I'm going to try something a bit different in the ol' TTR this week. As I'm trying to conserve my limited critical resources for the two-week theatre orgy called The Fringe, today will be a combination 'review' and 'feature'. What I like to call a 'freview', or occasionally a 'reveature'.

Moving forward.

Everyone loves a summit. If by 'everyone', you mean scowling diplomats and folks really into the reduction of nuclear weapon stockpiles. But Toronto's Bad Dog Theatre has come up with an event with much broader appeal- instead of arguing about the number of ICBMs in Poland, the Bad Dog Improv Summit is all about funny.

The National Theatre of Scotland is approximately 3300 Km from Toronto. Under normal circumstances, seeing a show there would involve a lot of money, time, jetlag, and hangovers, as the last time I was in Scotland I somehow ended up drinking the volume of a small bathtub every day.

So, I owe the Luminato Festival a debt of thanks. Their importation of the NTS's Black Watch saved me a handful of cash and spared my liver the vagaries of a week in Glasgow. And as a happy bonus, it was a pretty damn amazing show to boot.

I am not a religious man. Still, I have managed to pick up a few Judeo-Christian nuggets over the years. Here's one I think more or less sums up vast swathes of the New Testament:

Sharing is good.

And the best kind of sharing is when someone has a lot of something gives it to someone who has very little. Such is the philosophy embraced by DreamNorth Theatre Company, who for the second year is taking a Shakespearean play from relatively theatre rich Toronto, and exporting it to the theatre-poor Yukon. A neat idea, made all the better by the fact that their version of Much Ado About Nothing is very good. Thankfully, Toronto audiences still have a few days to catch this show at Fort York before it packs up and heads north.

Creating a new play isn't easy, especially when you eschew more mainstream conventions of story and character. Like, say, if you were to take an utterly mundane daily activity and explode it into an extraordinary moment of self discovery.

Such is the challenge of the Independent Aunties/ Theatre Centre co-pro Breakfast. Billed as a 'production in progress', it's not always a complete success as a piece of theatre. But it is an interesting and brave show, well worth checking out for those who like to walk a bit off the beaten theatrical path.

Plays about 'ideas' are tempermental beasts. When a playwright hitches his wagon to some kind of a political or social concept, it often ends up as a very boring show. A play that really wants to tell you something about, say, poverty ends up forgetting about all those other things that audiences actually connect with- story, characters and relationships. A good piece of social or political drama starts with the basics and lets the conceptual implications flow upwards.

So, it was with some trepidation that I went to see Necessary Angel's production of The Eco Show, the latest offering from Toronto's theatrical wunderkind, Daniel Brooks. Based on the title alone, I thought I was in for an environmental screed, a kind of Al Gore meets Hamlet kind of affair. Turns out, Brooks has not only created a remarkably compelling family drama, but also committed one of the most spectacular theatrical fake-outs I have ever seen. But more on that later.

Despite all the hooplah about CanStage's recent financial woes, the company deserves praise for its 2007-08 season at the Berkeley Street Theatre. CanStage's three Berkeley shows- The Pillowman, Palace of the End, and The December Man- are all unflinchingly honest looks at humanity's darker places. Bold choices, particularly when Toronto's theatre industry struggles with declining attendance, stagnant funding at the grim prospect of a North American recession.

As the old saying goes, fortune does indeed favour the bold. The Berkeley season has been at least an artistic success, bringing a welcome level of relevance and emotional depth to Toronto audiences. It is perhaps fitting then that the final show of the season, The December Man, should embody this trend so fully. While The Pillowman reveled in an almost cartoonish brutality, and Palace of the End spoke with the urgency of today's headlines, The December Man takes a softer, simpler look at the lingering destruction of a horrible crime. It is a very moving show, a detailed and honest look at a family consumed by guilt and loss.