THEATRE REVIEW: NEXT STAGE, 2012

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
08 JAN 2012

TORONTO - If you want to know what would happen if they threw a theatre festival and nobody came, don’t ask the organizers of Toronto’s Next Stage Theatre Festival, currently underway at the Factory Theatre. In fact, since the organizers of the summer Fringe Festival decided, five years ago, to spread their wings in a January edition of the popular event, audiences have been braving the exigencies of winter weather in ever-increasing numbers, hungry to check out the annual line-up of promising, if frost-bitten, new works.

As usual, this year’s selection includes a few hits, a few strong efforts and the obligatory one or two that leave one wondering just how they made the cut. To help make your choices, here’s our run-down:

HYPNOGOGIC LOGIC: Great premise, charming performances and more than a few laughs in an off-the-wall, silly-buggers sort of style. In fact, the only thing missing in this offering from Montreal-based Uncalled For is a bit of judicious editing. It would still be lighter than air, of course, just as these things are supposed to be, but it would keep things firing on all cylinders all the time.

THE TIKI BIKINI BEACH PARADISE PARTY A-GO-GO: Okay, right off the top: A woody, in surf parlance, was a car, not a board, and sushi wasn’t big in the western world in the ’60s. But while playwright/director Allison Beula isn’t much on research, she does manage to keep things moving in this inconsequential send-up of ’60s surf movies, thanks to some slick choreography and fine tunes by Jeffery Straker, delivered with more enthusiasm than polish by a game cast.

LOVESEXMONEY: Hey, Kat Sandler. Last time I checked, it was 2012 and this was a Fringe Festival (of sorts) after all. So how come the play you wrote and directed — the one purporting to look at some of the more unconventional sexual hi-jinx of our age — comes across as a mash-up of bad British bedroom farce and ’60s sitcoms, inspired more by Neil Simon than Neil LaBute? Just asking.

LOVING THE STRANGER (or How To Recognize an Invert): Writer/director Alistair Newton builds both an unconventional history lesson and a cautionary tale around the life of artist Peter Flinsch, a gay man imprisoned by the Nazis during the Second World War for kissing another man. An homage to Berlin’s pre-war cabaret scene, it’s compelling, thought-provoking and often in-your-face funny — and Hume Baugh (as Flinsch) is the perfect anchor.

LIVING WITH HENRY: After scoring big in last year’s production of The Normal Heart — a play about people dying of AIDS — Ryan Kelly returns to the stage in a play about living with it, heading a hugely committed cast and bringing life and passion to an unflinching and promising new musical by Christopher Wilson, directed and choreographed by Donna Marie Baratta.

MODERN LOVE: Playwright/performer Jessica Moss takes a long, if not necessarily hard, look at love and the search for it in an age when we are so plugged in and turned on that we seem to have lost our ability to connect. And while she scores some telling, often funny points along the way, ultimately it all feels a little too self-referential, leaving one to suspect that it might benefit from a broadening of the cast list to include other characters and other viewpoints.

TOMASSO’S PARTY: Hopefully, the event that gives Jules Lewis’ play its title will prove more engaging than the play it’s inspired. Under the direction of Nigel Shaun Williams, a sleep-deprived couple, Simon Bracken and Leah Doz, anticipate the event in question and discover all sorts of things about themselves and their relationship. But while they may not be able to sleep, chances are their audience will, despite the best efforts of all involved.

THE WASHING MACHINE: Radha. S. Menon seems to have engineered a head-on collision between Tennessee Williams and Somerset Maugham in this little tale of tea and tedium in the post-Raj world — and sadly there are no survivors, despite the committed work from director Sasha Kovacs, designer Jung-Hye Kim and a cast whose commitment can’t be questioned. Talk about feeling like you’ve been put through the wringer.

The Next Stage Festival, which also includes two Ante-Chamber offerings — Love Is a Poverty You Can Sell and Morro & Jasp: Go Bake Yourself — continues at the Factory Theatre through Jan. 15. Visit fringetoronto.com for details.