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REVIEWS: Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

This collection of Toronto Fringe Festival capsule reviews will be updated throughout the festival with writing from 20 different critics.

Let’s-a go: Embedded with the Fools’ Comedy of Errors

While I was preparing for the summer heat by shopping for lighter clothes, Kate Smith, artistic director of a Company of Fools, was getting ready for their next show. She called me while I was in the Rideau Centre and pitched an idea: “Would you have any interest in being an embedded critic?”

Theatre Aquarius’ NCNM selects three new musicals for 2025-26 development 

“The Danish Guest, The Blue Castle, and My Beef with Beef each bring such distinct worlds to life — from Victorian London to early-1900s Muskoka to a modern kitchen haunted by a ghost cow," wrote artistic director Mary Francis Moore in a press release.

As he plays Leontes at the Stratford Festival, Graham Abbey reflects on his deep bond with The Winter’s Tale

“It’s got to be my favourite [Shakespeare play] at this point,” says Abbey. “I don't understand why it's so rarely done. It’s listed as a ‘problem play,’ and I see that, but I have had such beautiful experiences with it throughout my life… I think it has the ability to unite audience and cast in a deeply human event.”

REVIEW: A new Emma Donoghue musical takes root at the Blyth Festival

As a resident of southwestern Ontario, what struck me most is how deeply rooted in the region The Wind Coming Over the Sea feels. It's a lively reminder of the cultural inheritances that continue to shape the area today.

Toronto Fringe is getting ready to send in the clowns

If there’s one notable trend in the 2025 Toronto Fringe lineup, it’s that this year's festival will feature more clowns than you can fit into a very small car. 

REVIEWS: Toronto Fringe Festival 2025

This collection of Toronto Fringe Festival capsule reviews will be updated throughout the festival with writing from 20 different critics.

As he plays Leontes at the Stratford Festival, Graham Abbey reflects on his deep bond with The Winter’s Tale

“It’s got to be my favourite [Shakespeare play] at this point,” says Abbey. “I don't understand why it's so rarely done. It’s listed as a ‘problem play,’ and I see that, but I have had such beautiful experiences with it throughout my life… I think it has the ability to unite audience and cast in a deeply human event.”

Let’s turn the page: Announcing a nationwide program for emerging performing arts critics

Do you like writing about the performing arts but wish you had more skills and contacts to help you advance in the field? Would you like to continue to build your writing and critical thinking skills? Are you IBPOC or from another equity-seeking background? There’s a new program for you.

REVIEW: Shaw Festival’s metatheatrical Major Barbara is sharp and subversive

Director Peter Hinton-Davis draws on a light smattering of Brechtian techniques — acknowledgements of artifice that enrich and vivify Major Barbara’s clash of morals.

REVIEW: Documenting seven Toronto indie shows, from Factory Theatre to the Tranzac Club and beyond

I’ve started writing brief reviews of Toronto productions Intermission isn’t otherwise covering, and stowing them away until I collect enough to publish in a batch. And now here I am, with seven.

Stratford Festival reviews: Macbeth, As You Like It, Annie, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

While the four productions I reviewed spanned different genres and styles, the presence of household-name director-designer Robert Lepage led me to reflect more broadly on the craft of directing, and how the demands of specific shows shift what’s entailed in that intense, wide-reaching job.