Feature: Ilana Lucas Picks the Top Toronto Theatre of 2024

As the sun sets on 2024, I’m reflecting on how much it shone on our theatrical world. This year has seen artistic triumphs and artistic tempests, financial successes and financial setbacks, runs extended and plays cancelled, theatres thriving and theatres in danger of sale.

This year, I saw 179 shows in three countries, and covered 131 of them in 95 articles. Here are some of my Toronto favourites. This isn’t a traditional Top Ten list; instead, I’ve sorted my highlights into categories in no particular order.

IMPRESSIVE NEW (OR NEW-ISH) CANADIAN WORKS

THE BIDDING WAR: One of my favourite new plays of the year, Michael Ross Albert’s funny farce at Crow’s Theatre married elements of low comedy and high tragedy (Farcedy? Tragifarce?) to tell the story of a group of grasping grotesques trying to get their hands on the last affordable house in Toronto while losing parts of themselves. Swiftly directed by Paolo Santalucia, a terrific cast headed by Peter Fernandes and Fiona Reid, a thoughtful and extravagant set (Ken MacKenzie and Sim Suzer) perfect for all the comings and goings, and Lear-worthy infighting was enough to bring any prospective house hunter to tears of laughter…and also depression.

Few plays hit me harder emotionally this year than Rosa Laborde’s INTERIOR DESIGN at Tarragon Theatre. Directed by Kat Sandler, Laborde’s story of four women on the cusp of 40 who were reevaluating long-standing friendships, careers, and other life choices couldn’t have felt more timely and relatable to this reviewer. It helped that the dialogue was sparklingly funny, a couple of unexpected twists kept things interesting, and uniformly strong performances across the board engaged throughout, particularly Sara Farb’s psychoanalyzing perfectionist determined to win friendship at all costs.

DE PROFUNDIS: Oscar Wilde IN JAIL: Soulpepper took a chance with Gregory Prest, Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson’s new musical about Wilde’s time in Reading Gaol for his forbidden homosexual relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas; luckily, the show was a daring and successful pastiche. Striking set design by Lorenzo Savoini, morphing from Victorian still life to dreary, framed prison cell to hot gay club to romantic secret garden, served as a backdrop to star Damien Atkins’ arresting performance. Atkins’ ferocious, consistent grasp on his character meant that Wilde’s personality was paramount, his humour, fear, frustration, loneliness and pride achingly shining through whether he was performing a torch song, a Gilbert and Sullivan-esque patter piece, or techno hit.

PLAYING SHYLOCK: At Canadian Stage, Mark Leiren-Young’s updated play about identity politics in theatre was given an enormous gift via the performance and life story of Saul Rubinek, born in a Displaced Persons camp to parents who were Holocaust survivors. Rubinek’s portrayal of himself as an actor playing Shylock in a cancelled production of The Merchant of Venice, calling out the theatre for bowing to nebulous online pressure that labelled the role as antisemitic, was simultaneously meta and personal. Asking us if he was “Jewish enough yet” to play the role, telling stories of his father’s brief career in the Yiddish theatre cut short by genocide and diaspora, Rubinek’s fire lit the stage. As well, this was one of few plays this year that could only take place in the here and now, on the stage and company whose history it shared and told.

BIG STUFF: Married couple and comedians Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus delivered a deceptively simple and thrillingly intimate exploration of the things we own that own our hearts. Stuffing Crow’s Theatre’s small studio space with moving boxes and personal items, the production directed by Kat Sandler pulled together a moving story of familial loss with moments of gently funny improv and audience participation, where audience members shared their stories of stuff that holds far greater value than the material. As a psychological study, the show was sharply observed; as a communal experience, it was heartwarming—though I’m not sure it’s going to make my New Year’s resolution to downsize my possessions any easier.

Also using audience participation skillfully, Hayley McGee’s AGE IS A FEELING at Soulpepper was a  “choose-your-own-life-adventure” play. While McGee, directed by Mitchell Cushman, was the only actor, the show’s order and stories were shaped by audience members who picked the key words we most wanted to hear about. Delivering an artful and beautiful second-person monologue, McGee told us that everyone’s experience of another person’s life is different; we never get to know 100% of another’s story, and that’s okay. Building a portrait of the arc of a life from a lifeguard-style high chair surrounded by flowers (set via Zoe Hurwitz), McGee found remarkable grace in the unremarkable, leaving few eyes dry by the end.

NEW (AND NEW-ISH) CANADIAN WORKS, HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

GIRLS, UNWANTED: Toronto theatre legend George F. Walker directed his own work about a halfway house for women who have been failed by the system, a final attempt to help before they disappear into the cracks entirely. Walker’s characters were multifaceted and distinct, the only thing in common their loneliness and despair after spending lives unwanted. The King Black Box is a new, intimate space that adapted well to Sophie Ann Rooney’s pre-distressed set filled with news clippings about our city’s failure to help those deemed expendable, and strong performances by a tough-talking Alexandra Flores-Matic and quietly yearning Louis Akins as a long-lost (or abandoned) sister and brother gave the work an effective core.

TYSON’S SONG: Pleiades Theatre and Factory Theatre brought us Peter N. Bailey’s tight one-act about Black male friendship, which looked at the intersection between the pressures of masculinity and mental health issues. Solid performances by Kyle Brown and Jamar Adams-Thompson kept the tension humming toward an ending that dared to be both tragic and hopeful.

WONDERFUL JOE: Ronnie Burkett’s new work was a gleefully meandering ode to those forgotten in the rubble of gentrification, bringing his gorgeously-crafted puppets and sets back to Toronto at the St. Lawrence Centre, a venue that is itself in danger. Burkett effectively weaves his spell, breathing life into his idiosyncratic and lovably profane characters as he delivers a message and warning about deeming any person’s way of life expendable.

EL TERREMOTO: I appreciated the ambition of Christine Quintana’s family-focused work at Tarragon, and Guillermo Verdecchia’s production literally shook the stage with an earthquake that led to a seismic second act for the three Jurado sisters, making them reflect on their heritage and the loss of their parents years earlier. Quintana’s characters, even the dead ones, were richly alive, and the design team (Shannon Lea Doyle’s set, Fernando Maya Meneses’ costumes, Michelle Ramsay’s lighting, and Samay Arcentales Cajas’ projections) gave us a colourful, shattered world with a healthy touch of magical realism.

AWESOME IMPORTS (Toronto productions of plays originating abroad) AND TOURS

Coal Mine Theatre scored big this year, mounting two of my favourite productions of 2024, Annie Baker’s INFINITE LIFE and Samuel D. Hunter’s A CASE FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. Both plays, which recently had successful runs in New York, were intimately moving stories about people who find connection through another’s understanding of their very specific kind of pain. In Baker’s play, six women and one man quietly bond in various combinations over their extreme, last-ditch attempt to rid themselves of chronic pain at a clinic that monitors a fasting regimen. Hunter’s play is about two single fathers who find their own private Idaho both comforting and frustrating, navigating a world where simple male friendship and support is rare and beautiful, hard to come by.

Directed with compassion and wry humour by Jackie Maxwell, Baker’s exploration of the isolation of chronic illness, given (dare I say) infinite life by a wonderful cast including Christine Horne, Nancy Palk, and Jean Yoon, was my top Toronto theatre experience of 2024, spare, delicate, and thunderously moving. Hunter’s play, directed by Ted Dykstra, gave us a warm and complex relationship between two fascinating characters, played with ease and depth by Mazin Elsadig and Noah Reid.

Lucas Hnath’s DANA H., a recorded portrait of his chaplain mother’s time as a captive of a psychiatric patient and former prisoner with ties to the Aryan Brotherhood, was a spellbinding theatrical coup that found a home at Factory Theatre after Crow’s had to move it in the wake of multiple extensions of GREAT COMET. Dana Higginbotham’s painful and suspenseful story sat halfway between an interview and a performance, with actress Jordan Baker expertly lip-synching to a recorded track to the point where one could forget she wasn’t speaking. The staging, largely reproduced from its Broadway run, felt “carved out of the theatre like a diorama under tilt-shift photography, life-sized yet strangely miniaturized,” which added to the disorientation and liminal feeling of the experience. It was hard not to feel shaken by the time the wild, real-life tale came to its dramatic conclusion.

Soulpepper and Obsidian Theatre’s THREE SISTERS, adapted to fit a Nigerian milieu by Inua Ellams, was as expansive as its WHAT THE CONSTITUTION MEANS TO ME was intimate, but both were extremely educational to local audiences while entertaining. Directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, THREE SISTERS with its marathon runtime explored the Biafran War, a crisis few Torontonians know well, using a familiar structure. It also featured too many dynamite performances by its stellar cast to name, though Oyin Oladejo as the outsider bride, Amaka Umeh as a maladjusted soldier, and Oyin Oladejo as the family fulcrum are a good start. Heidi Schreck’s CONSTITUTION paired her own family history with the precarious history of women’s rights as determined through the US Constitution; not to leave audiences smugly judging our neighbours to the south, the production ended with a live debate between Schreck actress Amy Rutherford and high school student Gabriella King on Canada’s own Constitution, a document that many of us don’t know much better.

Two standout Mirvish presentationss were LIFE OF PI, based on Yann Martel’s Booker-winning novel, and Tom Stoppard’s classic spin on Shakespeare, ROSENCRANTZ AND GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD, starring two of the world’s favourite hobbits, Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan, as the daft duo who often can’t tell each other apart. LIFE OF PI gave audiences breathtaking puppetry, particularly in creating the tiger Richard Parker, and a welcome discovery in Divesh Subaskaran, playing the challenging role of Pi in his professional debut, while telling a “tiger tale” about the power of storytelling to change lives. It was hard to believe that Boyd and Monaghan had never done a play together, as they effectively slipped into Stoppard’s twisting, patterned language over the backdrop of Jeremy Webb’s moodily atmospheric production, originally for Halifax’s Neptune Theatre.

FRINGE and NEXT STAGE FAVES

I wrote about 56 shows at the Fringe, some of which I hope get an extra life. GRINGAS, a coming-of-age story of several teens discovering facets of their heritage at a remedial Spanish-language summer camp, was fresh and thoughtful, its committed cast and banter convincing me this might be the next hit CBC series. Alberta’s Dayna Lee Hoffman and Katie Yoner gave us the outsized and extremely energetic clown show RAT ACADEMY, shrinking the audience into a world where rats must fight for their lives, trusting no one—not even each other. New play winner POZ, about the changed horror of a modern-day AIDS diagnosis that changes the narrative from fatal tragedy to grinding but steady chronic illness, featured a captivating structure to match that changed narrative plus a charming lead performance from writer Mark Keller. Veronica Hortiguela and Annie Luján’s MONKS was pure fun, an ode to doing nothing with a monastic backdrop that worked the audience like a rosary and delivered laughs, lunacy, and lentils. Making the most of the one-person storytelling format, Anand Rajaram’s CROSSTOWN was a deceptively simple but effective adaptation of a complicated novel, and Iris Bahr’s SEE YOU TOMORROW explored a harrowing family health event with wit, verve, and meaning.

Of the six shows I reviewed at Next Stage, my favourite was I WAS UNBECOMING THEN, an a cappella-backed piece set in a 2006 Vancouver high school music room, Lydsey Bourne’s script cataloguing the tribulations of twelve teenaged girls with honesty and Sam Kaseta’s skillful arrangements capturing their voices in harmony.

PROMISING NEW COMPANIES

I saw TOMMY RHODES at the end of its short run at the Red Sandcastle, but the complex new musical from Basement Productions established writers Mateo Chavez Lewis and Aveleigh Keller as ones to watch. Based on a real case of a missing boy who returned to his family after a lengthy disappearance, only to be claimed by another mother in a highly-publicized court case, the show was part ancestry detective story, part modern tale about the dangers of obsession with one’s lineage in maintaining present relationships, and part commentary on the ugly side of public opinion, class, and reputation’s impact on the justice system. A large, talented cast made the most of the tiny space.

MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG is a hugely ambitious Sondheim work (one of my favourites, to be honest), and Shifting Ground Collective’s production with full orchestrations was almost overpowering in the small Annex Theatre, but also very exciting. A solid cast and slick choreography elevated the production. An amateur company worth following.

COOL SITE-SPECIFICS:

These shows used their locations to the fullest:

THE CAGED BIRD SINGS: Waleed Ansari’s giant cage in the atrium at the heart of the Aga Khan Museum was an extremely atmospheric setting for Modern Times Stage Company’s production by Rouvan Silogix, Rafeh Mahmud, and Ahad Lakhani. The philosophically dense three-hander, an adaptation of Rumi’s “Masnavi,” benefitted strongly from its location.

R.A.V.E.: Outside The March gave audiences an evening that was half techno dance party and half cult ritual in a secret office location at the Downsview Airport Lands. The Real Audio-Visual Experience outfitted the office to match its philosophical mashup of mosh pit and corporate satire. Glowing wristbands and a banger soundtrack made the show a night to remember.

YOU, HAMLET: Also at the Fringe, DopoLavoro Teatrale took us through East End United Church in a series of nonlinear moments from history’s most famous play. Director Daniele Bartolini provided the audience with a series of images and sets of prompts, making the show half theatrical installation and half seminar. Audiences got out of the show what they gave, and luckily, at my performance, they were willing to give quite a bit, supported by the structure provided by the company.

SAMCA: If you enjoyed Tarragon Theatre’s production of Yaga, but prefer your examinations of mythological demonic female avatars who kill children more melancholy and dark, Riot King and Spindle Collective’s autumn offering provided a moodily atmospheric take on a Romanian folkloric creature. The horror musical used the north end of the Black Creek Pioneer Village campus to create eerie images with bloodstained white clothing, a singing saw, gnarled trees and a terrifying throne. A large cast gave voice to the legend, using the story of two sisters to tell a tale of womanhood and the fear, joy, and jealousy associated with pregnancy, an extended metaphor for topics of forced birth and abortion. Very memorable.

REMOUNTS:

NATASHA, PIERRE, AND THE GREAT COMET OF 1812: Okay, this isn’t technically a remount, but I didn’t get to see Crow’s Theatre’s production until January, so it missed my list from last year. Plus, it is getting a Mirvish remount in 2025, so you can experience the Tolstoy party for yourself.

CASEY AND DIANA: Nick Green’s humane and complex play about Princess Diana’s tour of AIDS hospice Casey House, directed by Andrew Kushnir, seamlessly made the move from Stratford to Soulpepper. Green’s tight pacing and expansive characterization, along with terrific performances anchored by Sean Arbuckle’s gregarious Thomas, gave audiences catharsis and hope.

WOMEN OF THE FUR TRADE: The National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre and the Great Canadian Theatre Company production of Frances Koncan’s anachronistic wonder at Native Earth’s Aki Studio was a gloriously biting satire of a show that looks at the intersection between the way women’s contributions to history have been dismissed or forgotten and long-standing issues of Indigenous erasure in Canada. Things got real, and then Riel (Louis Riel). The show featured possibly my single favourite supporting performance of 2024, Jesse Gervais as Irish immigrant Thomas Scott. Gervais’ vocal inflections and physicality were pitch-perfect, physically pulling back and verbally fading away from every attempt at a confident statement, cowed by Riel’s dismissive behaviour. The sympathy that Scott engenders with his sweet and pathetic countenance, and his insistence that he fled Ireland with nothing, almost made one forget his character was a racist supporter of Manifest Destiny who won’t hesitate to foment war against his Indigenous “friends” the second he’s provoked—and that’s the point. Scratch Cyrano’s surface, and find Andrew Jackson beneath.

I missed Soulpepper’s A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE the first time around, which was almost as big a mistake as selling Belle Reve. Weyni Mengesha’s New Orleans jazz-inspired production provided a rich musical backdrop to Mac Fyfe and Amy Rutherford’s sharp performances as crude, brutish Stanley Kowalski and faded flower Blanche DuBois.

THE MASTER PLAN: See last year’s roundup. But also, see THE MASTER PLAN.

That’s a wrap on 2024 theatre! Happy New Year, and best wishes for a stellar 2025 on stage!

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