Spare a thought, if you will, for poor, poor theatre.

In this age of long-form television, blockbuster films and digital doo-daddery, live theatre tends to get a little overlooked. It's kinda like the Cinderalla of human narrative. Hardworking, honest, and totally hot. Problem is, she's being oppressed by evil stepsisters who have way fancier clothes.

But once a year, theatre gets the fairy godmother treatment and gets to step out in style in carriage that used to be a pumpkin. I've clearly carried this Cinderella too far, and I'll abandon it now. But here's the point: today is World Theatre Day, and there's some nifty stuff going on around town that will give you a chance to celebrate all the theatrical goodness our city has to offer.

Everyone has seen a movie made from a play. From Cabaret to A Few Good Men, Hollywood has long looked to the humble playwright for inspiration. But for some reason, this relationship sledom flows in reverse. The play-made-from-a-movie is a rare beast, due I think to the problems with taking the hermetic story-telling of a feature film and cramming it into the more dialogic conventions of live theatre.

Lucky for us, there is a solution to this problem: just add music! You'll seldom see a stage adaptation of a movie without people singing and jumping around. It's a formula that worked well in Monty Python's Spamalot, or recent Broadway smash Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. On the other hand, it also produced Lord of the Rings: The Musical. Tricky.

A Man of No Importance is another example of the 'movie + music = play' paradigm. I'm happy to report that, thanks to an excellent production by Acting Up Stage, it's both a pretty successful mapping of the 1994 film and an entertaining play. It may not be the most challenging piece of theatre, but it's a charming story well told by a talented cast.

Like about a million other university educated schmucks with literary pretensions, I once tried to read James Joyce's "Ulysses". I got about 100 pages into the 1000 page behemoth, my brain turned to cat food, and I gave up. There's something so very Irish about taking English and turning it into a kind of trapezoidal deathmaze.

This tendency crops up in MacKenzieRo's production of Disco Pigs. But where Joyce's language is complex are rarefied, Disco Pigs goes in the opposite direction- to the underclass dialect of urban Ireland, a nearly impenetrable fog of slang with a rhythm alien to the North American ear. But here's the good news: you'll figure it out. And as you do, you'll be treated to two incredible performances nestled in a firecracker script.

Photo: Front Street, April 19, 1904. The cleanup begins after the Great Toronto Fire. Courtesy of the Archives of Ontario.

It's been one week to the day since the awful fire on Queen Street obliterated a block of historic buildings, consuming businesses and apartments and displacing dozens. A good chance to remember how the people affected by the fire are still struggling to rebuild their lives. It's also an opportunity to consider that, although tragic, last Wednesday's fire is just the latest entry on a long butcher's bill of catastrophic Toronto infernos. Fires have left a searing brand on the face of our city, changing the geography of our streets, our laws, the way we get around, and even the outcome of wars.

Here, then, is a short list of some of Toronto's more spectacular blazes, after the jump.

OK. So here's what happened. I was supposed to review Royal Porcupine Production's No Exit for last week's 'Thursday Theatre Review'. Unfortunately, the show, located just down the street from the massive Queen Street fire, lost power and couldn't go on. After a frantic exchange with No Exit's extremely accomodating media guy, I rescheduled for Sunday night. So, here's a special Tuesday edition of the Thursday review. And there'll be another one actually on Thursday this week, so don't miss that.

But onwards, ever upwards.

Now, No Exit is not a particularly good show. I really wanted to like it. But a charming cast and an interesting script can't overcome a problematic and somewhat confusing production. Royal Porcupine gets an 'A' for effort, but in the end their production comes up a little short.

It's one week to the day since the axe fell at the Canadian Stage Company: nine employees gone in the face of a $694,000 two season loss and a total debt load of $1 million. Bad, if not catastrophic, news for CanStage. But does the plight of Toronto's largest non-profit theatre say anything about the state of theatre in Toronto?

Probably. And the the prognosis isn't altogether promising.