Toronto author James Grainger’s debut novel, Harmless, reveals the potential for horror in everyday life when a weekend in the country among old friends turns into a search for their daughters who’ve vanished in the nearby woods. TRB sat down with Grainger to situate his new book in the haunted landscape of Canadian horror. TRB: How do you think horror fiction fares in Canada? JG: It’s an...
Reviewed in this essay: Kim’s Convenience, from Soulpepper Theatre Company. Written by Ins Choi and directed by Weyni Mengesha. Until February 11th at Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill Street, Building 49, Toronto. Reopens May 17–June 9, 2012. 416-866-8666 or www.soulpepper.ca. Building a play around a racial stereotype is risky business, especially when that business is a...
Reviewed in this essay: Loving the Stranger or How to Recognize an Invert, from Ecce Homo Theatre. Written and directed by Alistair Newton. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. One of the final slides projected onto the screen hanging onstage during Loving the Stranger or How to...
Reviewed in this essay: LoveSexMoney, from Theatre Brouhaha. Written and directed by Kat Sandler. Until January 15th at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst Street, Toronto. Part of The Toronto Fringe’s NextStage Festival. 416-966-1062 or www.fringetix.ca. If hotel rooms could talk, what stories would they tell? And would you really want to know what they have to say? Imagine the insights they’d offer...
Discussed in this essay: Tonight at the Tarragon: A Critic’s Anthology, edited by Kamal Al-Solaylee. Playwrights Canada Press, 2011. The book features work by prominent Canadian playwrights such as Michael Healey, Kristen Thomson and Jason Sherman, and launches, in fact, tonight at the Tarragon Theatre rehearsal hall, 30 Bridgman Avenue at 5:30 p.m. A funny thing happened with the rise of the...