Twelve indelible moments of performance from 2025

L to R, top to bottom: 'The 39 Steps' (photo by Raph Nogal), 'Benevolence' (photo by Jae Yang), 'The Born-Again Crow' (photo by Jeremy Mimnagh), 'Dimanche' (photo by Thomas Müller), 'Last Landscape' (photo by Fran Chudnoff), 'The Merchant of Venice' (photo by Kyle Purcell), 'Slave Play' (photo by Dahlia Katz), 'Waiting for Godot' (photo by Elana Emer), 'The Welkin' (photo by Dahlia Katz).

Reviews

/ Dec 19, 2025

SHARE

The performing arts unfold in the moment. When we look back on an impactful play, dance show, or opera, it’s often not narrative, theme, or character that’s most memorable, but the spark of real bodies interacting in real time and space. Glimpses, gestures, gulps: the ephemeral stuff. (AI actors need not apply.)

With the lights fading on another year of fleeting thrills in dark rooms, we asked 12 Ontario performing arts writers to reflect on a moment that stayed with them. The results mainly stem from Toronto theatre productions, but there are a few surprises weaved in — along with different takes on the idea of a “moment,” from literal instants to entire scenes.

We hope that reading about these moments reignites memories of performances that brought you joy, surprise, and insight this year.

Accused murderers take to the rails in The 39 Steps (Guild Festival Theatre)

Fleeing the police after being wrongly accused of murder, Richard Hannay (Sébastien Heins) boards a train in hopes of slipping out of London — and walks straight into pandemonium.

As the carriage begins to rattle, Hannay grips his crate-seat while Kiana Woo and Isaiah Kolundzic fling themselves into rapid-fire character changes: a nosy commuter one second, a stern ticket inspector the next, with each transformation marked by a new voice or a quick tilt of the body. They yank, slide, and collide with the crates, using them as seats, walls, and the very floor of the speeding train. Woo’s lightning-fast shifts push the chaos to its peak, and together the trio turns a handful of boxes into a hilariously unhinged escape sequence.—Krystal Abrigo

Read Krystal’s feature on The 39 Steps.

A fringe festival legend kicks off Adventures in Canadian Parking Lots (Theatre Kingston)

Before almost every theatrical performance, there’s an indescribable moment where an actor makes a switch from person to performer. Sometimes it’s subtle, but it’s there. The audience often misses it, but when jem rolls came to visit the cramped Theatre Kingston Studio, there was no backstage to conceal it.

The room goes dark, but bits of light still seep in from the hallway. rolls enters through the door casually and takes his place on stage, head facing down. When the lights come up there is a sharp inhale and his head snaps to the audience with a sudden eruption of magnificent poetic chaos. The casual figure who stepped in the door is gone, and for the next hour this new presence rapidly spews poetry with flawless delivery and calculated timing.—Aiden Robert Bruce

Kevin Matthew Wong gives his grandmother the stage in Benevolence (Tarragon Theatre with Why Not Theatre and Broadleaf Creative)

*Kevin Matthew Wong in* Benevolence. *Photo by Jae Yang.*

Wong sits side-on to the audience under a warm spotlight, blurring the audience/performer divide as he watches his centenarian grandmother speak, on video, about her experience of Hakka and Canadian cultures — a conversation that would become an early step in Wong’s own exploration of his Hakka identity.

On a technical level, there’s a lot to admire: Echo Zhou’s intimate lighting and Wong’s skilful direction, video design, and performance all come together beautifully. But the warmth, humour, and grief in this brief scene are what have stuck with me since seeing the play in April. The scene is a personal yet expansive way into the joys and challenges of intergenerational cultural connection, and a poignant look at the complexity of grandparent and grandchild relationships, a dynamic I’ve too rarely seen taken up on stage.—Charlotte Lilley

Read Charlotte’s review of Benevolence.

A yard becomes a Real Canadian Superstore in The Born-Again Crow (Buddies in Bad Times Theatre/Native Earth Performing Arts)

Near the end of Caleigh Crow’s Governor General’s Award-winning drama, protagonist Beth (Tara Sky) — a teenage ornithophile — receives a dead bird from the talking Crow (Madison Walsh) that’s been visiting her family’s backyard.

Beth gasps with terror: A corpse is no gift. But the Crow encourages Beth to be “strong.” To be a “warrior.” To be “Joan of Arc.” As Chris Ross-Ewart’s sound design crescendoes, the Crow intones: “You are a secret. You’re a secret pretending to be a woman.”

These words prompt Beth to relive a traumatic work experience; in tandem, set designer Shannon Lea Doyle plunges the production into the character’s mind. The backyard’s wooden fence barrels forward to the ground, unveiling a surreally rendered Superstore. It’s a startling design reveal that helps springboard the show toward a cathartic climax.—Liam Donovan

Read Liam’s review of There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow.

Three journalists drive through mountains in Dimanche (Chaliwaté/Focus at TO Live)

A tiny satellite van drives through barren hills. Zoom in. The van is bigger, driving over a mountain. Zoom in more. The mountain is the hunched back of a performer.

Closeup on three journalists bundled in white snow gear bouncing up and down over bumpy roads. Two puppet windshield wipers in perfect synchronicity, while one commands the steering wheel with their free hand. The middle-seat journalist dangles a rearview mirror with a tree-shaped air freshener above their heads. The cohesive acting trio of Denis Robert, Christine Heyraud, and Julie Dacquin have become the van driving through a snowstorm.

In a feat of carefully coordinated clumsiness, they switch seats mid-drive, passing around a leaking thermos of coffee over each other’s heads. They’re casual; everything’s fine. The sequence is magical, hilarious, and underlined with impending doom.—Gus Lederman

Read Nathaniel Hanula-James’ feature on Dimanche.

Makram Ayache makes the most of his Dora Award acceptance speech (Shakespeare in the Ruff/Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts)

What started as a theatrical reimagination of collateral damage “became a thinly veiled metaphor for Gaza [and what Arab women] are enduring today” — and Ayache’s first Dora win.

During his acceptance speech for outstanding new play in the independent theatre division, Ayache expresses deep gratitude for Shakespeare in the Ruff’s “fearless” support of The Tempest: A Witch in Algiers (2024) and the company’s dedication in meeting a critical need for unashamed public advocacy within the arts sector.

Ayache encourages that same fearlessness from a Meridian Hall sardined with theatre industry professionals, calling on them to divest from the Azrieli Foundation — one of Canada’s largest arts funders and a subsidiary of Israel’s leading real estate developer in the occupied West Bank.

“I know it’s scary, [but please don’t] do it when you’re ready,” Ayache insists. “You have to do it when you’re afraid.”—Stephanie Fung

Read the full list of 2025 Dora winners, and Aisling Murphy’s review of The Tempest: A Witch in Algiers.

Workers enjoy the sun in Last Landscape (Bad New Days with Common Boots Theatre at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre)

*The company of* Last Landscape. *Photo by Fran Chudnoff.*

A tall performer in beige workwear (Nicholas Eddie) sets a ring light upstage, settles onto a park bench with his back to the audience, and unfolds a silver sun reflector. One by one, four others (Nada Abusaleh, Gibum Dante Lim, Annie Luján, and Kari Pederson) join him, warming their faces in the glow. Collectively they sigh in satisfaction.

As Eddie switches off the light, he spots the audience. The others turn and contemplate us with quiet curiosity, holding the moment. This early sequence sets the tone of creator-director Adam Paolozza’s haunting, wordless imagining of a future in which workers reconstruct memories of a natural world lost to climate collapse. It slowed me down and bowled me over.—Karen Fricker

Read Ferron Delcy’s review of Last Landscape.

**Cameron Scott looks toward a Shabbat table in The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare BASH’d at The Theatre Centre)**

Scott stands wraithlike, clad in black, trembling. She’s Jessica, Shylock’s daughter who elopes with her non-Jewish partner to live a liminal existence.

Her attention, like mine, focuses on a Shabbat table laden with celebratory items. At the start of the show, it was in a place of pride. Now, the rest of the actors insouciantly strip it bare — a ransacking all the more blatant for its casualness.

Scott stares in reproach as the good Christians take ownership of the spoils they assume are rightfully theirs.

Like many Jews, I have a complicated relationship with Merchant, finding its presentation of Elizabethan-era antisemitism comparatively progressive but still painful. Here, Shakespeare’s putative comedy becomes an unmistakable tragedy, thanks to Scott’s constant, silent presence as a witness to hatred.—Ilana Lucas

Read Ilana’s review of The Merchant of Venice.

A group of dancers enter the world in PASSING (Ballet BC at TO Live)

Hearing the words “onstage birth” puts the fear in me, but in PASSING at the Bluma Appel Theatre, the juice is worth the squeeze.

It’s in fact worth the squeeze of about 18 dancers, who a single performer births one by one in choreographer Johan Inger’s naturalistic show — an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mix of classical ballet; contemporary, folk, and tap dance; and theatre acting. Inger asks his dancers to commit, and they do it with a candour that turns a potentially cringey device into a study of renewal. The relentless repetition gives PASSING its forceful momentum to produce the show’s ensuing landscapes of wonder, connection, bewilderment, and grief, which cover decades of emotional ground in barely an hour.

On leaving it’s hard not to feel like one of those freshly birthed dancers myself; outside the theatre, the world shifts into a raw and unknown marvel.—Lindsey King

Sophia Walker battles a wave of disappointment in Slave Play (Canadian Stage)

*Gord Rand and Sophia Walker in* Slave Play. *Photo by Dahlia Katz.*

Walker has brought an unyielding fortitude to the characters she’s recently played — women taking care of a world that doesn’t return the favour. Slave Play’s Kaneisha is particularly unattended to. In Act One, on the ground on her knees and begging for “Master Jim” to match her freak, she holds out hope for a release from her perverse fantasies that ever so briefly seem within reach. After all, there are doors within each of us that only other people can unlock.

The moment of her performance that lingers in my mind is when Jim utters the safe word, cutting her fun short, and the palpable abjection that overcomes her previously aroused expression. Studying her experience of the fallout, I thought: there’s nothing worse than being imprisoned inside of a body full of bawdy desires.—Nirris Nagendrarajah

Read Divine Angubua’s and Ilana Lucas’ reviews of Slave Play.

Alexander Thomas says the titular character’s name in Waiting for Godot (Coal Mine Theatre)

When I first hear Thomas pronounce Godot as “GAH-Dough,” I narrow my eyes in anticipation of something special. In Coal Mine’s production of Beckett’s post-Second World War opus, the actor (as Vladimir) tempers the godlike stature in the name “Godot” with this hilariously aloof vocalization.

I find the choice not only supremely entertaining, but also poignant in its haunting, funhouse-mirror effect. By vocalizing Godot as “GAH-Dough,” Thomas does not diminish or demystify the spectre of Godot. Instead, the idealism and good faith he channels into my laughter draw me toward Godot, only to hurl me against the dead-end reality of Godot’s monstrous indifference to Vladimir and Estragon’s situation.—Divine Angubua

Read Ferron Delcy’s review of Waiting for Godot.

bahia watson delivers an impassioned monologue in The Welkin (Crow’s Theatre/Soulpepper Theatre/The Howland Company)

Bordered by a jury of women, Sally Poppy’s truth tumbles forth: “I wanted and I wanted and I wanted.” watson’s musical voice invokes a bruised reality. Fight as release, longing as power. Her words pulse. She tells us she conjured a man, the man who chopped Alice Wax to pieces. She is not a victim!

Resolving The Welkin’s mysteries feels like scrubbing blood splatter from linen. In this Act Two monologue, watson embodies the play’s murky moral crux with dignity, disdain, and desperation. Her performance crawls under my skin.

watson’s remarkable season of Toronto theatre, which also saw her as the erratic Kristina in The Comeuppance at Soulpepper, will continue into the new year when she plays Alma Winemiller in Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke at Crow’s.—Ferron Delcy

Read Ilana Lucas’ review of The Welkin.

Intermission review coverage is independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.