Theatre 2026: Kimberly Akimbo, &Juliet, Some Like It Hot, Shucked (Again!)

Between January to March 2026, four of the live theatre shows on our schedule are ones that my husband Rich and I have previously watched within the past 3 years. Prior to our self-imposed boycott of the United States, we made annual trips to watch Broadway shows before being sidetracked by COVID closures. To make up for it once the pandemic was over, we returned to Manhattan and attended four musicals and one play in the span of four days. As it turned out, 3 of the 4 musicals (Kimberly Akimbo, Some Like it Hot and Shucked) are now part of our 2025/26 Mirvish and Off Mirvish subscription series. This reiterates the fact that we don’t need to travel to the United States to have the chance to watch good theatre. There are enough home-grown productions plus traveling road shows to more than fill up our schedules and whet our appetites. Another musical that we already watched before is &Juliet, which was part of our 2022 Mirvish subscription series. Since I wrote about these shows when I first watched them, you can click on my links to our first viewings read my initial impressions. On these second viewings, I will merely comment on the differences that I noticed between the two productions in each case.

Kimberley Akimbo won the Tony award for best new musical in 2023 but is a smaller, more intimate show than the flashier big Broadway productions like Some Like it Hot.  Perhaps that is why despite its critical acclaim, the former show is part of our off-Mirvish subscription series in the smaller CAA Theatre as opposed to the latter which is staged in the much larger Ed Mirvish Theatre.  Kimberly tells the story of a teenage girl with a rare disease that ages her body four times faster than normal.  Although she looks like she is 64, emotionally and intellectually, she is still her natural age of 16.

When we first watched the musical on Broadway, I was blown away by how believable actress Victoria Clark was in portraying an awkward, gawky but ever optimistic and determined teenage girl. Clark sold this with her vocal delivery, movements, facial expressions, and that mischievous glint in her eyes. While watching Clark as Kimberly, I totally bought into the conceit of the story. The Toronto production starred Canadian stage icon Louise Pitre who we have seen in many productions including Blood Brothers, Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, and Mamma Mia, in each case playing an adult. Perhaps it was my familiarity with Pitre’s previous roles but when she played Kimberly, I could not properly suspend my disbelief to see her as a teenager in an elderly body.  I just saw an older woman wearing youthful clothing.

As with most road shows, the stagecraft had to be scaled down for the Toronto production, which was performed on a much smaller stage than on Broadway to begin with.  This made ice skating scenes and dance numbers feel  more constrained than I remembered.  But the biggest difference that I noticed happened in a scene (slight spoiler) where Kimberly and Seth were on a road trip and writing postcards home.  On Broadway, video stills were broadcast in the background to illustrate their adventures.  In the Toronto version, the family sat at a table holding postcards in their hands that we could not see, so we had to imagine the trip based on the dialogue. It wasn’t a big deal but does illustrate what is lost in a touring show.

&Juliet is a jukebox musical, featuring songs by prolific Swedish songwriter and producer Max Martin. It tells the story of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne tinkering with the ending of Romeo and Juliet, exploring what would happen if Juliet did not kill herself.  I felt skeptical about revisiting this musical as part of our 2025/26 Mirvish subscription series since it has just been a few years since we watched it for the first time as part of the 2022/23 Mirvish lineup.  I thought that the initial excitement of experiencing a new show for the first time would be lost on second viewing, now that I knew the story and what to expect. I was totally wrong!  Right from the first notes of the Backstreet Boys’ Larger than Life, I was totally immersed and entertained again by this lively and fun show that cleverly uses the lyrics of familiar pop songs to advance the plot.

The staging felt familiar in that it included the same “ROMEO” and “&JULIET” neon signs, the rotating circular walkway in the centre of the stage, and the trap door from which a platform rose propelling Juliet into the air as she sang Katy Perry’s anthem “Roar”.  There might have been more use of video to indicate the travel from Italy to Paris France.  

This second staging of &Juliet in Toronto is a “sit-down” production that is intended for an extended run at the Royal Alexandra Theatre with an all-Canadian cast in the main roles. Canadian performers Vanessa Sears as Juliet, the ubiquitous George Krissa as Shakespeare, Julia Mclellan as Anne, Sarah Nairne as Angelique and David Silvestri as Lance were all stellar in their roles.  One thing to we noted watching this show at the Royal Alexandra Theatre is how great the acoustics are here, especially compared to the Ed Mirvish Theatre where we always have trouble hearing as the sound is consistently muddled.  At the Royal Alex, the voices are crystal-clear!

Some Like it Hot was one of our favourites of the five shows that we watched in New York, so it was disappointing that both Rich and I felt the touring show in Toronto felt flat in comparison.  It didn’t help that it was held at Ed Mirvish where once again, the sound quality and acoustics were lacking. I was particularly distracted by the speaking and singing voice of the actress playing Sugar, the female lead and romantic love interest.  This role calls for a vocal performance that ranges from sultry to earnest to spunky, all of which was delivered on Broadway.  The voice of the actress in the Toronto production was overly nasally and slightly annoying for me. Luckily, where this show did live up to comparisons with our first viewing was in the dancing and choreography.  In particular, the climatic chase scene involving many moving doors was a highlight, just like the first time.

What made our attendance at this performance most memorable were the two major technical issues that arose.  At the start of the show, we received the usual announcements to turn off cell phones and not take photos/videos and then the lights dimmed but the show did not start.  We sat in silence in the dark for several minutes before the lights went on again. A few minutes later, the lights re-dimmed and the show finally started. Things went relatively smoothly until the second last song of the first act before the intermission.  The scene was the lavish Hotel Del Coronado decorated with a large chandelier.  As the character Osgood come out to sing “Poor Little Millionaire” surrounded by dancing bellhops, the chandelier started to shake and wobble. The actors froze and a crew member off stage desperately gestured for them to scatter.  Osgood made some quip before the curtain came down and once again the audience sat in silence for many minutes while they fixed the set issues backstage.  I have never been to a show before where there were not one but two lengthy interruptions.

Finally, the last show that we watched for the second time was Shucked, a hilarious romantic comedy/musical about a tight-knit corn-growing community that had the audience howling with laughter from start to finish when we saw it on Broadway. Unfortunately, once again the touring show did not quite live up to the original production. Part of the issue was the stellar casting in the Broadway version that would have been impossible to reproduce. The two OBC (Original Broadway Cast) standouts were Alex Newell playing Lulu and Andrew Durand playing Beau. Their singing and charismatic acting performances took the show to the next level and their touring counterparts paled in comparison.  After being dumped by his finance Maizy, Beau’s lament “Somebody Will” as sung by Durand was a nuanced mix of defiant bravado and emotional heartbreak.  In Toronto, the song just sounded loud and shouty. Similarly, there will never be a performance of Lulu’s “Independent Woman” to beat the tour-de-force, award-winning rendition by Alex Newell.

The timing of the jokes felt a bit off in the road show and while the audience was definitely laughing, it was not the same continuous, uproarious laughter that we experienced the first time. In Toronto, the staging of the dance number “Best Man Wins” was scaled down and simplified compared to the intricate barrel-rolling, plank-jumping choreography in the original production.  But most inexplicably, the opening song of the second act was changed from the tongue-in-cheek, irreverent number “We Love Jesus” to the bland, expositional new song “The Ballad of Rocks”.  Perhaps this was to appease bible-thumping destinations on the tour but it was not a good change.

Having said all that, the touring version of Shucked is still a very funny, entertaining show that will please any crowd who doesn’t have the original to compare against. Some of the best gags come from the non-sequitur, deadpan patter of the character Peanut who muses about anything that comes into his brain.  The show is known for changing these jokes with each performance. At our performance in Toronto, some of the ones we heard included “What do people in China call their good plates?” and “Both politicians and babies need to be changed frequently … for the same reason”.

Having watched a lot of theatre over the years, we realize that the original production is usually hard to beat. But just being able to watch any version of an interesting Broadway or West End show at all without making the expensive trip to those destinations makes attending a touring production well worth it.  We are continually grateful that we live in a city that offers us such a vast and wide variety of live theatre choices.

Theatre 2026: The Surrogate @ Crow's Theatre

As its name alludes to, The Surrogate is a fascinating play about surrogacy that is layered with thought-provoking legal and ethical issues spanning politics, religion, race, sexual orientation, identity, class, wealth, privilege, lack of universal healthcare, bodily-autonomy, female agency, and more.

Sameer and Jake are a gay married couple from Manhattan who entered into a surrogacy contract with Marya, a Muslim woman from Houston, Texas. Problems ensue when Marya, who is 28 weeks into her pregnancy, becomes seriously ill while visiting her son at college in Louisiana. While commercial surrogacy is legally binding in states like California and accepted with conditions in most other states including New York State and Texas, it is prohibited and not considered legal in Louisiana.

Sameer is an aggressive lawyer who understands the danger in the situation. He races to Marya’s hospital to try to have her transported back to Houston. Were she to give birth while in Louisiana, their contract would be deemed invalid and Marya would be considered the mother of the baby, despite having no genetic connection to the child.  He spars with an antagonistic and homophobic nurse named Christina, who blocks Sameer against taking any action that could endanger her patient.

Jake is an aspiring writer who hopes to write about their surrogacy experience but is thus far financially dependent upon Sameer. You can see the inequality in their power dynamic even in the way they are dressed.  Sameer is in a suit and tie while Jake wears a casual shirt and slacks. Jake arrives at the hospital and tries to be the calming voice of reason, but soon arguments erupt as secrets emerge from all sides.

Playwright Mohsin Zaidi was born in Britian to Pakistani parents, raised as a Muslim and Oxford-educated as a barrister, who then moved to New York to practice law before giving it up to focus on writing.  His award-winning debut book “A Dutiful Boy” published in 2020 was his memoir on growing up gay in a Muslim family.  Many of his own attributes and experiences seem to be imbued into the play and especially in the character of Sameer.

In Sameer, Zaidi created a complex character who struggles with the dichotomy between his Muslim upbringing and his identity as a gay man who craves acceptance from his disapproving mother, both of his lifestyle choices and of his white husband Jake who she refuses to acknowledge. Sameer is also portrayed as a Canadian expat which accentuates the differences in the healthcare systems between the two countries.

Once again, the staging at a Crow’s Theatre is fantastic, set as a thrust stage with audience on three sides in the intimate Studio Theatre.  A hospital bed with a monitor and chair are placed at the far end of the stage backed by a large mirror that highlights Marya when she is lying on the bed so that she can be seen by all the audience regardless of their seating locations. Long fluorescent-like “hospital” lighting hangs above the length of the stage. They start off emitting that typical yellowish hue found in older medical facilities but change to bright red and blue colours during dramatic moments and occasionally momentarily fade to black. Sound design was experienced before the play even started with the occasional voice heard from an intercom calling “Transport requested to ICU” or “Code Blue ICU”.

While the focus was often directed at the hospital bed where Marya lay for most of the play, there were also heated conversations happening between the other characters who paced along the long empty space in the centre of the stage floor.  A chair in the first row on either side of the stage was deliberately kept empty, where Sameer and/or Jake would sit during certain scenes. We paid for “Tier A” seating facing the front of the stage, so we had the best vantage point of all the action. Although we were farthest from the bed, the reflection in the mirror allowed us to clearly see what was happening there while the scenes away from the bed occurred directly in front of us and we had a good view of the characters when they sat in the chairs.  The viewpoint was not always as good for the people on either side of the stage since they were often looking at least one character’s back.

This play was exhilarating to watch and spurred lengthy discussions afterwards. For me, that is always the sign of an impactful and memorable show.  Hearing about the issues with American healthcare and how illness was the leading cause of bankruptcy made me so grateful to be Canadian. This production of The Surrogate is a world premiere so we, as Canadians, saw it first. Given that compensated surrogacy is viewed so differently in each American State, and that it is illegal in Canada just like in Louisiana, it will be interesting how this play is received in each jurisdiction.

So far, other than Rogers v. Rogers, this has been my favourite play of the 2025/26 Crow’s Theatre season.

Theatre 2026: The Neighbours @ Tarragon Theatre

The Neighbours is a dramatic play by Canadian playwright Nicolas Billon, who also wrote “The Butcher” which remains one of the most intense and exciting performances of live theatre that we have ever experienced.  We first came across Billon’s writing when we watched the 2014 movie Elephant Song.  Billon presents interesting characters that gradually reveal their true selves, be it their secret identities or hidden agendas, and mysterious plots that that are initially disorienting with information slowly being fed to the audience a bit at a time until all becomes clear. Each of the three Billon works that we’ve watched dealt with a serious theme—genocide in The Butcher, mental health in Elephant Song and complicity in The Neighbours.

The Neighbours is set in the suburban neighbourhood of Stanley Court as cleverly illustrated by the set design.  The houses on the court are depicted by numbered rectangles on the stage floor while two sets of sparse furnishings on either side of the stage represented the home of longtime residents Denise and Simon on the right along with their daughter Sophie who is coming home from college to visit, and Mr. Au Yeung Wei on the left.  Most of the play focuses on Denise and Simon as they discuss recent events.

What starts off as banal conversation about summer barbeques and idle gossip about their neighbours takes a darker turn when they reveal that something shocking and evil has happened at the house across from them. This house is lit up on the stage floor and suddenly the broken fragments of houses dangling from above the stage make sense. They represent the hidden horrors that had been lurking in the seemingly quiet and peaceful suburban neighbourhood, foreshadowing that all was not well.

As Denise and Simon recall the traumatic discovery, discussions turn to whether or not they should have sensed that something was wrong and somehow intervened. The couple break the fourth wall to address the audience, as if trying to convince us that they are good people and definitely would have helped had they known. There is some debate over the fine line between caring enough to form communal and neighbourly bonds versus “minding our own business” to respect people’s privacy. Did they ignore warning signs so as not to get involved? Are they in any way complicit by choosing to turn a blind eye?  I am reminded of a line from the Robert Frost poem “Mending Fences” which states “Good walls make good neighbours”.

While Simon tries a bit too hard to prove that he is a “good man” and initially comes across as jovial and good natured, his throwaway comments show signs of misogyny, homophobia and racism including remarks directed at their Chinese neighbour Mr. Au Yeung Wei who Simon dismissively nicknames “Zoom Zoom”.  Throughout most of the play, Mr. Au sits quietly in an armchair in his own home, reading a book and drinking tea from a pink teapot that we learn later holds significance both for him and for Sophie. His silent presence creates a slightly distracting unease and tension for the audience as we glance at him occasionally wondering how he would contribute to the plot. Perhaps that was his purpose, to make us question whether there was more to the story that Denise and Simon were spinning.  This character acts as a physical reminder of other voices and perspectives that Denise and Simon chose not to acknowledge in their complacent acts of willful blindness.

While not as intense as his other two works, Nicolas Billon has once again created a thought-provoking play that held our attention from start to finish.  Curiously, The Neighbours had its world premiere in Tokyo, Japan in 2019 instead of Canada. Perhaps that is why when we inspected the book that Mr. Au was reading throughout the play, it turned out to be “Remains of the Day” by Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro. Also on his table was the pink teapot and another major prop, a fake cover of the Canadian Walrus magazine with the headline referencing the horrific event driving the plot of the play.

Theatre 2026: Summer and Smoke @ Crow's Theatre

Summer and Smoke is Tennessee Williams’ lesser-known play that he wrote in 1948 following his two previous smash hits, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), and Glass Menagerie (1944).  Set in Mississippi in 1916, it deals with Alma Winemiller and John Buchanan Jr., who have known each other their whole lives, growing up together as next-door neighbours.  Now both in their late 20s, they are drawn to each other but cannot find common ground to be together despite their mutual attraction, due to opposing ideological views on life and love.

John chafes against the pressures to live up to the standards of his namesake father, a respected doctor, and the expectations to eventually take over John Sr.’s medical practice. Perhaps in rebellion, John lives a hedonistic lifestyle, seeking pleasure in drink, gambling and loose women. For him, the expression of love is physical, carnal and full of passion.

As the puritanical preacher’s daughter whose religious upbringing has instilled in her a sense of moral righteousness and propriety, Alma views love as a spiritual meeting of souls. Even her name is Spanish for “soul”.  Saddled early in life with the duties of caring for her demented, childlike mother who lacks self control, Alma has grown up as a repressed, high-strung young woman who suffers from anxiety and heart palpitations. Although she inwardly desires John, she cannot outwardly show it.

These fundamental differences keep them apart, leading John to satisfy his needs with the lusty Rosa Gonzales, daughter of the wealthy owner of a gambling casino. While she pines for John, Alma spends her time giving singing lessons. One of her pupils is the youthful Nellie Ewell, whose mother is the town trollop, looked down upon for hanging around the train station trying to pick up traveling salesmen. Nellie also has a crush on “Dr. Johnny” which becomes an important plot point at the end of the play.

Things come to a head when the unexpected death of John Sr. leads to an ironic role reversal between Alma and John. Alma finally embraces her sensuality and releases what John called the “doppelganger” inside of her, freeing her to physically demonstrate her love for him. But it is too late as John has also changed and now accepts their relationship as just a “spiritual bond”. The tragic events have shocked him into maturity and he has moved on with his life, taking over the medical practice and becoming engaged to the now grown-up Nellie. Devastated by this reveal and John’s rejection of her, Alma heads down to the train station and picks up a traveling shoe salesman, leading to the final irony of the play. While Nellie has attained respectability she craved by marrying John, Alma actions hark back to those taken by Nellie’s mother.

We watched a version of Summer and Smoke that is a co-production between Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper Theatre, directed by Paolo Santalucia, recently named Artistic Director of Soulpepper.  It was held at Crow’s Theatre’s Guloien stage, set in the round with four rows of seats on each side. There are pros and cons to staging in “the round”.  On the plus side, every audience member is close to the action, creating a more intimate setting.  The disadvantages are related to sightlines and audibility.

At any time, the actors have their backs turned to at least one side of the audience. This makes it difficult both to see what is being performed as well as hear what is being said. In a well-staged show, the actors are constantly turning to provide adequate accessibility to all sides of the audience. Unfortunately, in this production, the blocking could have been improved. There were long periods of time when we were looking at the performers’ backs, making it difficult to comprehend the dialogue (the heavy southern drawls, rapid speech and occasional shouting didn’t help!) and obscuring important actions from our view. Adding points of action to the four corners “off stage” also didn’t help. We were luckily seated in the best side of the stage, so we could see characters approaching or disappearing in an aisle to our left behind the people seated on that side, who had no way to see this. In the far-right corner, we could see allusions to gambling, cock fights, flamenco dancing and later on, a pivotal fight and death scene. The people sitting directly across from us had no exposure to this.

There were elements of stagecraft that were extremely well done, as we have come to expect from a Crow’s Theatre production. In the play, Alma and John debate the dichotomy between the spiritual versus the physical aspects of love and humanity. In his text, Williams added the props of a stone angel statue that sits at a public fountain and an anatomy chart in the doctor’s office as the physical and visual manifestations of these two concepts. Santalucia enhanced these two symbolic visuals by hanging a statue of the angel bathed in an ethereal icy blue light in the middle of the stage.  The stone angel is prominent during scenes in the square and rises to the rafters but always slightly in view otherwise. He contrasted this with an anatomical medical model of a human’s innards to provide two strong physical images of the conflicting ideas.  Once again, because of our seats, we had a wonderful view of the front of the angel including its elegant wings. The people on the other side stared at its butt for the entire show.

Santalucia also tapped into the symbolism of “Summer” (representing the intense heat of vibrant passion) vs “Smoke” (a wispy emittance that dissipates, representing fleeting emotions that fade like mist). He emphasized these concepts with the use of theatrical haze and the smell of tobacco smoke that emanated in several scenes where characters smoked herbal cigarettes.

There is other symbolism built into the props and costumes used in Summer and Smoke.  Alma wears a ring that she constantly twists, representing her nervousness and emotional turmoil. She is dressed in white in Act I, representing her purity and saintliness. By the second act, she is dressed in bright red and wears a plumed hat to symbolize her released desires.  The plumed hat is a repeated image, as Rosa wears it in her first appearance which catches John’s eye, Alma’s mother impulsively purchases one, demonstrating her lack of restraint, and Nellie wears one in the final scenes.  Throughout the play, Alma’s mother tries to finish a jigsaw puzzle, frustrated that the “pieces don’t fit”. The puzzle represents the mental confusion in her life and later in a moment of stress, Alma repeats those words.

The ultimate tragedy of Summer and Smoke is that both Alma and John come to an understanding of each other’s points of view, just not at the same time. It is thought that this play was not as popular as Tennessee William’s other works because the characters are not as fleshed out, but rather act more as archetypes for his overarching themes. Williams seems to have imbedded elements of his own life and experiences in this (and other?) plays. As a gay man in the 1940s and 50s, he was well aware of and often wrote about loneliness, repression and societal constraints on sexuality. It is also interesting to note that his father was a traveling shoe salesman, a specificity that he gives to Alma’s final encounter.

Theatre 2026: Mrs. Doubtfire @ Princess of Wales Theatre

For me, there is nothing like the feeling of watching a musical for the first time and even better if it has a happy, feel-good story that leaves me smiling at the end of it. My husband Rich and I started off our 2026 theatre-going season in just that way by watching Mrs. Doubtfire, the Musical, based on the 1993 comedic film of the same name starring Robin Williams, Sally Fields and Pierce Brosnan.

In the movie, Daniel Hilliard is an unemployed voice actor, which gives Williams ample opportunity to show off his amazing mimic and improvisational skills.  Daniel dearly loves his three children (Lydia, Chris and Natalie) but is an irrepressible man-child who is not responsible enough to properly care for them.  Unable to put up with his antics anymore, his wife Miranda files for divorce and temporarily gains full custody of the children.  This will become permanent unless Daniel can establish a suitable home for his kids and secure steady employment.  Desperate to be able to see his children every day, Daniel asks his makeup artist brother to dress him up as a matronly woman and gets hired as the family’s Scottish nanny/housekeeper Mrs. Doubtfire. 

Mrs Doubtfire, the Musical does a great job of representing the major plot points, humour and heart of the movie while adding in songs and dance numbers to convey the story.  The show premiered on Broadway in 2020 but was shut down by COVID after just 3 preview performances.  Restarting at the end of 2021 and then temporarily shut down again at the start of 2022, the show never recovered from being derailed by the pandemic and only ran for 124 performances before closing for good.  It then moved to London’s West End where it was slightly revamped with changes to a few songs.  The show performed much better without the interruptions, ending up with 700 performances over 2 years.  The current North American road show is based on the West End adaptation.  Hopefully Broadway will give it another chance in the future.

Just like the movie, the musical begins with Daniel doing a voiceover for a commercial but getting fired when he cannot resist adlibbing to “improve” his lines.  While there will never be an actor to match the incomparable genius of Robin Williams, the actor Craig Allen Smith, who plays Daniel/Mrs. Doubtfire, did an admirable job with his voices and impersonations including Mickey Mouse, Kermit the Frog, Yoda, Golem and more.

The opening number (“That’s Daniel”) runs through multiple scenes showing Daniel’s recklessness including sneaking the kids out of school, throwing a party for Chris against Miranda’s wishes and accidentally booking a stripper.  The montage also shows Miranda complaining to her therapist and the couple fighting.  One telling lyric states “He has three kids, she has four”, which succinctly sums up their issues. By the end of this song, the couple is in divorce court where Daniel poignantly pleads with the judge not to separate him from his kids (“I Want to be There”). 

An early highlight of the musical is when Daniel begs his makeup artist brother Frank and Frank’s gay partner Andre to “Make Me a Woman”.  Presented as a big musical number, the pair suggest different looks using Jackie Onassis, Princess Diana, Cher, Grace Kelly and Donna Summers as examples with ensemble dancers dressed as each of these icons. When Daniel says he needs to be more matronly, they turn to older women for inspiration including Eleanor Roosevelt, Julia Child, Margaret Thatcher, Janet Reno, and “a bit of Oscar Wilde”.  Using these role models, they come up with the perfect and now iconic Mrs. Doubtfire look with the wig, glasses, fake teeth, skirt, cardigan, flat shoes and purse.  In the same scene in the movie, Robin Williams did impersonations of Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard, Barbara Streisand and the matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof as rejected attempts to make him a woman.

While the conversion between Daniel and Mrs. Doubtfire happens mostly off-screen or via screen cuts in the movie, the stage production repeatedly shows the character switching costumes in real time and it was quite the feat. The Mrs. Doubtfire blouse/skirt/sweater or dress costume as well as Daniel’s shirt and pants were each one-piece outfits that the actor simply stepped into and was zipped or buttoned up in. The Mrs. Doubtfire persona also required a body suit, mask, wig and glasses which took a bit more work to put on and take off.  Most of the time this was done quite quickly on stage in front of us, which was very impressive. During the last frantic switch in the final restaurant scene, there was a minor faux-pas as Daniel strips down to his underwear and for a split second, the underwear slipped slightly too far down exposing a bit of butt-crack.  The audience gasped and laughed at the sight and Smith acknowledged the moment with a smirk and butt wiggle after the underwear was safely readjusted.

Frank and Andre have a much bigger role in the musical than the equivalent characters in the movie.  One running joke involved Frank being a bad liar who shouts very loudly whenever he tries to tell a lie.  Eventually after Daniel’s older children Lydia and Chris discover his Mrs. Doubtfire secret, Chris also starts to shout when he tries to lie.

I always admired the movie for not following the typical Hollywood rom-com trope by making the new love interest Stu into a villain (although apparently this was originally considered).  Instead, he was a successful, charming and overall nice guy and a good role model for the kids, giving Daniel reason to be jealous, but also someone to emulate.  The musical includes a great song titled “No” where Stu asks Mrs. Doubtfire whether he has a chance with Miranda and she unequivocally answers “No” while providing hilarious reasons why.

Many of the memorable scenes from the movie are represented in the musical including Mrs.Doubtfire dancing with the vacuum, scorching her blouse around her (luckily fake) breasts while trying to cook dinner, and pelting Stu with a lime while claiming that it was some anonymous “drive-by fruiting”.  Also recreated was the iconic scene where Daniel is trapped without his Mrs. Doubtfire makeup by the Child Services rep and hides his identity by planting his face into a frosted cake.  This includes a dollop of icing from his chin that ends up plopping in the rep’s teacup.  In the filming of the movie, that icing mishap was not planned and Williams quickly improvised a clever line that ended up staying in the film’s final cut.

The other standard trope that the movie did not pander to, although studio heads originally pushed for it, was the typical “Hollywood romantic comedy happy ending” where Miranda and Daniel magically solve their issues and get back together to reunite their family.  Instead, a more realistic yet heart-felt conclusion was chosen. This led to a memorable scene where Mrs. Doubtfire explains that families come in all shapes and sizes and that mummy and daddy don’t always get back together, but that doesn’t make you any less of a family. The musical wisely kept the same ending and punctuated it with the final song “As Long as There is Love”.

This is a fun and joyous show that was well adapted from its iconic source material, made us laugh and entertained us from start to finish.  What a lovely way to start off the new year.

Theatre 2025: Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical - Royal Cinema

After watching over 30 plays this year, our last show of 2025 is another Christmas-themed play with the unwieldy, self-explanatory title “Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical”. My husband Rich chose this show so I went with a bit of scepticism, since we did not enjoy some of his Yuletide picks from previous years including “The Christmas Tea” and “The Wizard of Oz” Christmas panto, which didn’t quite hold up without the influence of Ross Petty.  But I can’t resist any new musical, so off we went.

To prepare for this latest show, we front-loaded our Christmas viewing starting in late November by watching a slew of “Hallmark Christmas movies”.  These are all variations of the same plot, a small subset of the “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back” Rom Com trope.  In the Hallmark Christmas movies, the story obviously happens around Christmas time, the girl with a high-powered or at least white-collared job comes from the big city to a charming little town/village and falls in love with the local carpenter/contractor/fireman/cop/solider, etc. and decides to stay.  Even the same actors get recycled from movie to movie including past B-list stars like Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf from Party of Five or soap opera stars like Hunter King (Young and Restless) and Ryan Paevey. (General Hospital).

I am happy to report that Rich finally picked a holiday winner!  Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical is a fun show with original songs that both advance and spoof the plot of a typical Hallmark Christmas movie. The entire cast has great singing voices and gives hilarious performances with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. The costumes are appropriately festive with lots of red and green and ugly Christmas sweaters.  What really stood out was the video backdrop that set the scenes, from the skyscrapers in Big City to the airplane and highway scenes traveling to and arriving at the quaintness of Small Town with its general store and snow-glistened trees.  This extensive use of video is quite apropos since the show is staged inside Royal Cinema, an Art Moderne movie house and event space built in 1939.

Introduced with an ensemble number titled “Big City”, the heroine, aptly named “Holly”, is the powerful businesswoman who lives in “Big City” working for “Big Bank” and is spearheading “Big Merger” with a Chinese bank.  When she learns that her mother Merry has heart issues and is overworked from running 12 companies in “Small Town”, Holly decides to return to her hometown to help her mother, singing “Going Home For Christmas” as she travels.  Holly turns over responsibility for Big Merger to her co-worker and quirky best friend Martha, another stereotypical role in Hallmark movies. Martha is played by the versatile Luke Witt in one of the many outlandish wigs that he dons in portraying a variety of characters including townswomen and a shady cookie contest judge.

Once in Small Town, Holly runs into her hunky high school sweetheart, Mark Hall, who is the town sheriff/Christmas Tree Farm owner/widower with a young daughter that he repeatedly forgets about.  Exaggerating the characteristics of the typical Hallmark movie male lead which emphasize emotional intelligence over book-smarts, Mark is portrayed as kind-hearted but a total idiot, to great comedic effect.  While the sexual attraction and spark is there, Holly becomes more and more aware of his lack of intelligence.  Mark explains how his wife died in the hilarious song “Ballad of Jenny” which feigns several false conclusions as to the cause of her demise (car crash, oven gas leak, etc.) before it is revealed that she died after ignoring her severe gluten allergy in order to make and consume “real Christmas cookies”.

Holly and Merry sing a duet titled “Love or Career” that cuts to the chase of the major dilemma of many Hallmark movies.  In many of these movies, the woman is made to feel guilty for prioritizing work and career over affairs of the heart.  This musical refreshingly subverts that decision with Holly deciding that instead of following her heart, she will follow her brain, which she declares with the song “I Choose Me”.

The arc of the musical which focuses on the love story between the two romantic leads is very satisfying and spoofs the tropes perfectly.  What worked less for me was the over-the-top subplot of Merry and her former best friend turned rival Cookie in a grudge match over a cookie contest that has been rigged in Cookie’s favour for years.  This satirizes the many movies that feature cookie baking contests including a “Cookie Cutter Christmas” or “A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe”.  In the musical, Cookie comes across as a sneering, Cruella de Ville lookalike with dark arched eyebrows who blackmails a crooked judge into voting for her annually. 

Cookie does get to sing a pair of great songs including the jazzy “Cookie Doesn’t Crumble” and another song where she lists a slew of different types of cookies (gingerbread, shortbread, thumbprint, etc.).  The tune and cadence of the song sounded so familiar and it took me a few minutes to realize that this was a homage to the song “Joseph’s Coat” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat which has the lyrics “It was red and yellow and green and Brown and blue”.  This is just one of multiple popular musical references or Easter eggs hidden throughout the show.  At the finale of one song, Cookie climbs onto a chair with arms spread and a green light shines on her, as if she is singing the last notes in “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.  Rich also thought he noticed quick dance poses that reminded him of Bob Fosse or the musical Chicago.

In midst of the whole cookie judging scandal, Matt’s moose Bruce got loose leading to a scene in the forest with flashlights as everyone is out looking for him while singing “A Moose Is Loose”.  While the song is said to be reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss musical, the choreography reminded me of mystery musicals like Curtains where characters are creeping around in the dark.  In another scene in the forest when Holly and Mark are trying to kiss, the introduction of singing and dancing Christmas trees changed the tone of the show away from a rom com, veering it more into more of a cartoonish affair.  I would have preferred if the plot stuck to parodying the Hallmark Christmas movies, but this is a minor nit.

From generalizing “Big City” and “Small Town” to playing on every Hallmark Christmas Movie Trope and then further exaggerating or even subverting it, this musical does an excellent job of skewering what is a guilty pleasure for many people each holiday season.  We left smiling, happy and wishing that a soundtrack would be released for the delightful songs.  Hopefully this show will tour and will return each Christmas season.

Theatre 2025: Rogers v. Rogers @ Crow's Theatre

Rogers v. Rogers is a new play by acclaimed Canadian playwright Michael Healey, who is known for writing “The Drawer Boy” and “Master Plan”.  His new endeavour was commissioned by Crow’s Theatre and is based on Globe and Mail business journalist Alexandra Posadzki's 2024 book Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire.  It deals with the epic familial power struggle between the heirs of Ted Rogers’ telecommunication company Rogers Communications.  Ted began building his empire by purchasing the Toronto FM station CHFI in 1960, then continuously added cable TV, broadcasting, internet, wireless mobile, and media operations over the decades until the various entities incorporated as Rogers Communications in 1987.

Facing his mortality amid health concerns, Ted wanted to ensure that his company remained under the control of the Rogers family.  To that end, shortly before his death in 2008, he established a Control Trust that holds about 97.5% of the company’s Class A Voting shares.  The trust is overseen by an advisory committee plus a corporate trustee (Bank of Nova Scotia). Ted assigned his immediate family members including his wife Loretta and four children (Edward, Melinda, Martha and Lisa), as well as a close cousin David Robinson and a few trusted outsiders to the advisory committee.  Edward was named the Chair of the Trust which gave him the most power, and Melinda was designated the Vice-Chair.  While this group works independently from the Rogers Communications Board of Directors, it wields control over the board due to this overwhelming majority voting block.

The power struggle for control of Rogers Communications began after Joe Natale, former CEO at Telus, was brought in as CEO in 2017.  He held this position through 2021 as he helped navigate the contentious attempt to merge Rogers with Shaw Communications, a move which Canada’s Competition Board sought to block.  Wanting to become CEO himself, Edward cited dissatisfaction with Natale’s performance due to Rogers’ low share price and its customer growth lagging behind Bell and Telus, as well as Natale’s mishandling of the merger.  Edward’s push for the ouster of Natale led to the Rogers board attempting unsuccessfully to remove Edward as Chair of the Control Trust.  He countered by using that power as Chair to remove 5 dissenting board members.  All this led to court battles with Edward facing off against his sisters Melinda and Martha and his mother Loretta who challenged his authority to unilaterally fire board members without a shareholders’ meeting.  The fight played out in the press, leading to comparisons to the hit TV show Succession which was popular at the time. Ultimately, Edward won the court challenge and his victory was complete when the Shaw merger was also successful.

Michael Healey’s play Rogers v. Rogers delves into this turmoil, with actor Tom Rooney playing all the characters in a one-man tour-de-force performance.  The set consists of an office boardroom with a long table and many swivel chairs, a multi-windowed digital screen along the back wall and a digital floor that changed colours throughout the play.  The back screen provided visual context for to clarify explanations provided by the various characters.

Instead of directly focusing on the dysfunctional Rogers family, Healey opens the play with the character of Matthew Boswell, the commissioner and head of Canada’s Competition Bureau.  Using the back screens like a digital blackboard, Boswell acts as a narrator, providing background about the Competition Act of 1985 including its deficiencies and the adverse effects on consumer prices when there is a lack of competition.  He gives multiple examples where companies such as Loblaws and Dollarama create the illusion of competition by swallowing up or merging with a slew of smaller companies which are rebranded but actually all owned by one parent company.  Rooney represents Boswell as a moral, passionate, and frenetic character who throws around “F-bombs” at will.  In his initial rant, he alludes to the stressful time his team went through in trying to oppose the merger between Rogers and Shaw Communications, with more details coming out throughout the play.  Boswell’s frustrated diatribes are tempered by calming words from his wife, who Rooney transforms into via a mere sidestep and a change of tone, demeanor and posture.

By donning an apron and speaking with a European accent, Rooney next becomes the Spanish butler Ricardo, the de facto parent-figure who provided the day-to-day childcare for the Rogers children.  Through this character we learn about Ted Rogers’ difficult childhood with a father who died when he was five and an alcoholic mother who shipped him off to Upper Canada College boarding school between the age of 7-17.  Throughout these years, Ted was not allowed to go home even though he was a mere 9 blocks away from his house.  Despite these hardships and the loneliness that he endured, Ted was determined to exceed his father’s achievements, spurring his own drive and risk-taking mindset.  As a result of his ambitions and workaholic nature, Ted was not around much for his children, as noted by the butler.  He also set extremely high standards which his offspring found difficult to meet.  Edward was described as a weak, insecure and neglected child who craved his father’s approval and compensated by overeating, while Melinda was seen as the intelligent, competent child who was a natural leader, but somehow still not good enough to take over the company, perhaps owing more to her gender than anything else.

By the time we finally see Edward and Melinda as actual characters, they are young adults that have been pitted against each other by their father in competition for his approval.  Rooney flips between the pair by having Edward hold a cup of coffee which he sets down and crosses the stage to reply as Melinda.

Visual cues were used to differentiate between the various characters, especially in terms of dress and wardrobe.  Matthew Boswell’s character usually appeared jacketless, unless he was in a rapid-fire back and forth conversation with Edward, who usually wore a suit jacket with a red pocket square once he reached adulthood.  Edward’s wife Suzanne wore large gold, dangling earrings and at one point when Edward and Suzanne had a conversation with each other, Rooney would sport the earring on only one ear and would turn from side to side to represent each character.

We continue to learn more about Edward through stories told by others. In one scene, an American telcom executive, wearing a cowboy hat and speaking with a southern drawl, describes a meeting that he had with Ted who wanted to take over his company. Ted brought Edward along and there was a strange incident with Edward trying not to eat all the pie slices on the table.  The interaction highlighted Ted’s ruthlessness and Edward’s insecurities.

In a hilarious scene where he is seated at the end of the table, Rooney portrays both Edward and a senior exec that he is trying to woo as he seeks allies to support his bid for CEO of Rogers Communications.  Rooney switches between the two characters, describing conflicting points of view of the dinner that Edward organized at the Windsor Arms.  From Edward’s perspective, the dinner was a huge success and he majorly impressed the exec all night with scintillating conversation.  Interspersed with Edward’s comments are the exec’s quips where he mocked the venue (somewhere his grandma would go), thought Edward strange and uncommunicative, and the meal lasted only 45 minutes.

Boswell returns to provide more background about the events that led to showdown between the Edward, his family and the Rogers Board.  Boswell describes the Rogers CEOs that succeeded Ted Rogers after his passing, each time bypassing Edward who vied for the job.  These included Nadir Mohamed, Vodafone “rock star” Guy Laurence and finally Joe Natale.  With each additional snubbing, the resentment grew in Edward until he finally realized that as Chair of the Control Trust, he could override the board, fire Natale, install his own figurehead CEO in Tony Staffieri (the current CFO) and then run the company from his role as Trust Chair.  We learn about the infamous “butt dial” scandal where Staffieri accidentally discussed the plans for Natale’s removal, not realizing that Natale was listening in on his cell phone.

This led to the highlight of the play, which was a masterclass in staging.  The board meeting held in September 2021 to vote on firing Joe Natale was virtual due to pandemic restrictions.  To represent this in the play, the entire stage was transformed to represent the Zoom meeting with each panel of the multi-windowed digital screen inhabited by one of the board members, all played by Tom Rooney!  The images were pre-taped but it was amazing how he made each person seem distinct with different expressions, hairstyles, some wearing glasses and matriarch Loretta sporting a cigarette in her hand.

The floor of the stage contained all the buttons of a virtual meeting including volume and mute.  Rooney sat in the chair at the middle of the long table, speaking into a microphone.  He started the meeting in the role of Edward before shifting to David Peterson, Melinda, Martha and Loretta.  As each character spoke, their video feed was enlarged on the screen, simulating Zoom’s “Active Speaker View”, reflecting Rooney who was speaking live.  Humorous moments occurred when Loretta was on mute and we only saw her lips moving while the other characters were all calling for her to unmute.

Although in reality the events happened on different days, for dramatic purposes, the vote on Natale, the pushback from the board, the call for removing Edward as Chair of the Trust, and Edward’s ultimate powerplay of invoking his rights as chair, all happened in the same Zoom meeting.  Also added to the meeting for exposition purposes were other humorous, real-life events that highlighted the dysfunction within the Rogers Family.  At one heated moment, Martha started to tweeting insults hurled at Edward and the tweets appeared on screen. In another absurd moment, Edward’s wife Suzanne inexplicably popped up to highlight two embarrassing and inappropriate events.  First was the 2021 photo with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago that sparked public backlash for poor optics.  Then she streamed a video that she commissioned (actually in 2022) where Brian Cox from Succession congratulated Edward on his “real-life Succession” board victory.

The result of this fabulously chaotic meeting was surreal, mesmerizing and mind-blowing as we watched all those images of Tom Rooney interacting with each other on screen while also watching the actual actor on stage.  Kudos to Crow’s artistic director Chris Abraham for some ingenious stagecraft and for Tom Rooney who pulled it off.

Just as Matthew Boswell opened the play, he got the last word to wrap it up as well.  Although his valiant efforts to prevent the merger of Rogers and Shaw were unsuccessful, he did achieve a conciliatory victory for Canada.  There was so much public outrage over the deal that the government felt pressured to pass Boswell’s proposed changes to the Competition Act of 1985 which should result in better protection for consumers going forward.  Bill C-59 (2025) strengthened rules on mergers, greenwashing, and hidden fee (drip) pricing, while expanding market study powers.

Michael Healey has done a fantastic job in writing a play that begins by proclaiming itself part satire, part documentary, and part work of fiction. For the audience, the play was totally entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny.  Considering all the political, economical, and organizational details about monopolies, mergers, and stock voting rights that he had to convey, this work could easily come across as dull or overly complex. But by focusing on the fallibilities, ambition, and greed of Edward Rogers and contrasting it against the Don Quixotesque passion of Matthew Boswell as he fights for the rights of consumers, Healey has turned this into a human interest, Goliath v David story that was fascinating from start to finish.  It is no wonder that this show sold out its original run in record time and then sold out again despite being extended for several more weeks.  Hopefully this play is remounted in the future, so that more people can watch it.

It would be interesting to hear what members of the Rogers family or executives of Rogers Communications think about the play, since Healey pulls no punches in depicting both the corporation and Edward Rogers in a negative light. The show even ends with a not too subtle plug for Freedom Mobile as a way to lower your cell phone bills.  The message definitely hit home since during the post-show Talkback discussion about the play, several members of the audience who responded to a question prefaced their answers by expressing feelings of shame or regret for being Rogers’ customers.

Theatre 2025: The Woman in Black @ CAA Theatre

I am not a fan of horror, be it in movies or plays.  So as much as I was apprehensive about watching The Veil at Crow’s Theatre, I dreaded watching Mirvish’s production of The Woman in Black even more.  While both these plays are considered “Gothic Horrors” that use mood, atmosphere and anticipation to rachet up suspense, The Veil was more psychologically eerie while The Woman in Black leaned into the “jump-scare” moments.

Based on a 1983 Gothic Horror novel of the same name by Susan Hill, the 1987 stage play The Woman in Black was adapted by Stephen Mallatratt using the same basic premise but wrapping the story in a “play within a play” as a framing device.  Elderly solicitor Arthur Kipps has written and wants to perform a play detailing the traumatic events that he endured as a young man, as a way to exorcise his demons.  He hires an actor (unnamed and referred to as “Actor”) to help hone his performance. But it quickly becomes clear that he does not have the skills to effectively convey his tale.  Instead, it is decided that Actor will portray the young Kipps while elderly Kipps plays all the other characters in the story.  Lighting cues are used to differentiate the inner play (Kipp’s tale) vs the outer play (the interactions between old Kipp and Actor as they plan the scenes).

Young solicitor Arthur Kipps is hired to settle the estate of the deceased Mrs. Drablow. Kipps travels to the remote (and fictional) coastal village of Crythin Gifford to attend her funeral and visit her mansion, Eel Marsh House, in order to review her papers.  While there, he is met with fear and suspicion from the villagers who refuse to accompany him to the manor.  Both at the cemetery and in the house, he spots a ghostly woman dressed all in black with a ghoulish, skeletal face and hears the sounds of screams, a child crying, and a pony and cart plunging into the surrounding marsh.  Eventually Arthur learns that the ghost is the vengeful, malevolent spirit of Jennet Humfrye, the sister of Alice Drablow who had adopted the unwed Jennet’s son Nathaniel.  Going mad after watching her son and his nursemaid drown in the marsh one foggy night, Jennet now haunts the village and wreaks revenge by causing the deaths of children related to anyone who sees her.

As much as I don’t enjoy being scared for two hours, or even worse, the anticipated dread of waiting to be scared, I did admire the acting performances and especially the stagecraft used to set the mood.  For the most part, the play is a two-hander performed with a minimalist set and a rack of coats, hats, scarves and canes that transform the elderly Kipps into the various village people.  The rest is left up to the audience’s imagination, aided by vivid dialog accompanied by effects of dim lighting, shadows, smoke, fog, and sound effects including rumbling of a train, crows cawing, the clip-clopping of a horse and cart that takes Kipps to the mansion, the thudding of a rocking chair in the middle of the night, anguished neighing horses plunging into water and bloodcurdling screams emanating from the back of the theatre.  A third actor pops up throughout the play as the eponymous Woman in Black and waiting for her appearances serves as one of the main sources of tension and foreboding in this play.

The Woman in Black is the second longest running non-musical play in London’s West End, trailing only Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap.  I thought it was strange to schedule such a play at Christmas as opposed to Halloween (although there might not have been much choice given that this is a traveling production).  But Arthur Kipps first line talks about Christmas Eve, so maybe that qualifies this as a “Christmas play” after all … as much as Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

Theatre 2025: Narnia @ Soulpepper

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (known as LWW) is the first book in a children’s fantasy series titled “Chronicles of Narnia” written by C.S. Lewis between 1949-1956.  Set in 1940 during WWII, the story deals with the four Pevensie siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (aged 13, 12, 10 and 8 respectively), who are evacuated from London to evade the German Blitz.  They are sent to live with an old professor in a Victorian manor in the English countryside.  During their stay, first Lucy, then Edmund and finally all four siblings discover a magical passage through the back of a wardrobe leading them to the mystical land of Narnia, which is full of talking animals and mythical creatures including fauns, centaurs, dwarves, giants, tree spirits and water nymphs.  Under the control of the wicked White Witch, Narnia is stuck in perpetual winter.  The children are met by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver who greet them as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve and reveal that the witch fears them because the four are prophesized to defeat her with the assistance of Aslan, a great and powerful lion who is returning after a long absence.

On Lucy’s first visit to Narnia, she meets a faun, Mr. Tumnus, who is supposed to turn her over to the witch.  Instead, he shows her the way back home and is punished by being turned to stone.  When Edmund first finds Narnia, he encounters the witch and is initially lured into helping her with promises of power and the addictive magical treat “Turkish Delight”.  This makes him a traitor against his family and by invoking ancient laws of “Deep Magic”, the witch claims the right to kill all traitors.  Aslan offers to take the place of Edmund and is killed by the witch but is soon resurrected under an even “Deeper” magic.  Along with Aslan’s army, the Pevensies fight a vicious battle against the witch’s minions and eventually triumph, vanquishing the witch and freeing all the creatures that were turned to stone.  Spring returns and the four are crowned Kings and Queens of Narnia, ruling peacefully for many years into their adulthoods.  One day while out hunting, they come across the entrance leading to the wardrobe.  Stumbling back into their own world, they are children once again and discover that in this realm, no time has passed since they entered the wardrobe.

I read this book many years ago as a child, enjoying the fantastical adventures without recognizing all the religious themes imbedded throughout the story.  I did not remember much about the book when we watched Narnia, a joint Crow’s Theatre/Soulpepper musical production based mainly LWW with a few references to later books.  Experiencing the tale as an adult, the references to Christianity now seem so apparent.  Aslan is obviously a Jesus figure who dies for the sins of others and is resurrected, while the children are referenced as offsprings tracing back to Adam and Eve, the Witch could refer to Satan and Edmund’s temptation for Turkish Delight might allude to the “Original Sin”.

As is the tradition of Bad Hat Theatre, who developed the show, this rendition of LWW is presented as a musical. Songs composed by the actor Landon Doak, who plays Edmund, are added sporadically to the action. Actor-musicians play instruments on stage including violin, guitar, piano, accordion, bass, drums and other rhythm-making apparatus, often while in character and as part of the choreography during fight scenes.  It seems lately that more and more shows are using actor-musicians although it is not clear whether this is an artistic choice or a cost-savings decision?  Another trend that seems prevalent these days is to have the actors/musicians roam around on stage for an extended period of time prior to the start of the performance.  This was a bit confusing in this show since the jigs and reels being played evoked a Maritime kitchen party feel, which while entertaining, had nothing to do with the vibe of the show once it started.

The play makes a major plot change to the source material by making the four children not blood relatives but fellow orphaned evacuees.  This deviation allowed the concept of the “found family” to be highlighted, where bonds of love, loyalty and community span beyond blood ties.  The children come from different ethnicities (White, Black, Asian) and to further extend the ideas of diversity and inclusiveness to the LGBTQ communities, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are now Mr. and Mr. Beaver. While the outfits of the children seem too modern for the 1940s setting, the elaborate costumes of the characters from Narnia are fitting, especially the luminous bejeweled robes and crown of the White Witch.

One artistic decision that I questioned was not transforming the stage more to represent the magic of Narnia.  The set was designed to represent the old Victorian manor and in particular, the room with the wardrobe whose doors opened up to reveal a bunch of coats hanging from the racks.  When the children crawled into the wardrobe and then emerged into “Narnia”, the only visual indication of this was some “snow” falling from above and a lamp post off to one side.  There was no backdrop depicting a winter wonderland with glistening trees, shimmering icicles and snow.  Throughout all the Narnia scenes, we stared at the original set of the mansion in the background.  A pair of moving stairs were pushed around to help choreograph scenes of traversing over terrain but it was difficult to conjure the enchantment of this mythical land without any visual cues.

In fact, it was the lobby of the Soulpepper Theatre that was decked out in a fashion closer to how I imagined Narnia should look like.  There were tinsels hanging from rafters to represent icicles, several large Christmas trees decorated with lights and bulbs, a tangle of interwoven frosted tree limbs covered with shards of ice within Narnia’s forest and a cool blue hue to reflect the cold winter enveloping the land.  There was even an entrance into the theatre with coats hanging from above to give you the impression of stepping through the wardrobe.  Perhaps this was to allow those who did not have tickets to the show to take part in the world of Narnia.  Too bad the ones who did watch did not get that extended experience on stage.

Theatre 2025: Ava - Secret Conversations @ CAA Theatre

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was a famous American actress working under contract for MGM between 1941-1986, which overlapped Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Known for her stunning looks and famous husbands as much as for her movie roles including “The Killers”, “Show Boat”, “The Barefoot Contessa”, “Night of the Iguana” and “Mogambo”, Gardner was dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal”.  She was briefly married to Mickey Rooney (1942-43), Artie Shaw (1945-46), and Frank Sinatra (1951-57).  All this can be discovered from a basic Google or Wikipedia search.

It was a bit of a disappointment to watch the play “Ava: Secret Conversations” which was based on a collaborative autobiography of Gardner that was ghost-written by Peter Evans.  Despite the implicit promises of the title, there were not really any new insights about the star.  Rather, the play focuses on the period in 1988, towards the end of Ava’s life, when Evans and Gardner held multiple private interviews in preparation for the book, only to have it all fall apart at the end. Gardner walked away from the project out of loyalty to Sinatra after learning that Evans had been successfully sued for libel by Ava's last husband, who she considered the love of her life despite their divorce.  Instead, Gardner worked with other writers on “Ava: My Story” which was published a few months after her death in 1990.  Peter Evans’ book was not published until 2013, a year after his death, after Gardner’s estate finally granted permission.

The role of Ava is played by Elizabeth McGovern of Downton Abbey fame, who also wrote the screenplay adapted from Evan’s book.  If McGovern’s portrayal is accurate, in the last years of Ava’s life, she was skittish, acerbic, foul-mouthed, temperamental and elusive in revealing much detail about her personal life.  The sole humorous moment in the play was when Ava protested about all the swearing that Evans had included in the biography but did so by cursing like a sailor. On the whole, I thought her performance felt overwrought and whether that was because of the acting or what was required by the screenplay, both can be attributed back to McGovern.

Aaron Costa Ganis, in the role of Peter Evans, fares much better.  He also portrays all three of Ava’s husbands, aptly mimicking each of them while video cues in the background help to clarify which character he is playing.  In particular, in the role of Sinatra, Costa Ganis does such a great job of singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” that I watched closely to determine whether he was lip-syncing (he wasn’t). Towards the end of the show as the relationship between Evans and Gardner was fraying, there was implication that Evans had fallen for Gardner, which does not seem to be substantiated by history and could have been added just for dramatic purposes.

In the end, I found this play to be lightweight and not that memorable. For me, the two most intriguing questions that arose from attending this show were not even about the content of the play.  The first was why no photographs were allowed, even at curtain call.  Most shows encourage you to take photos at curtain call and post them as part of free publicity, which you would think this show could use.   The second was why Elizabeth McGovern looked so shockingly thin? Perhaps she always looks like this but you couldn’t tell from watching Downton Abbey since she wore long sleeves and flowing outfits and we never saw her bare limbs.