List of Sites that Review Theatre in Ontario Canada
You don’t have to take my word for it. I often find myself in a minority when it comes to opinions on plays and films, for reasons that are more fully explained on the About This Site page. It’s a phenomenon nicely summed up in the phrase “your mileage may differ.” So if you disagree with any of my reviews — or even if you don’t — here is a list of sites that review theatre in Ontario, Canada. You may find them more to your liking.
Christopher Hoile is the Canadian theatre reviewer whose opinion I respect the most, although we don’t always agree. He is deeply knowledgeable about theatre and seems to have an eidetic memory for every play he’s ever seen, and he’s been seeing them for decades.
Lynn Slotkin is a freelance theatre critic who sees (so she says) 250 shows a year. Her site focuses primarily on Toronto.
To find out what the mainstream press has to say, checkout J. Kelly Nestruck (the Globe and Mail) and Karen Fricker (The Star). They are reliably on the cutting edge of the latest trends in theatre. I frequently find myself at odds with their take. The Globe and Mail has a fairly impermeable paywall. The Star lets you view a handful of pages every month.
Keith Tomasek maintains this invaluable site that aggregates critical responses to plays at The Stratford Festival, including those from sources not mentioned here, rating each review as “positive,” “mixed,” or “negative” and offering a composite score for each play. Full disclosure: I write the occasional article for the site.
More Sites That Review Theatre in Ontario
Those are my favorite sites, but here are some others you might enjoy.
This site, which has been inactive in the latter stages of the pandemic, features reviews from critics in the Ottawa area.
Stratford-based freelance critic Lauren Gienow covers the Stratford Festival for this site which, as the name suggests, concentrates primarily on the Great White Way,
The focus is on Tornoto, but their critics range farther afield in Ontario.
Mary Alderson is a freelance journalist who has written reviews for a number of outlets over the years.
London, Ontario, that is. The focus is local.
Senior Editor for Culture at The Greek Press.
Fellow Nutmegger, Chris Peterson, gets to Ontario occasionally and writes about what he sees.
So Sumi
Glenn Sumi’s punnily-named site focuses on the Toronto scene.
Local Papers
The Stratford Beacon Herald covers the Stratford Festival, of course, and the Niagara Falls Review covers the Shaw Festival, the Foster Festival, and even what’s going on in Toronto.
Elsewhere
As for reviews posted in the “Elsewhere” section, you’re on your own, but if you know enough about the Internet to be reading this you probably know how to search for reviews of plays in New York, New Haven, London, and elsewhere.
