The SummerWorks Festival starts in Toronto this Thursday! Running for ten days and packed with live performances of all stripes, SummerWorks is now the largest juried theatre festival in Canada. The 'Works' has been around since 1991, beginning as a Fringe-like festival, but it has evolved into very much its own animal: unpredictable, exciting, and a crucial showcase for local talent. Okay, with ten days, and way too many options, better take your vitamins now.

It's been a while since I saw a musical that made me want to get up and dance. The Harder They Come accomplishes just that.

I've found that Toronto audiences much too easily give a standing ovation, but at last night's opening show of the Mirvish production at Canon Theatre, it was rightly deserved.

This Theatre Royal Stratford East and UK Arts production of the Perry Henzell hit (based on the 1972 film starring Jimmy Cliff) comes off a successful run in London's West End. If you embrace the culture of reggae music, you'll likely enjoy this show immensely.

Theatre, beer, and general wackiness...Toronto's 21st Fringe Festival kicks off tonight with 150 shows from here, there, and everywhere. Start with some of our picks, but take some chances, too--the Fringe is all about seeing the unknown, the risky, and the plain old strange. Tickets are only $10 at the door ($12 in advance), making the Fringe the city's biggest AND most affordable theatre experience of the year.

The InspiraTO festival (not to be confused with the Luminato festival) is a 10-minute play festival where every minute counts. It's ideal for short attention span types like myself.

If you get bored of one of the 10 plays, it'll soon be over and another one will likely amuse (Jalapeno Cough Syrup), infuriate (While Isabelle Bleeds) or equally annoy you (Fifty Years Hungry). That said, most of them are well-written and acted.

One of the highlights of the 10 plays for me was The Piano by Amy Fox, featuring a sassy Ese Atawo as The Countess (pictured above) who claims to live above a young couple, played by Adrian Sheperd-Gawinski and Sara Mitich. We learn that sometimes reality and imagination don't always get along. But where should the piano go?

Don't mess with The Shadow.

The Shadow is a new opera by composer Omar Daniel and librettist Alex Poch-Goldin about intrigue, desire and deception in Old Barcelona. It centers around Raoul, a postman who woos a young lady, lives beyond his means trying to impress her and gets chased down by his shadow.

The Shadow is more than just a metaphor in this case. It has been a tradition in old Barcelona to have a man exceptionally dressed follow around, or shadow, those who don't pay their debts, shaming them into paying up, or exposing their secrets and making their lives miserable as recompense. In some cases, this practice still exists in Barcelona today, with an El Cobrador del Frac (The Debt Collector in Top Hat and Tails).

The opera, directed by Tom Diamond, isn't your typical lavish, melodramatic production and it's more pleasurable as a result. The intimate Berkely Street Theatre houses this show and most of the story sung in English. There's a small flat-panel TV suspended above the left side of the stage, hovering over the seven-piece stage "pit orchestra" ensemble. It subtly provides translation surtitles to the Spanish-sung passages. In such a small venue, it's a delight to see up close the facial expressions of the performers.

For about the cost of a movie these days you can experience an evening of Sam Shepard's wildest plays performed in the decrepit ballroom of an old literary society at St.George and Bloor.

Candles are for Burning Co-op present 4-H Club, Killer's Head and Cowboys #2, giving us a glimpse into Shepard's American west. In some cases, a very wild, wild west. All three plays are directed by Steve McCarthy (also a member of The Elastocitizens) who created, with Michelle Monteith and Christian Barry, 2006's much lauded Revisited.

The moment I enter the venue, I get a sense of what's to come. The plays are housed in a dilapidated mansion at 160 St. George Street (two buildings south of the Bata Shoe Museum at St. George and Bloor). It feels like an old barroom where one might encounter Tom Waits on the upright, slightly out-of-tune piano in the corner.