I’m not saying that you should rape a centaur, but you could…” – Scott Thompson on the ethics involved in forced intercourse with woodland creatures

It’s amazing to see comedians that have already arrived. At this stage in their respective careers, both Scott & Kevin could continue to rest on the laurels of Kids and whatever random things they’ve accomplished since Kids, but they don’t. Their history of success gives them fuel to take risks others wouldn’t. This made for one hell of a funny show, with individual stand-up bits by both, as well as duo sketches that tied everything together with a bow of hilarious-ness. My cheeks still hurt from all the laughing.

There are some people, in spite of their every effort and bad habits, that will never age a day. Evan Dando of the Lemonheads happens to be one of those people. If anything, Dando has aged like a fine wine even with his much-publicized affair with drugs, a marriage with a model that has recently ended, and a self-proclaimed lack of ambition. Dando is now 44 years old, separated from his wife, and living a sober(er) life post-alcoholism (though he still maintains he likes taking mushrooms on a monthly basis).

For those of you who were born post 1980, a lot of this will seem completely obscure. But for women in my age group, Dando was briefly the world’s biggest teen heartthrob in that ’93-’96 time frame, gracing the face of glossy magazines and rivaling Kurt Cobain (as some kind of golden-haired and sanitized version of grunge music) and Oasis in terms of legendarily copious drug use, supermodel bedding (and eventual marriage), and making all of the other girls swoon. I didn’t really pay too much attention to the Lemonheads after It’s a Shame About Ray, but remembering that melancholy time period of my life, I was busy following Morrissey’s career nosedive with Southpaw Grammar and Maladjusted.

I wasn’t sure what to expect then, when Dando and his latest incarnation of “The Lemonheads” took stage in the latest in a string of “everything old is new again” one album tours. Touted as “Evan Dando and the Lemonheads perform It’s a Shame About Ray”, I was expecting this to be another in a series of stale cash grabs. This, after I’d sworn off all reunions–such wishy-washiness is pretty predictable from those with the ‘ol nostalgia bone. Dando took stage sporting a hoodie and good looks that seem not to have aged a day (and only then did I realize that at 44, he looks better than a 30-somethign Dan Cortez), a bassist that looked about 25, and a drummer.

Stiffly ripping through the set without pause, the packed and rowdy crowd certainly seemed to think he could do no wrong. He was egged on through his constant setlist glances and seemed unsure about which chords to play. Unless he was shoegazing, the memory could have been an issue here. There was one moment where he explained that they’d just restrung the guitar he was playing, which was not a good thing to do in retrospect, and certainly not right before a show. No matter, no one cared–everyone was just happy to hear the songs live again.

Skipping the tacked-on cover to Mrs. Robinson, Dando’s backing band was ushered offstage and he engaged everyone in a solo acoustic set, seeming to get more comfortable as he plugged along. This was an audience full of fans, he soon learned, and seemed genuinely touched that everyone knew the words to every song. The high moment came during Outdoor Type, when you could literally taste the palpable swooning of every woman in the room. Easing into things, Dando started to field requests from the audience, and boy were there a lot. Thankfully, only a couple of morons yelled for “Mrs. Robinson”, and were promptly ignored when he explained, pleaing for  “a song we’ve written”.

The band came back on again to shoot out hits like “Into Your Arms”. Then the encore of solo acoustic followed with a continuation of a barrage of requests and ended after one song. I suppose Dando was tired at this point–and after an hour and a half on a Monday, I suspect many others were too.

Overall I’m just happy he made it through the set consistently. And that he’s still alive.

In the 1950’s, the town of Darwin was a thriving, raucous and kinda dangerous mining community in California’s desolate Death Valley. After the mine was shut down, re-opened, and shut down again, the population dwindled to just 35 souls. With almost no infrastructure, no church, no jobs, and no government presence save the post office, the people of Darwin were left to fend for themselves.

“If they were to [take away my unemployment cheque today] I’d turn my life over completely to crime. For serious, I’d turn it over completely. I’m a pretty smart boy, I’d be a pretty good fucking criminal.” – Darwin Resident Robin

As you can imagine, a town of 35 people will collect its fair share of colourful personalities. There’s an ex-miner with a talent for art, a postmaster with the only job in town, a 20-year old transgendered youth, some pagans, and some nihilists who are convinced the end is nigh. Oh, and an anarchist that buries rifles in the desert in an anticipation of the apocalypse. Say what you will about the people of Darwin, but when Skynet makes the first move, they’ll be the ones that survive.

“Charles Manson? Well, he’s definitely strange… maybe even nuts … I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about Charlie Manson.” – Connie

“Charlie Manson is a piece of shit and he still is. I met the man and he’s a piece of shit.” – Hank (Connie’s husband)

Although this doc starts off a little slow, it quickly picks up speed as you get to know the inhabitants of the town. It’s an honest look into their lives, equal parts of sad, touching and funny. You may shake your head in disbelief at some of the things they say, but you can’t help but get drawn into this quirky little town.  The pace and the story-telling is bang on, and the one liners alone are worth the price of admission.

Darwin was featured at Toronto’s Planet in Focus film festival on Oct 15th.

The Evergreen Brick Works has become an institute in recent years for urban Torontonians to get a little taste of the outdoors without having to commute too far from home. Mostly known for a burgeoning farmer’s market, the process behind transforming the Don Valley Brick Works from an outdated and abandoned quarry/industrial site to what it is now was a long and difficult task. The journey of this development is the captured this documentary by Catherine Annau.

A fast paced documentary, Brick by Brick quickly dives into the story, introducing you to a variety of men behind the development, including the man at the heart of the story – Geoff Cape, the director of Evergreen (a non profit organization). his bright eye enthusiasm gives the story a lot of warmth and as the project struggle along financially, one can actually see the energy drain from his face at meetings as pencil pushers aim to cut corners to make the project work.

The documentary also briefly touches on the history of the buildings and it was a nice touch to hear what the former workers of the Brick works had to say about the redevelopment. For those interested in the technological perspective, the documentary goes to great lengths to establish that the Evergreen Brick Works is one of the most environmentally progressive buildings on earth.

Given that the this place is one of the most interesting landmarks in our city, I was particularly interested in this documentary and while at times it comes off as an infomercial for the place, it was intriguing to see the concepts and motivations behind transforming that space into what it is today. Go Check it out.

Brick by Brick: The Story of the Evergreen Brick Works
October 15, 2011 – 4:15 at the Rom