Under direction from Brendan Healy, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre has been on top of the Toronto scene recently with hit productions The Maids, The Normal Heart, and The Penelopiad. Their annual festival of dynamic, politically-charged performance, the Rhubarb Festival, is set to continue the charge with a two-week takeover at 12 Alexander. Festival Director Laura Nanni has brought together over 100 artists for the festival's 33rd year of new work.

This week in theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto. It includes just-opened shows as well as productions that are about to close.

Divisadero: A Performance / Theatre Passe Muraille / 8:00pm/2:00pm / $25-$35
A remount of the 2011 run, Divisadero: A Performance is a collaboration between Michael Ondaatje and Daniel Brooks — a pairing that's hard to beat. Ondaatje has adapted his novel Divisadero, a story that considers the influence of the past on the present, into a performance that's part musical, part poetry, part drama. It's not a play, in the traditional sense of the word, but it's bound to be thought-provoking.

Hamlet Live is both a live theatrical performance of Hamlet and a livestream of the play for those who are unable to attend the performance in person. The play is set in 2080, in a post-apocalyptic world, and seeks to contend with issues of decay, madness and rule, motifs generally associated with Shakespeare's best-known tragedy.

I admire the ambition of this undertaking: to be the most watched Hamlet in history (on account of the delivery method). A theatrical livestream event is groundbreaking in and of itself for small-scale productions, the likes of which we only see at movie theatres and performances at the Met for example. Stratford and BBC take note: streaming may be the way to increase your relevance and audience. Actor Kyle McDonald argues that livestreaming allows "audiences to find [live performance]. Theatre becomes open to those who can't afford it and to those who live far away." But my praise for this livestream ends here. Although I saw an early version (and thus later versions will have technical glitches solved), I much preferred the in-person play.

Martin Crimp has an ethereal Beckettesque presence. In town for the opening of his 2004 play Cruel and Tender, a modern version of Sophocles' Trachiniae, the playwright — a tall, stick-thin ghost-like figure — appeared for the curtain call alongside the play's director, acclaimed filmmaker Atom Egoyan.

It's a play that's set to divide Toronto audiences, not necessarily for Egoyan's direction of the piece, as the fanfare would suggest, but rather for Crimp's fractured portrait of war and a disappointing performance from the play's lead.

This week in theatre rounds up the most noteworthy live theatre playing right now in Toronto.


A Brimful of Asha / Tarragon Theatre / 8:00pm/2:30pm / $23
When's the last time you've seen a play featuring a mother and son playing themselves? In A Brimful of Asha, actor and director Ravi Jain performs alongside his mother for a look at a true Canadian story about generational culture clash. When Ravi takes a vacation to India, his parents decide to showcase potential brides. As a special treat, select Sunday performances take place at Dish Cooking Studio and include a cooking class with Asha.

With 2012 touted as the End of Days by groups citing the conclusion of the Mayan calendar, heightened interest in the unlikely event of our demise has brought a renewed focus to the environmental movement. Enter Ronnie Burkett and the marionettes of his newest touring show, Penny Plain, where the end of the world takes place in the living room of a blind senior citizen.