Robert Cushman: It is the best thing to happen so far in Streetcar Crowsnest's new East End home. Imaginatively presented on a bare open stage, it draws us into a world
Robert Cushman: Those who know the film have testified that the reborn stage musical isn't strictly Strictly Ballroom at all
Robert Cushman: The truth is there's been a healthy component of irony in the best romantic comedies, at least since Shakespeare and probably before
Robert Cushman: Some things in this adaptation/production may be questionable, but everything feels thought and imagined
Robert Cushman: There's good and bad suspense; this play has both
Robert Cushman: He can be hilarious, in modes silky or self-deprecating. He can be frighteningly angry. He can be just as frighteningly lost
Robert Cushman: Whenever you think that her 90-minute hard-luck story has outstayed its welcome, Karen Hines draws you back in
Robert Cushman: It's a show that has its share of wry self-deprecation, but is more about living with and even overcoming obstacles
Robert Cushman: It's also the return to producing of Garth Drabinsky, who gave us such masterful shows as Ragtime and Kiss of the Spider Woman
Robert Cushman: Tension keeps us interested through dialogue that is generally easy-flowing and sometimes amusing
Robert Cushman: Maybe we're not meant to take it seriously and Shields is attempting the impossible " being ironic about irony
Robert Cushman: This Toronto season has brought us John, Father Comes Home from the Wars, The Realistic Joneses and now this. American playwriting is back on a roll
Robert Cushman: There are five actors in Five Faces for Evelyn Frost " two male, three female " and they hardly ever make contact
Robert Cushman: The author, who is also the director, hasn't found a style that would carry us with him
Robert Cushman: In the American play, everything is laid out on the surface; in the British one, the important things are happening underneath
Robert Cushman: The best to be said for her new play How Black Mothers Say I Love You is that a television spin-off is an unlikely prospect
Robert Cushman: There are supporting performances that I'm tempted to call the best I've seen in the roles
Robert Cushman: This play, by the rising young American playwright Annie Baker, lasts more than three hours but has no dull moments
Robert Cushman: The author was 25 when she wrote the play and it has the pretentiousness of youth without the excitement
Robert Cushman: At its end, Passing Strange succumbs to the kind of portentousness seemingly unavoidable in rock musicals
Robert Cushman: The Wedding Party is a new play by Kristen Thomson, staged by Crow's indefatigable artistic director Chris Abraham
Robert Cushman: Sequence belongs to the growing genre of scientific-mathematical-philosophical plays that proceed through argument, usually spiced with melodrama
Robert Cushman: The words, sung and spoken, and the music are the joint work of Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston; near-namesakes but not related
And of course there are current Broadway shows we will be itching to see
Robert Cushman: Jordan Tannahill's Botticelli was the best new Canadian play of the year; Sunday, its double-bill partner, wasn't but was still worthwhile