Theatre 2026: Measure for Measure @ Crow's Theatre Studio Space

Measure for Measure is one of William Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, written in the middle of his career, and often termed one of his “problem plays” since there is not a definitive consensus of whether it should be considered one of his comedies or tragedies. The plot deals with themes of justice, exploring the balance between following the letter of the law versus showing compassion and mercy. It questions the difference between what is legally versus morally right.

The play begins with Duke Vincentio wondering if he has been too lenient in following his own laws. To test this theory, he passes his power to the strict judge Angelo and pretends to leave Vienna but secretly returns dressed as a friar to witness how Angelo wields his power.  Angelo invokes an ancient law which punishes premarital sex with death and sentences Claudio to die for impregnating his betrothed Juliet prior to marriage.  Claudio’s sister, a chaste novice nun, arrives to beg for mercy. The lecherous Angelo bargains with her, offering to spare Claudio if she agrees to give up her virginity and sleep with him. This is the ultimate hypocrisy since Angelo would be committing the “sin” that Claudio is accused of but can get away with it since no one will believe Isabella. The nun refuses to give up her soul to save her brother (much to his dismay).  The Duke/Friar comes up with a plan whereby Angelo’s ex-fiancee Mariana, who Angelo dumped after her dowry was lost at sea, will sleep with Angelo while pretending to be Isabella. Despite getting his way, Angelo still orders the beheading of Claudio. The Duke/Friar intervenes again by arranging the head of a dead pirate to be presented to fake Claudio’s death. 

In the last scene, the Duke reveals himself, forces Angelo to marry Mariana, produces the still alive Claudio, and then proposes to Isabella but the play ends without her answer. This ambiguous ending has been cause for much debate with a split opinion of whether she accepts or refuses yet another unwanted proposal from another powerful man.

I generally do not like watching Shakespearean plays as I find the flowery, archaic language difficult to understand and I spend so much energy trying to discern the meaning of what is spoken. I decided to watch Crow’s Theatre’s production of Measure for Measure, adapted by Christopher Manousos, because of its play within a play format where a group of (deliberately unnamed) actors perform the Bard’s work as a radio program. The premise of this adaptation promises intrigue between the actors of the outer play, which would reflect upon the inner play. This added dimension intrigued me.  To prepare, I read a detailed synopsis of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure which I summarized above.

The show was performed in the smaller Studio space in Crow’s Theatre with the stage set up in the round, or more accurately, in the “rectangle” as the audience were seated along all sides of an elongated rectangle. At the centre of the stage were two long, narrow tables that fit together to appear as if they were a single table.  Once the show started, the tables were separated and moved to the left and right of the stage. On each table were props used to create sound effects for the radio show including a pair of boots that made stomping noises, bells for ringing, paper for crunching, chains, belts and various metal cups and plates.

Microphones attached to the corners of the tables where used in rotating fashion by the actors as they performed the Shakespearean play. Four chairs, one on each side of the rectangular audience seating, were marked as “reserved” with one of the chairs placed directly next to my seat. Once the performance began, actors who were not in the current scene would alternate sitting in one of these chairs.

Prior to the show, the room was bathed in stark white light and haze while during the radio performances, the lighting dimmed and changed to shades of greens, blues and violets. Whenever there was a break in performance, the bright white lighting reappeared, clearly delineating the inner and outer play.

While waiting for the show to start, we heard strange sound effects of drumming with the occasional echoey sound that reminded me of sonar or perhaps whales calling. It was never clear to me why these sounds were played since I did not detect the correlation to anything that happened later once the show started.  I asked Google AI when I got home and the explanation was that the sounds tried to emulate the chaotic audio-recording environment and clarified that we were not supposed to be in 17th century Vienna.  This was lost on me.

As the show started, five actors appeared on stage to perform the radio show, referenced only by their roles. There was the Sound technician, responsible for the foley effects as well as being the narrator who indicated the start and end of scenes, and announcing commercial breaks.  The director and his very pregnant movie star wife strolled in hand-in-hand, followed by another actor who was friends with the director, and finally a beautiful, long-legged actress who was a last-minute substitute.

As these characters interacted, it seemed clear that their roles within Measure for Measure reflected their personalities in the outer play.  Each of them played a main role as well as one or more smaller parts. The director, who appropriately played Angelo, was also in a position of power in the outer play. And similar to Angelo’s character, the director was smarmy and lascivious towards the substitute actress who was playing Isabella, leering at her and once pressing himself against her.  The substitute actress was flustered and out of place, thrown into a high-pressured live broadcast with zero rehearsal time. This mirrored Isabella’s situation as she tried to negotiate with Angelo.

The visibly pregnant movie star appropriately played the pregnant Juliet as well as many other roles including Angelo’s spurned ex-fiancée Mariana, an elderly male magistrate, and a female brothel owner. The director’s friend played the Duke disguised as a Friar while the sound guy played Claudio, Claudio’s flamboyant, loose-lipped friend Lucio, and a pimp (bawd) named Pompey. At one point, the Sound guy performed an argument between Lucio and Pompey, signifying the switch back and forth between the two characters by donning and removing his sunglasses.

Watching Measure for Measure performed as a radio play with all the necessary sound effects, and watching the actors rapidly switch between characters as they navigated across the stage added an interesting dynamic. But the promised “outer play drama” never amounted to much and was much too subtle for me to fully appreciate at the time. There seemed to be some tension in the first act between the movie star and the substitute as they eyed each other uneasily. Then a shocking action closed the first act and we looked forward to watching the fallout in the second act. But nothing came of it and in the end, the play was mostly just a rendition of the inner play.  This was disappointing for me.  One interesting reference between the outer and inner plays occurred at the end after the radio show was done. As all the actors were leaving, the director complimented the substitute actress on her work and invited her to join his company. She looked a bit shell-shocked by the invitation, hesitated in her response and then the show faded to black. This was a direct callback to the Duke’s marriage proposal to Isabella at the end of Measure for Measure.

Theatre 2026: Hell's Kitchen @ CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre

I have stated many times that I prefer a book musical with an original plot and songs over a juke box musical that relies on the catalog of a popular performer or group to form a show. For me, the worst is the biographical juke box musical that is often a drama about the performer’s life and career with songs sung in a diegetic manner as part of auditions, studio recordings or concert performances. Almost as bad is the jukebox musical that comes up with a ridiculous story in order to force-fit a set of songs. Bat Out of Hell (Meatloaf) and We Will Rock You (Queen) come to mind, each reduced to using the trope of the “dystopian” world in an attempt to make the plot work. The gold standard which all future jukebox musicals with original stories are compared to is Mamma Mia, whose plot weaved ABBA’s songs so seamlessly that it felt like each song was written for the show.

Lately as a way to generate a built-in audience, more and more juke box musicals are being produced, hoping to cash in on the fans of the artist(s). Hell’s Kitchen is the latest jukebox musical to come to Toronto via Mirvish productions, featuring the discography of R&B and soul singer Alicia Keys. Since I only know a handful of Keys’ songs and her genre is not usually my favourite, I could not even count on familiarity like I did for MJ the Musical. Knowing that the show was playing at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, which is notorious for its poor acoustics, did not help. I therefore went in with low expectations, hoping to be pleasantly surprised. But first, to give myself a chance, I read the synopsis in Wikipedia, then listened to the cast recording while following along with the lyrics.

One interesting aspect of Hell’s Kitchen is that it is a hybrid of the two types of jukebox musicals. While this a fictional story and not considered a typical biographical musical describing Keys’ childhood, career and rise to success, many elements of the plot are heavily influenced by Keys’ life. The main character is a 17-year-old girl named Ali with a protective white mother nicknamed “Jersey” who once worked as a performer, and absentee black father named Davis who is a traveling piano player always on the hunt for his next gig. The show implies that Ali gets her musical talents from Davis. The portrayal of Jersey closely mirrors Keys’ mother Terria Joseph, who maintained an acting career while working as a paralegal to support her child. Keys’ real father Craig Cook was a flight attendant, not a musician, and was not a part of her childhood, unlike Davis who pops in and out of Ali’s life but cannot be depended upon to stick around.

The supporting characters, including sounding-board friends for Jersey and Ali, Ray the doorman, and especially the older street percussionist Knuck, who becomes Ali’s love interest, are all fictional composites that help flesh out this coming-of-age story and the mother-daughter conflict that is the heart of the musical. The ensemble dancers with their baggy clothing, low-riding jeans that expose their underwear, and hip-hop dancing add to the vibrant and gritty vibe of the neighbourhood.

I thought the book writer (in collaboration with Keys) did an excellent job of selecting songs and weaving together a earnest and heart-felt (albeit, a bit derivative) tale of the spunky, independent 17-year-old, Ali, who chafes against Jersey’s efforts to shield and protect her. The show opens up with “The Gospel”, a song written by Keys in 2014 which acts as a no-holds-barred depiction of New York City ghettos. The fast-paced lyrics, starting with “I said we're all God's children, products of the ghetto. Momma cooked the soup. Daddy did the yelling… The roaches and the rats, heroin and the crack, Couldn't blame me, I'm just giving the facts" went by so quickly and was mostly drowned out by the loud orchestrations, vindicating my efforts to review the words beforehand. I still couldn’t follow what was being sung, but at least I had an idea of what the song was about. This was a great song to set up the environment for the story.

Next wisely, Keys wrote two new songs specifically for the show which introduced each of the two main protagonists, revealing their hopes and fears. Ali sings the “I want” song “The River” which describes her desire for more freedom. “I'm alone here in a crowd of seven million. I know there's more to life than this, cause something's calling me”. Jersey then sings “Seventeen” which vocalizes her frustrations and fears that her daughter would get into trouble trying to grow up too soon. “She’s just 17 and her brain just don’t work… Think she knows it all. She don't know nothing.” 

Then the show takes flight and reels off one Alicia Keys hit after another, including the few that I recognized. When Ali tries to talk to Knuck for the first time, she and her friends sing “You Don’t Know My Name” as they dare her to approach him although for the first few choruses, the friends tease her by singing “He don’t know your name”.  Eventually Ali starts a relationship with Knuck (without revealing she is just 17) and also discovers her love of the piano through lessons with Miss Liza Jane.  Ali’s euphoria is perfectly depicted through the song “Girl on Fire”. The song is interrupted by Ali’s friend Tiny who spews off an angry rant in rap, giving her a reality check and reminding her that Jersey is going to kill her once she finds out.  Unfortunately, the lyrics were unintelligible given the loud background music and bad acoustics. I had to google later to find out what all that was about.

Later, things fall apart after Jersey catches Ali and Knuck together and has the police haul him away. Devastated, Ali refuses to speak to her mother, who calls Ali’s father Davis in for moral support. Davis is all charming and flirty with Jersey, singing the sultry song “Fallin”, then cheers up Ali by singing the song he wrote for her as a child “If I Ain’t Got You”. But then, Davis takes off again and Ali realizes that it is her mother who has aways been there for her. They reconcile with the song “No One” (“No one can get in the way of what I feel for you”).  I must admit that familiarity does have an impact since I appreciated the songs that I recognized more and marveled at how well they were integrated into the story—not quite Mamma Mia standards, but not bad at all!

There were a couple of powerhouse songs that were new to me but blew me away with their force and passion. The first was “Perfect Way to Die” which Miss Eliza Jane sings about the racism and police brutality that she endured and witnessed in her past. Keys wrote this song in 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matter, as a protest against the frequent murders of blacks by white policemen. This scene was one of many that effectively used background video. In this case, images of murdered children including Emmett Till (murdered in 1955) flashed by. The other was “Pawn It All”, sung by Jersey to express her dismay that Davis was leaving and disappointing his child once again. The tour-de-force performance by Jersey as she belts out this song made it the “eleven-o’clock number” of the show, leading to thunderous applause.  Hell’s Kitchen ends with the uplifting anthem “Empire State of Mind”, acting as a love letter to New York City.

The set representing the neighbourhood of Hell’s Kitchen in New York City was filled with scaffolding with video used to project skyscrapers.  The orchestra played on various platforms within this scaffolding, including the piano player who provided much of the live music while the actors portraying Miss Liza Jane, Ali and Davis pretended to play. On Broadway, the piano player in the orchestra was Alicia Key’s own high school piano teacher at Manhattan’s Performing Arts School. The show opened with a very effective use of video as Ali rides down the elevator from her 42nd floor apartment, describing how different musicians lived on various floors. As the elevator door stops, there is Jazz on the 32nd floor, Merengue and Latin dance music from a dance class on the 27th, Opera on the 17th floor, Classical music on the 7th to 4th floors, and finally piano on the ground floor, which turns out to be Miss Liza Jane playing.

As much as I prepared myself not to like this jukebox musical, I found myself really enjoying it and admiring the natural ease with which Keys’ lyrics propelled the story. I can see this musical being used to introduce a younger generation to musical theatre. The age of the audience members surrounded us at our performance seems to confirm that this is the case.

On a side note, shortly into the first act, the musical had to be paused due to technical difficulties. A voice came over the intercom asking the actors to leave the stage, the audience sat in the dark for a few seconds, and then the lights came on. It took several minutes for the action to resume.  This is the second time within the same year that an issue occurred at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.  The same thing happened during a performance of Some Like it Hot, which we watched in February.  Add this to the fact that the sound quality at this theatre is terrible, to the point where entire reddit threads complain about it, and you wonder if it is time to shut down this theatre and perform a major upgrade. Hopefully something is done soon to resolve these technical issues.

Amélie Musical @ Daniel Spectrum (AKI Studio) Theatre

The whimsical, endearing, and critically acclaimed 2001 French-language romantic comedy Amélie was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best International Feature Film. Starring a wide-eyed Audrey Tautou in the titular role, the movie explores how Amélie’s sheltered childhood with Raphael, her emotionally detached father, and Amandine, her strict, high-strung, and apathetic mother, affects her relationships with others as an adult. When her doctor father gives her a regular checkup as a child, she is so excited to see him that her heartbeat rises, causing him to misdiagnose her with a heart condition. Trying to protect her, Amélie’s parents keep her isolated at home with a goldfish named Blubber as her only friend. Once she turns 18, Amélie leaves her now-widowed father behind and lands a waitressing job at the Two Windmills in Montmartre, Paris. There she interacts with the eccentric staff and customers but shies away from any personal entanglements. Things change upon the death of Princess Diana along with the unexpected discovery of a hidden box, which leads Amélie to open up and become a do-gooder like her idol Diana. Through her adventures in discovering the owner of the box, Amélie meets her soulmate Nino, an equally quirky character who is obsessed with the photos left in photobooths. But can Amélie overcome her awkward upbringing to embrace true love?

In 2017, a Broadway musical version of Amélie bombed, closing after just 6 weeks.  Created in the vein of slick, commercialized Broadway musicals, this show went for big, broad sets and an Americanized score and songs. This includes a confidence building “I Want” song (“Times Are Hard for Dreamers”) sung by an intrepid Amélie as she heads off for Paris, that channels Maria from the Sound of Music as she leaves the convent. This totally deviated from and therefore lost the quirky, innocent charm of the original story, and undermined the character of Amélie, who is supposed to be a shy, naïve dreamer. The change in tone did not resonate with the audience, leading to the show’s early demise, despite casting Broadway powerhouse Phillipa Soo of Hamilton fame in the lead role.

Luckily for musical lovers, in 2019, a new U.K. musical version totally revamped the show, resurrecting the charm, whimsy and quirkiness of the movie. Instead of American accents, the characters spoke with French accents intermixed with common French words.  Actor musicians played various instruments while acting and singing on stage. The sets and staging were more intimate to closer reflect the source material. Many songs changed in tone with slower pace and a more wistful, European feel. Some tunes were replaced with new songs to flesh out the characters and story, and others were moved to provide a better flow.

In the American version, young Amélie was played by a child actor who sang the earlier songs and appeared throughout the show to harmonize with her adult counterpart. The goldfish, renamed Fluffy in the musical, is played in full camp style by a grown man with a fish costume on his head. By contrast, in the UK musical, both young Amélie and Fluffy are played by puppets. The result of all these changes was a show that fared much better, playing across the UK and the West End between 2019 and 2021 despite being subjected to COVID shutdowns for over a year. This version received multiple Olivier award nominations whereas the U.S. version received no Tony nominations.

Shifting Ground Collective is a Toronto-based incubator for emerging musical theatre talent, giving early-career artists opportunities to act in full-scale musicals and cabarets.  We watched this group’s excellent production of The Drowsy Chaperone earlier this year and thought it was extremely well done. For their new show of the 2026/27 season, Shifting Ground Collective put on a production of the UK version of Amélie. Once again, we thought the show was stellar, featuring impressive triple-threat young performers who could act, sing and dance, although they did not play instruments. Instead, the band was positioned on either side of the stage with the strings, woodwinds and piano on the side and drums/electric guitars on the other. The actors also didn’t try to adopt French accents but did occasionally throw in simple French words such as “au revoir” or “merci” which even non-bilingual people like us could understand. I approve of this choice, since a fake French accent would have made the dialogue and lyrics more difficult to understand, especially in a theatre that already did not have the best acoustics.

Amélie is portrayed by Colette Richardson who is also a founding member and the executive director of Shifting Ground Collective. She plays the part with a sparkle in her eyes, a mischievous grin, and a sweet shyness and vulnerability that perfectly embodies the role. The strong supporting cast complement her well, providing both comedic and touching scenes and great dance numbers. At the Two Windmills Café, she meets the owner Suzanne, who once was a circus trapeze artist before an accident occurred where she was dropped by her partner (both physically and then romantically). Her two co-workers are Gina, who is still mourning the death of her husband who had left her for another woman, and Georgette, a hypochondriac who has a crush on the customer Joseph, who in turn is fixated on Gina. Other customers include Hipolito, a poet who has writer’s block and Philomena, an airline stewardess. She also encounters the grocer Collignon, who mistreats his assistant Lucien, her neighbour Dufayel, who is housebound due to a bone disease and spends his time reproducing copies of Renoir’s masterpiece “Luncheon of the Boating Party”, and finally Nino, who she falls in love with but is afraid to get too close to.

The main set piece on the left side of the stage is the photo booth that drives key plot points, with stairs behind it that lead to Amélie’s small Parisian flat. Various props are pushed onto the centre of the stage create the father’s doctor’s office, the family’s dining room, and later on, the interior of the Two Windmills café. Without props, it becomes the open space where large ensemble dance numbers are performed. On the right side of the stage is a door and a window which acts as the frontage of various homes including that of her neighbour Dufayel.

Following the lead of the UK musical, this version had some creative staging including the use of the cutest puppet to play young Amélie, styled with the same haircut as the actress playing the role. The scene of the child’s physical examination by her doctor father seemed much less creepy when performed on the doll as opposed to the adult actress. Rendered as a papier-mache fish on a stick, Fluffy the goldfish leapt out of the fishbowl and floundered on the ground. Shocked by what she considered a suicidal fish, Amandine insisted that Fluffy be released back into the river. As he swam away calling out “Au revoir”, he was represented by a large parade-float. When Dufayel showed Amélie his numerous attempts to reproduce Renoir’s masterpiece “Luncheon of the Boating Party”, the ensemble cast appeared on stage wearing similar straw hats and posed in the same positions as the people in the painting.

One effective concept that was not in the movie but added in the U.S. musical is the ancient Greek philosophical argument “Xeno’s Paradox” which argues that two objects (or people) can never meet because there will infinitely be a half-way point between them. During home-school lessons (in the song “Half-way”), Amandine teaches her daughter this theory and it becomes a metaphor for Amélie’s fear of intimacy and inability to form human connections. This inability to connect is mirrored in the other characters, who eventually are helped by Amélie’s good deeds. She helps pair up both Georgette and Joseph, and Raphael and Suzanne, gives Gina closure by forging a reconciliatory letter from her late husband, jolts Hipolito out of his writers’ block and gives him confidence by writing his insightful quotes on a wall, shames Collignon into appreciating Lucian, and spurs Dufayel into painting something original (a portrait of her) instead of merely copying others. But it takes Nino solving Xeno’s Parodox that leads to Amélie finally letting him in. With a reprise of “Half-way”, Nino determines that if they both step forward at the same time, they can bridge the "infinite" gap.

Two elements of high camp were retained from the US version, probably to demonstrate Amélie’s vivid imagination. First, after Princess Diana’s death, Amélie imagines that it is her funeral and Elton John, clad in his sparkly white jumpsuit and platform heels, is serenading her with the song “Goodbye Amélie”. Later, she steals Raphael’s garden gnome and sends it off on foreign adventures with a stewardess friend in order to help her father get out more and expand his world. To illustrate the postcards that Raphael receives from the gnome’s travels, an actress dressed in a green gnome costume prances around and sings the song “There’s No Place Like Gnome”. I felt like these two songs didn’t quite fit in with the vibe of the rest of the show.

We really enjoyed this delightful production of Amélie and were glad that we saw the U.K. and not the U.S. version. We continue to be impressed by the work of Shifting Ground Collective and look forward to watching more of their shows in the future. We especially like that they target more obscure musicals as opposed to the old standards that theatres like Stratford and Shaw like to produce. I regret that we did not learn about them earlier as I would have loved to have attended their recent productions of Ride the Cyclone and 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee.

Theatre 2026: A Fine Balance @ Crow's Theatre

I had not read Indo-Canadian author Rohinton Mistry’s acclaimed 1995 novel A Fine Balance, set in an unnamed city in India during a tumultuous period termed “The Emergency” between 1977-1979. But several of my friends had dubbed it one of the saddest books that they’ve ever read. Reviewing the synopsis of this 600+ tome in Wikipedia did nothing to dispel this assessment. Dealing with systemic oppression in India’s dictatorial political system at that time, the book touches on the inhumane caste system that demeaned and inflicted brutal violence upon the lower castes, abject poverty and slums, forced labour, rampant corruption, and programs of mandatory sterilization for population control. The novel follows the lives of Ishvar and his teenaged nephew Om, trained tailors who were born into the lowest caste and deemed “untouchables”, the financially strapped widow Dina who employs them, and Maneck, a well-to-do young student who she rents a room to in order to help make ends meet. The four form an unlikely “family” who struggle together to survive these turbulent times.

Given this horrific history as a backdrop and shocking plot elements that involve torture, physical mutilation including castration, murders and suicides, I was skeptical of the novel’s purported underlying theme of resilience and maintaining hope in midst of so much despair (the “fine balance”). I was therefore not looking forward to watching Crow’s Theatre’s stage play based on the novel and adapted by Indo-Canadian playwright Anosh Irani. I braced myself for a 3-hour long night of tension and misery. I also wondered what would remain and what would be lost in the adaptation of such a large novel with so many characters and storylines.

I concluded that Irani did an excellent job by focusing on the four main characters and distilling the important elements of the plot to fit into a reasonably long play, conveying entire chapters of events into single expositional dialogues. In this manner, we found out about the horrors that befell Isvar’s and Om’s families who were brutally murdered by a sadistic upper-caste landowner, about Dina’s struggles for financial and physical independence from her abusive brother, and of Manesh’s hazing in his school dorms that led him to seek lodgings with Dina. I was also surprised to find that the overall tone of the play was not as oppressive and downtrodden as I expected. While the horrors described in the book were definitely portrayed, they were interspersed with lighter, more personal and even tender moments of interaction between the characters and I was amazed at the few moments where I actually chuckled softly. By the end of the play, I was definitely grateful not to have been born to a lower caste in India, but I also admired the spirit, and yes, resilience of these poor people who could find a tiny bit of joy in midst of all the tragedy that they have encountered.

The actors portraying the four main characters were superb, as were the two extra actors who played all the other roles, including a bent-over, aged tax collector and an armless/legless beggar. But as always with every play at Crow’s Theatre, what impressed me most was the staging.  The main set is Dina’s apartment with a door and verandah stage left, the living room and kitchen in the centre, and a spare bedroom to the right where the tailors set up their sewing machines. An overhead metal rail at the front of the stage is used to slide across props that transform the space into different locations. At the start of the show, Ishvar, Om and Manesh are all crammed into the same train that is taking them to Dina’s house. A set of overhead grab handles are slid along the track and through the use of lighting, sound effects, and the jostling bodies holding onto the rails, the set becomes a moving train. That the train hits a bump and is delayed by what is probably a body on the tracks (either suicide or murder victim) and the nonchalant reactions of the commuters quickly establishes the normality of such occurrences and foreshadows more to come. Next the hand holds are slid off stage and a door is slid across to become Dina’s front door. This was a quick and effective way to control set changes.  On two occasions, video text displayed on the door to establish time jumps (e.g. 3 months later, 8 years later).

In the end, I still would have preferred to spend my time watching a happy play, but I definitely appreciated this work for the touching performances and the innovative staging.