Courtney Shea | torontolife.com

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All stories by Courtney Shea

The Conversation: Colm Wilkinson and Deborah Hay discuss melodic storytelling at the TIFF Bell Lightbox

The place: Luma at the TIFF Bell Lightbox. The people: musical theatre legend Colm Wilkinson and actor-turned-singer Deborah Hay. The subject: melodic storytelling
By Courtney Shea | Photography by Derek Shapton

Torontonians love blockbuster musicals. We flocked to Phantom of the Opera for a decade and sang along to Mamma Mia! for five years, and Colm Wilkinson has made his career on our zeal. The prodigally piped Irishman moved here in 1989 to star in Toronto’s first production of Phantom after spending two years doing Les Misérables in NYC and London. His latest concert, Broadway and Beyond, features a band and two singers accompanying Wilkinson as he sings classics from both shows, along with some of his personal favourites (John Denver, Johnny Cash, John Lennon and of course the Irish anthem “Danny Boy”). Deborah Hay made her name in Shaw Festival productions like The Women and Born Yesterday and is now adding musical theatre to her repertoire, taking on Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. We got them together for seared tuna salads and a little shop talk.

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The Hype

From the Print Edition

July 12, 2011 | 2:00 pm

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Russell Peters and Trey Anthony on jokes, race and jokes about race

The place: Cora’s Breakfast and Lunch in Woodbridge. The people: comedians Russell Peters and Trey Anthony. The subject: jokes, race and jokes about race
By Courtney Shea | Photography by Derek Shapton

Russell Peters has been poking fun at his fellow Indians—not to mention Brits, Jamaicans, Chinese and just about every other ethnicity—for more than two decades now, selling out the Air Canada Centre and ranking among the top 10 highest-paid stand-up comedians on the planet along the way. His latest DVD, The Green Card Tour, Live from the O² Arena, filmed in London, England, is a must-see for comedy-loving couch potatoes. Trey Anthony, the British-born Jamaican-Canadian playwright and actor, has also made it her job to send up stereotypes. Ten years ago, her career leapt from the Fringe (where her play ’da Kink in My Hair, about a West Indian hair salon, debuted) to the foreground (’da Kink became a hit for Mirvish and was turned into a sitcom). The play is getting a rejig and a remount next month at the Harbourfront Centre, before heading out on a North American tour that will spread Anthony’s brand of hysterical and heartwarming sass to audiences across the southern U.S. But the comedians have more in common than just the polarizing race card. Both grew up in Brampton, both cite their families as the ultimate source of hilarity, and both say Canadians need to get over their tall poppy hang-ups. We got them together at Cora’s in Woodbridge (one of Peters’ favourite hangouts), bought brunch (extra sausage) and listened in.

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The Informer

From the Print Edition

July 5, 2011 | 3:00 pm

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Reason to Love Toronto: Because Rob Ford’s graffiti crackdown is inspiring works of art

Because Ford’s graffiti crackdown is inspiring works of art

Bloor and Manning. (Image: Jesse Boles)

It’s said that crisis breeds creativity. Back in the spring, our mayor declared war on graffiti, and faster than you could say “watch where you stick that power hose,” his army of bylaw enforcers began doling out citations to property owners. The problem was that many of the so-called infractions were pieces of commissioned artwork, paid for by those property owners and created by accomplished artists (resist the urge to stereotype: some of them live in Rosedale and Forest Hill). Predictably, the crackdown provoked an increase in vandalism—tags and angry “bombs,” which is slang for the unsightly scrawl that requires little skill to execute and is a costly pain to remove. But it also provoked another response: some can-wielders decided to stick it to the mayor by upping their game.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

July 4, 2011 | 2:30 pm

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The Thing: our newfound appreciation for the classic backpack

(Image: Jessica Milan)

Backpacks, a natural extension of the scruffy-prep “found-this-in-the-back-of-my-closet” look, are everywhere this summer, and for good reason. The schoolyard staple is eminently practical, a bag that’s purpose-built for carrying life’s real necessities: gym clothes, organic sausages, six-packs. Knapsacks even showed up on the runway at the most recent LG Fashion Week. Branksome-girls-turned-design-darlings Chloé and Parris Gordon (Chloé Comme Parris) featured iterations so chic they could have been ripped right off Kate Moss’s bony back, and a Bay Blanket bag was the jewel of the ridiculously buzzy Klaxon Howl show. Meanwhile, Queen West’s haute hipster outposts are churning out simpler versions that are big and boxy, with subtle flourishes like exposed stitching and leather trim. The look is almost anti-fashion, which, of course, makes it even more fashionable. But what we like most is having hands-free storage space and shoulders that don’t ache at the end of a long day. Whoever said “fashion before function” needs to update their accessories.

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The Dish

From the Print Edition

June 9, 2011 | 10:30 am

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50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No.30, There’s a hidden watering hole called Goodnight in an alley at Richmond and Spadina

(Image: Lisa Gent)

The first rule of Goodnight is: don’t talk about Goodnight. The hidden watering hole, located behind a buzzer-access metal door at the end of a dark, graffiti-covered alley at Richmond and Spadina, opened last September, just in time to be Harvey Weinstein’s unofficial TIFF clubhouse. To a certain nightlife species—people who experience a frisson entering a bar with a strict reservations-only policy—Goodnight is proof that Toronto has arrived. The list of regulars includes erstwhile politicas like Belinda Stronach (who often stops in with her boyfriend, Harbord Room chef Corey Vitiello), indie darlings like Metric’s Emily Haines, and professional partiers like Ashleigh Dempster, the co-founder of social climbers’ club The Society (she’s also married to Matt George, one of Goodnight’s owners). Once you get past the door, it’s remarkably cool. Imagine a pub designed by Wallpaper magazine: the raw wood bar is supported by metal radiators; a wooden staircase leads nowhere; vintage posters of Communist leaders and sewing patterns line the walls. And a list of potent concoctions like the Fat Sailor (three types of rum and Tia Maria) and the Bunny Hug (equal parts Canadian Club, gin and absinthe) puts even the most aloof A-lister in a frisky, feel-good mood.

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The Hype

From the Print Edition

June 8, 2011 | 12:30 pm

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50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 24, Rob Stewart is the new Jacques Cousteau

(Image: Courtest of Sharwater Productions)

Nine years ago, Rob Stewart, then a 22-year-old Toronto biologist, boarded a plane to Ecuador with his brand new underwater video camera. With no experience making movies, he spent the next five years documenting how sharks are hunted for their fins. He met poachers, pirates and police, and contracted dengue fever, tuberculosis, West Nile virus and flesh-eating disease. The result of his adventure was Sharkwater, a gripping documentary that provided some seriously good PR for a species that had never really recovered from the Jaws effect. The movie won dozens of awards—Canada’s Top 10 at TIFF and Best Documentary from the Directors Guild of Canada, to name two—and the young filmmaker’s passion proved contagious. After seeing Sharkwater, Galen Weston Jr. asked Stewart to dinner, and was persuaded to order his Loblaws stores to remove shark fin soup (an Asian delicacy) from the shelves. A Grade 3 class on the tiny fishing island of Saipan was so impressed by the movie that it successfully petitioned the government to endorse a bill that bans the shark fin trade.

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The Hype

From the Print Edition

June 7, 2011 | 4:30 pm

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50 Reasons to Love Toronto: No. 17, Malin Akerman is the city’s girl next door

No. 17, Malin Akerman is our girl next door

(Image: George Pimentel)

If you don’t know her name, that’s because she’s not desperately shoving it down your throat. She doesn’t spend her evenings chugging vodka Red Bulls at Bar Marmont, she didn’t date Wilmer Valderrama and, last time we checked, she had only one paparazzi’d crotch shot on the Internet—and it was blurry. Chances are you know her work, though. Since stealing the spotlight as Katherine Heigl’s hottie sister in the 2008 rom-com 27 Dresses, Malin Akerman has scored big as the hilarious, impossibly gorgeous girl next door, building up a resumé most young actresses would hit the casting couch for, Lindsay Lohan included. Akerman got her biggest break yet when she was tapped to replace the uninsurable star in Inferno, a biopic about porn queen turned porn critic Linda Lovelace. At 32, the Toronto-bred Akerman is a little older and a lot wiser than Lohan and her ilk. She’s been married for four years (her husband is the Italian musician Roberto Zincone), and when you Google her, one of the first things that pops up is “Malin Akerman greens her home and neighbourhood school.” Not exactly the egomaniacal antics of a Hollywood hellion, and we’d like to think a wholesome Toronto upbringing had something to do with that.

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The Hype

From the Print Edition

June 3, 2011 | 11:00 am

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Why writer Tabatha Southey and artist-architect Philip Beesley are smitten with Toronto

The place: C5 at the ROM. The people: writer Tabatha Southey and artist–architect Philip Beesley. The subject: why they’re smitten
By Courtney Shea | Photography by Derek Shapton

Globe and Mail columnist Tabatha Southey is known for her quick wit, but her latest project was a slow burn. Ten years ago, her son Basil’s school asked parents to compose a valentine for their kids. Southey wrote a poem about the make-believe house she wanted to build for Basil, a burgeoning architecture fan. That poem is now a storybook, It Must Be As Tall As a Lighthouse, illustrated by starchitect Will Alsop and recently published by Parkdale’s new artisanal press The Book Bakery, which focuses on small print runs of beautiful, visually driven books. Think of it as the locavore movement for the lit set.) Artist and architect Philip Beesley is equally at home in the world of whimsy. An international figure in the trippy field of responsive architecture, he creates structures that change form, colour or shape depending on their environment. This month, he unleashes his hovering, undulating art installation, Sargasso, on the Brookfield Place atrium as part of the Luminato Festival. We brought the design-obsessed duo to one of the city’s most divisive architectural attractions, the ROM Crystal, sprang for lunch and listened in.

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The Hype

Power Couples

April 27, 2011 | 12:34 pm

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In honour of Kate Middleton’s freshly pressed coat of arms, we design crests for Toronto’s blue blood

To give their daughter Kate as much aristocratic heft as possible (and to quiet complaints about a commoner princess), Michael and Carole Middleton recently commissioned a family crest unveiled just in time for Friday’s Royal Wedding. Apparently, you don’t need to be to be royal or even noble to earn your own coat of arms. With this in mind, we designed crests for some of our city’s most celebrated clans. Illustrations by Nick Craine

Click on to see our illustrated coat of arms for Toronto’s flossiest families »

The Hype

From the Print Edition

April 26, 2011 | 9:25 am

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Memory lane: Woody Harrelson carries a giant torch for Toronto. Here’s the photo album to prove it

Woody Harrelson likes us. He really, really likes us. The American actor and enviro poster boy has been in Toronto since February, rehearsing his loosely autobiographical comedy, Bullet for Adolf. The play is set in the summer of 1983—during which Harrelson worked construction in Houston alongside his pal (and co-writer) Frankie Hyman—and covers everything from race relations to dissolving friendships. This new show is the latest chapter in the Woody-hearts-Hogtown saga that began more than 20 years ago when the actor, newly famous for playing a lovably dim bartender on Cheers, hung out with Ted Danson on the Toronto set of Three Men and a Baby. Since then, he has returned regularly for film and theatre projects, awards ceremonies and the mother of all yoga sessions. We met with him over milk thistle smoothies at his top nosh spot, Live, to reminisce about his best Toronto moments.

Breaking a killer fast, August 2003
“I had started a juice fast before I got to town. The cast and producers of This Is Our Youth—a play I was directing here—threw me a welcome party at Fresh. I thought I was just going to sit there, but I hadn’t eaten in 30-odd days. The smell was too much; I was onto those sweet potato fries before I knew it. God, those things are good. I’m kind of an extremist, so I’ll do the fast and then I’ll gorge. Same old bullshit.”

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The Hype

Prime Time

April 7, 2011 | 12:02 pm

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Dream-casting The Real Housewives of Toronto: seven ideal stars for the Canada-bound reality show

We learned recently that the Real Housewives franchise is officially looking into a Canadian spinoff. No word for sure on which major city will get the nod, but Toronto seems like an obvious choice. According to the Post’s Shinan Govani, our top duelling divas Stacey Kimmel and Suzanne Rogers have already declined offers to participate. Meanwhile, the city’s original glitter girl Catherine Nugent told ET Canada that she “wouldn’t even consider” an offer.

Luckily, not all Toronto socialites have such resolve. Govani reported that Jessica Mulroney, wife to Ben and new mom to the couple’s new chinny-chin twins, is “in talks” (though her hubby later recanted on her behalf). Ainsley Kerr, the best local example of the famous-for-being-famous phenomenon, played coy when asked about her involvement. We thought you had to be married or divorced to be qualify as a Housewife, but maybe not.

Depending on your feelings about trash television, this is either the best news since So You Think You Can Dance Canada, or a sign of the cultural apocalypse. Personally, we think a show like this would be must-see TV. Torontonians are so stiff and serious—a little mudslinging might do us some good. And so—with our fingers crossed and our PVRs primed—we set about coming up with the ultimate cast list for The Real Housewives of Toronto. Our picks, after the jump.

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The Hype

From the Print Edition

April 4, 2011 | 2:12 pm

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Men of action: Ennis Esmer and Kenny Hotz talk about the things they’ll do for a buck

The place: Dangerous Dan’s Diner on Queen East. The people: Wipeout Canada co-host Ennis Esmer and Triumph of the Will star Kenny Hotz. The subject: the things people will do for a buck

Our collective craving for thrill-and-spill television is boundless. If it weren’t, we would have long moved beyond watching complete strangers and D-list celebrities lose their heads, hearts and dignity over cash prizes, skeevy bachelors or a shot at fame. The comedy stunt film Jackass 3D opened at number one across North America last fall, a stat that bodes well for Wipeout Canada, our very own version of the popular American game show on which contestants must complete the ultimate obstacle course to claim $50,000. As co-host, actor Ennis Esmer (seated on the left) is expected to dish out quips while players do their best not to plummet into a mud pit or get socked in the face/gut/groin by giant red balls. Kenny Hotz is a bona fide cult TV hero, having created and starred in the lewd and crude hit Kenny vs. Spenny. His new comedy series, Kenny Hotz’s Triumph of the Will, is about accomplishing tasks that most people would think are insane, from building a mosque at Jones and Gerrard (“I must be the first Jew to ever give the gift of a mosque to Islam”) to asking recent moms for their placentas—and getting one. In keeping with the reigning spirit of sadism, we sat the funny guys down at the viciously greasy east-end diner Dangerous Dan’s, bought them artery-busting burgers and listened in.

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The Goods

From the Print Edition

April 4, 2011 | 11:14 am

23 Comments

The Thing: The revival of two-digit denim

(Image: Raina and Wilson)

Jeans have always been a cultural barometer: the free-flowing bell-bottoms of the ’60s, the ironed-on butt-huggers of the days of disco, the despondent denim that Kurt Cobain and his fellow unwashed icons turned into a grunge-era staple. A couple of years ago, the luxury denim-du-jour spoke volumes about our obsession with status symbols: if Jennifer Aniston has $450 Rick Owens jeans, why shouldn’t I? (The woman earned $1 million per episode—do we really need to answer that question?) Just when it seemed there was no limit to our appetite for excess, the recession hit. Yorkville shopaholics were checking price tags, sweet-16 spendthrifts stopped bringing mommy’s credit card to Aritzia, and dozens of cubby-size Queen Street boutiques plastered their windows with fire-sale signs.

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The Hype

Awards Season

March 28, 2011 | 3:40 pm

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And the Juno for Worst Dressed goes to—oh God, where to begin?

Best not so mellow yellow: Measha Brueggergosman

A birdie and her two chicks (Image: George Pimentel)

Last night’s awards ceremony was hyped as the cool, hip, young Junos, but apparently many of the celebs in attendance didn’t get the memo. We don’t want to be overly critical here. We wish we could gush about all the gorgeous fashion on the Canadian red carpet, but—sigh—it was one sartorial train wreck after the next. See our picks for the few hits and many misses below.

The Hype

Prime Time

March 15, 2011 | 5:14 pm

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Skins recap, episode 9: the show that gets high school right—except when it doesn’t

Chris and Tina get serious (Image: MTV)

This week’s episode finally fills us in on the illicit (never mind totally illegal) relationship between Chris and teacher Tina. And while the after-school special fan in us loves a good hot-for-teacher plotline—they’re all the rage these days, according to Entertainment Weekly—this one felt really uncertain about what it wanted to be. Funny bits like Chris handing in an essay entitled “How I’m Going To Bone You Tonight” didn’t quite jibe with more serious scenes, like the one where Tina is arrested for rape. This lack of identity has been Skins problem all along; ridiculous characters like Dave, Tina and that weird girl taking all the pictures make it unclear whether the show is trying to paint a real picture of high school or parody it. As always, here is our weekly reality roundup of what passes the reality test and what feels faker than teacher Tina’s trout pout.

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