April brings us warmer weather, longer days, bright flowers, and a whole host of other things we’ve been looking forward to for months now.
This month also brings Chilina Kennedy home to Toronto to star in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical for the second time (the first was in 2017). The Canadian theatre star has been performing the lead role in the musical, which tells the true story of King’s remarkable rise to stardom and features many of her most beloved hits, on Broadway for four years. Beautiful is onstage at the Princess of Wales Theatre from April 9 to May 5.
The Canadian production of Dear Evan Hansen is now onstage for an open-ended run at the Royal Alexandra Theatre, with tickets currently on sale through September 29. And Come From Away continues to win rave reviews at the Elgin Theatre.
With Opera Atelier’s regular venue (the Elgin) booked, the company debuts at the Ed Mirvish Theatre with Mozart’s Idomeneo from April 4 to 13.
The Canadian Opera Company is onstage at The Four Seasons Centre with two productions beginning this month and continuing well into May: Puccini’s La Bohème and Verdi’s Otello.
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is featuring an assortment of programs at Roy Thomson Hall, including performances of Beethoven, Mahler, and the Best of Hollywood, a presentation of favourite film themes and songs. On April 27 the TSO presents its first Relaxed Performance, featuring dance styles from around the world. “Relaxed performances are intended specifically to be sensitive to and welcoming of patrons who may benefit from a more relaxed environment, including, but not limited to, those on the autism spectrum, with sensory and communication disorders, or people living with learning and/or developmental delays or disabilities.” See the TSO’s site for details.
Streisand x 9, a fundraiser for The Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company, is at the George Weston Recital Hall on April 7. It will feature nine of Canada’s leading musical theatre ladies in an evening of songs celebrating Streisand’s life and career.
The Sony Centre has programs this month featuring a wide variety of musical performers and styles, dance performances and, on April 12 and 13, the comedy of Steve Martin and Martin Short in Now You See Them, Soon You Won’t.
If you see a show at one of Toronto’s major theatres listed on our homepage, please help us build our database by submitting a review of the view from your seat.
We enjoyed Dear Evan Hansen this month, despite a plot featuring a few morally questionable behaviours. The Canadian cast (in the first production outside of the USA) excels and the production design is very clever. Some of the music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (the writing duo behind the songs in the films La La Land and The Greatest Showman) is very catchy and stays with you long after the show is over. But the big deal here is Robert Markus as Evan Hansen. Markus beat out more than 800 others to win the role of Evan and rightly so. His singing and acting are beyond reproach, in a role that requires him to be onstage for most of the show.
P.S. If you haven’t seen The Greatest Showman yet, download it, put it on hold at the library, do whatever you have to do to see it. The memorable tunes will give you a whole new understanding of the term “earworm”.