2024 was not a good news year for live theatre in Canada. Venues are disappearing. With the lack of sufficient public funds, Factory Theatre has been in talks to redevelop its space as apartments or condos. Last year Mirvish filed an application to knock down the CAA Theatre and redevelop the property as a 76-storey mixed-use building. This November Harbourfront Centre said it was ending its lease on the Fleck Dance Theatre, which has existed there for more than 40 years.

Theatre festivals have encountered trouble. Due to a loss of financial support from a provincial grants fund, the Toronto Fringe Festival saw a significant reduction in programming. It 2019 it presented 151 productions; this year it was down to 77. Toronto’s Luminato Festival lost it main corporate sponsor. The festival had had a budget of  $7.4 million in 2016. Last year that amount was $3.4 million. For 2023 the Shaw Festival reported an operating deficit of $5.7 million, the largest in its history.

Given declining private support and insufficient public funding, theatre companies are mounting productions with smaller budgets and are cutting programming. Soulpepper has announced that its future lies in co-productions with other companies – a far cry from the company’s original goal of producing Canadian takes on classic plays with a core ensemble of artists. That, not co-pros, is what led the company to be invited to take a festival of plays and concerts to New York. Yet, as Soulpepper says of its new strategy, “This transformation plan is our answer to the challenges of today and tomorrow—a radical reimagining of how a theatre company can be an integral part of the fabric of its city”.

As a final note to this list of decline and pivots, the Toronto Arts Council cut off operating funding for Theatre Smith-Gilmour after the company’s 40 years of creating and touring theatre. Luckily, the Zita and Mark Bernstein Family Foundation set up a matching campaign to help. Visit www.canadahelps.org.

The upshot of this overview is that if an arts organization has provided you with engaging, intellectually and emotionally stimulating experiences over the years, you must seriously consider donating to it simply to ensure that it continues to exist.

Despite difficulties that theatres face, there is still so much theatre on offer in Toronto that no one person can see everything. At year’s end it is a pleasure to look back and note the various times where actors’ performances, the direction and the physical production all came together to create a thrilling, enlightening experience.

Toronto:

In alphabetical order here is my list of the ten best productions in Toronto that I reviewed in 2024. As usual, I have excluded productions that have previously appeared on this list.

A Case for the Existence of God by Samuel D. Hunter, Coal Mine Theatre. This was an unusual case of a contemporary play with an optimistic outlook. It posited that two people of diametrically opposite backgrounds could feel enough empathy for each other to become friends.

A Christmas Carol by Justin Haigh, The Three Ships Collective & Soup Can Theatre. This was the sixth year Three Ships and Soup Can have presented their immersive production of the Dickens classic so cleverly adapted to be played in various rooms of the Campbell House Museum. But this year is the first chance I had to see it. Of the vast proliferations of Christmas Carols every December, this is the one to see because it has the greatest immediacy and greatest impact.

Infinite Life by Annie Baker, Coal Mine Theatre. Coal Mine has become something of a specialist in Annie Baker’s elliptic manner of playwriting. Director Jackie Maxwell and her all-star cast made a play consisting of seemingly inconsequential remarks at a wellness retreat into an examination of the ways people cope with the possibility that life is an illusion.

The Inheritance, Parts 1 & 2 by Matthew López, Canadian Stage. The success of this epic two-part play announced the return of Canadian Stage as a major player in Toronto’s theatre scene. Brendan Healy and his 13-member cast never put a foot wrong in the tale of the complex relationships of gay men in the 21st century – a play that asks the important question of what older and younger generations can learn from each other.

Medea by Luigi Cherubini, Canadian Opera Company, Metropolitan Opera, Greek National Opera & Lyric Opera of Chicago. The COC’s first-ever production of Medea was a triumph for all concerned. Sondra Radvanovsky sang in only two of the opera’s six performances but gave her most thrilling performance ever. I get a chill down my spine just thinking about it.

Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Molloy, Crow’s Theatre & The Musical Stage Company. Who would guess that Book 8 of Tolstoy’s War and Peace would make a good source for a musical? Who would guess that EDM would be the perfect medium to tell this story? Risk after risk pays off to make this a truly exciting piece of music theatre. It opened in 2023, but I did not have a chance to see it until January 2024. It returns to Toronto July 15-August 24, 2025, as part of the Mirvish season.

The Noose by Frankétienne, translated by Dr. Asselin Charles, Abigail Whitney Productions, Next Stage Festival. At a time when Haiti is in chaos and when Haitian immigrants are being ridiculed in the US, Abigail Whitney Productions gave Torontonians the rare chance to see the best-known play by Haiti’s greatest living playwright. The gripping two-hander, like Waiting for Godot but with an overtly political edge, explores the pain of immigrants in 1978 who have left turmoil in their home country only to be exploited in their adopted country. The play will be part of the undercurrents Festival in Ottawa February 5-15, 2025.

Playing Shylock by Mark Leiren-Young, Canadian Stage with Starvox Entertainment. This play about a performance of The Merchant of Venice halted at intermission was the occasion for Saul Rubinek’s triumphant return to the stage. Playwright Mark Leiren-Young lent Rubinek’s own life story to the actor playing Shylock so that the actor’s plea that the show must go on and that the production of plays with uncomfortable subjects must go on resonated as a trenchant rebuke of censorship whether it comes from the right or from the left.

Three Sisters by Inua Ellams, Soulpepper Theatre Company & Obsidian Theatre Company. Inua Ellams transferred the action of Chekhov’s play to Nigeria during Biafra’s failed war of independence. He used the play as a means of exposing the continuing harm of colonialism in African countries even after they gain independence. The new, more dangerous setting increased the tension in the play while Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu drew riveting performances from the entire cast.

Wonderful Joe by Ronnie Burkett, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes. TO Live presented Ronnie Burkett’s latest work, a deceptively straightforward story about an elderly gay man, that demonstrates how belief can change reality no matter how appalling that reality may be. The work is a masterpiece about the nature of puppetry itself.

Outside Toronto:

In alphabetical order here is my list of the ten best productions outside Toronto that I reviewed in 2024.

As You Like It by William Shakespeare, adapted by Daryl Cloran, Bard on the Beach Festival, Grand Theatre, London. London is the only Ontario stop so far in the tour of Daryl Cloran’s extraordinarily popular mix of Shakespeare’s comedy with 22 songs by the Beatles. The songs are so well chosen and so well placed that they and Shakespeare seem meant for each other. The joyous show is a buoyant showcase for a cast of triple-threat performers.

La Cage aux Folles, music & lyrics by Jerry Herman, book by Harvey Fierstein, Stratford Festival. This is the best production I have ever seen of this musical, and that includes the show’s original production in 1983. Sean Arbuckle and Steve Ross ensure that the central gay couple are fully rounded characters, not caricatures, which gave this farcical comedy a depth that other productions have lacked.

A Christmas Story: The Musical, by music & lyrics by Benj Pasek & Justin Paul, book by Joseph Robinette, Theatre Aquarius, Hamilton. Mary Frances Moore programmed and directed this early Pasek and Paul musical that turns out to be a real winner. Catchy songs expand on characters’ feelings at all the right moments and the use of a large, very talented children’s chorus made this a holiday treat one would like to see more often.

Cock by Mike Bartlett, Talk Is Free Theatre, Barrie. The ever-adventurous Talk Is Free Theatre presented a sizzling production of Barlett’s play about gay and straight psychosexual manipulation. Dylan Trowbridge and his cast created an air of such tension and menace you could hardly breathe. The must-see show is coming to Toronto January 19-31, 2025.

The Diviners by Vern Thiessen with Yvette Nolan, Stratford Festival. Stratford gave this adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s classic novel a lavish production with a none-member cast and a chorus of twelve whose voices and movement immeasurably heightened the play’s theatricality. In their version of Morag Dunn, Thiessen and Nolan may have created the best female role in Canadian drama.

The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? by Edward Albee, Stratford Festival. Stratford presented a riveting production of Albee’s provocative play with its deliberately outrageous subject matter. Director Dean Gabourie clearly understood the play as a tragedy, directed it as such and lent the action heart-stopping impact.

Madame Minister by Branislav Nušić, adapted by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman, Talk Is Free Theatre, Barrie. Talk Is Free Theatre gave non-Barrieites yet another reason to visit with the well-adapted and -directed Canadian professional premiere of an hilarious 1927 comedy by Serbian playwright Branislav Nušić with a fantastic central role for woman superbly played by Laura Condlln.

The Minutes by Tracy Letts, Theatre Aezir, London. Theatre Aezir scored a major coup by presenting the Canadian premiere of Tracy Letts’s 2017 play about a naïve individual confronting a group that wants no one digging up the past or changing the status quo. Director Mike Semple and his 11-member masterfully cast brought home both the comedy of small-town politics and the terrifying aspects of entrenched power.

One Man, Two Guvnors by Richard Bean, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake. This may be the funniest play the Shaw Festival has staged since its celebrated run of farces in the 1980s. Director Chris Abraham calculated everything – the pacing, the dialogue, the monologues, the playing of the skiffle band – for maximum comic impact and an impeccable cast, led by Peter Fernandes, effortlessly rose to the occasion.

The Saviour by Deirdre Kinahan, Here For Now Theatre, Stratford. Here For Now Theatre, Stratford’s plucky alternative to the Festival, staged one of the most powerful plays at Stratford this year. Rosemary Dunsmore gave a magnificent performance as an Irish mother with a damaged childhood who struggles with an internal battle between truth and illusion as she tries to fend off the distressing news her son has for her.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Sondra Radvanovsky as Medea in the Canadian Opera Company’s production of Medea, © 2022 Marty Sohl. Antoine Yared as Toby, Qasim Khan as Eric, Louise Pitre as Margaret and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff as Leo in Canadian Stage’s production of The Inheritance, Part 2, © 2024 Dahlia Katz. Irene Poole as Morag and Julie Lumsden as Pique in The Diviners at the Stratford Festival, © David Hou.