Echo by Cirque du SoleilSupplied
It’s one of those weeks in Toronto with a flurry of theatre productions all opening on the same night.
Echo, Cirque du Soleil’s newest touring show (which I saw in Montreal last year) is in town, setting up shop on a site at 2150 Lakeshore Blvd West from May 8 all the way to August 4. It is Cirque’s most breathtakingly beautiful production ever created under a big top.
Dog Man: The Musical, an American touring production of a show based on the children’s book series from Dav Pilkey (of Captain Underpants fame), is at the CAA Theatre from May 9 to June 2.
In Seven Days, a play by Jordi Mand that touches on MAID’s effect on one family, runs in the Greenwin Theatre at the Meridian Arts Centre to May 16. It’s a Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company production, and had a run at the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., earlier this year.
Hedda Gabler, a new version of the Ibsen classic by Liisa Repo-Martell and starring Diana Bentley, is at the Coal Mine Theatre to May 26, while First Métis Man of Odesa is at Soulpepper to May 19. It’s the second time through Toronto for this romantic comedy invaded by the war in Ukraine.
I must admit I find it particularly strange that two Toronto theatre companies co-founded by Ted Dykstra are holding openings on the same night as each other – and not for the first time this season, either. (The new musicals De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail and Dion: A Rock Opera opened at Soulpepper and the Coal Mine, respectively, on Thursday, February 8.)
I can’t pretend to be everywhere at once on Thursday, May 9. I am unfortunately not one of those AI reviewers that The Toronto Star recently discovered a couple of local theatre companies were, inadvertently, blurbing from in their social media feeds.
And so I have chosen to see and review In Seven Days that day, as it is only on for seven more days after its media night. I will catch up on Echo afterward to see how it has evolved since last summer. The Globe has freelancers going to Dog Man and Hedda Gabler, and as for First Métis Man of Odesa, you can read my review from its run at the Theatre Centre last April here.
As long as I’ve been reviewing theatre in Toronto, it has been fairly common for not-for-profits to hold conflicting opening nights.
I’ve often noted on social media (and occasionally in print, too) that this is less usual in other theatre cities. It’s one of those own goals in performing arts communications that perplex me – like when theatre companies produce new plays with the exact same title as other plays they’ve produced, or performing arts organizations give two physical theatres similar names. Or even just the trend of listing actors’ names in alphabetical order instead of by order of appearance in programs.
At a certain point, however, I stopped complaining about the opening pileups – as I stopped expecting theatre companies to spend much time thinking about the work and publishing schedules of newspaper critics. There weren’t as many of us any more, and I knew organizations had many other ways to get out news of their shows, such as through their own social media channels.
But I bring it up again here as the general struggle to get attendance back up to prepandemic levels continues – and at a time when runs can be just two weeks long.
I do wonder whether the fact that social media is no longer as helpful a tool as it used to be for discovering new art and voices is becoming an issue. Perhaps shows are not appearing on the radar of as many potential audience members, and therefore ticket sales are lower. All sorts of companies that have built up large followings on certain platforms – not just those in the performing arts – are increasingly at the whims of owners and algorithms and, in some cases, plummeting traffic.
I‘ve been reading a book by Kyle Chayka called Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture. It explores the reasons behind why the online world, which was supposed to free us from cultural gatekeepers, can sometimes make it seem as if there’s only one pop star in the world.
How do you make people aware about theatre, especially new and not-for-profit work, in a society where you can easily end up listening to Taylor Swift all day long (no offence to her)? I don’t have the answer – but holding a bunch of promotional parties in the same community on the same night doesn’t seem all that helpful.
Three season-ending comedies opening this week across Canada
- Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange is ending its season this week with The Outside Inn (to May 19), a dark comedy by Sharon Bajer and Elio Zarrillo about a mother and her adult child trying to figure things out while suck in a vintage camper in the middle of nowhere. It had its world premiere last year at Festival Antigonish Summer Theatre, and is in town in that original production.
- The Segal Centre in Montreal is capping off its season by producing POTUS or Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive from May 12 to June 2. Lisa Rubin directs the Broadway comedy by Selina Fillinger, which is described as Veep meets House of Cards.
- Alberta Theatre Projects’ final show of the season is a presentation of the Arts Club production of Mark Crawford’s comedy The Birds and the Bees, set in two adjoining bedrooms on a modern Canadian farm. Lauren Taylor directs.