The Top 10 Toronto theatre productions of 2024

Age is a Feeling, The Inheritance: Parts 1 and 2 and Big Stuff top my list of the most memorable shows of the year

Age is a Feeling (clockwise, from left), The Inheritance and Big Stuff. All photos by Dahlia Katz

While arts organizations — including theatre companies and festivals — continue to struggle as we emerge from the pandemic, it’s good to know that great theatre is still possible.

Some of the shows on this list might seem, well, modestly scaled; I can’t remember the last time I was impressed with so many productions featuring one- and two-person casts. Perhaps this is a response to economic challenges and bottom lines. Large ensembles are expensive, especially when factoring in standbys and alternates in case actors get sick.

On the other hand, this list contains one of the most ambitious, large-scaled shows Toronto has seen in recent years. Event theatre isn’t dead; it’s just more of a gamble in an already risky environment.

Another intriguing theme that emerged this year was the use of improv and chance, proving that audiences are hungry for unique, one-of-a-kind experiences that streaming services can’t deliver.

Here are my favourite Toronto shows this year. One caveat: I didn’t see enough at Stratford or Shaw to include them. I hope to see more there in 2025. Memorable remounts/extensions are mentioned at the end, as well as some runners-up.

Haley McGee surveyed one woman's life in the transcendent Age is a Feeling. Photo by Dahlia Katz

1. Age is a Feeling

Soulpepper/Soho Theatre/Haley McGee Productions, in association with Luminato, May 29 to June 23

An unnamed woman (writer/performer Haley McGee) chronicles episodes from her life from her mid-20s through to old age, each suggested by a word on an envelope attached to one of 12 floral arrangements. The kicker? The audience chooses which words to hear stories about; the other memories, like key moments from everyone’s lives, remain lost except to the person who lived them. McGee’s solo show — her fifth and like many directed by Mitchell Cushman — is her most mature yet, an expansive, generous, funny and achingly true look at what it means to be alive. See my review here.

Stephen Jackman-Torkoff's Leo feels abandoned in the second part of The Inheritance. Photo by Dahlia Katz

2. The Inheritance Parts 1 and 2

Canadian Stage, March 22 to April 14

One of my biggest concerns about the conservative wave sweeping much of the world is that arts companies, after their grants shrink, might shy away from the ambitious and risky in favour of austerity and safety. There was nothing austere or safe about Matthew Lopez’s epic, two-part look at what a post-AIDS crisis generation of queer people inherited from the sacrifices and examples of their elders, both living and dead. Unabashedly literary yet frankly contemporary and sexy, the play examined class, legacy and ethics, all wrapped up in an absorbing narrative. Director Brendan Healy, casting with an eye to diversity and a meta-theatrical symbolism (pioneering queer playwright Daniel MacIvor played the E.M. Forster figure, Morgan), used every inch of the cavernous Bluma Appel to give this work the massive canvas it needed. Unforgettable. See my review here.

Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus unbox lots of truths in Big Stuff. Photo by Dahlia Katz

3. Big Stuff

A Baram and Snieckus Production in association with Crow’s Theatre, November 12 to December 22

A toaster or three; a knitting needle; an old LP record. These might seem like innocuous items, but as Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus made us realize at their marvel of a show, the memories such things hold for people can be as big and significant as life itself. Expertly blending their own story of meeting each other, making comedy, moving to the States for work and then moving back to care for elderly parents, the two, carefully guided by director Kat Sandler, integrated bits of improv and audience participation in the gentlest and most artful way imaginable. The result was transcendent, especially in one of the closing moments, when the spirit of shared humanity brought more poignant meaning to the phrase “holding space for...” than the entire Wicked press tour. Fingers crossed it tours the country, continent — and world. See my review here.

Jacob Ehman (right) is looked on by Fiona Highet and Kwaku Okyere in Roberto Zucco. Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh

4. Roberto Zucco

Buddies in Bad Times, September 15 to October 5

While many theatre companies are struggling not just financially but with their actual artistic mandates — as one prominent writer told me recently in an unpublished quote, some theatres’ mandates seem to be “merely survival” — it’s heartening to know that Buddies in Bad Times has adopted a bold, take-no-prisoners approach to theatre-making. How else to describe Bernard-Marie Koltès’s fractured, jagged, uncompromising look at the roots of evil, inspired by a real-life serial killer named Roberto Succo and written when the author was dying of AIDS-related illness? ted witzel, directing his first production he programmed as Buddies’ AD, gave the play the heightened theatricality — complete with stylized performances by Jakob Ehman, Daniel MacIvor, Fiona Highet, Samantha Brown, Oyin Oladejo and Kwaku Okyere — that it warranted. See my review here.

Damien Atkins shows off his Wilde range in De Profundis. Photo by Dahlia Katz

5. De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail

Soulpepper, February 1 to 23

As I wrote when I first reviewed Gregory Prest’s adaptation of Wilde’s infamous letter penned when the latter was imprisoned for “gross indecency,” it will take multiple viewings to appreciate this rich, layered work. De Profundis isn’t merely a recitation of Wilde’s epistle but rather a genre-shifting, period-hopping fantasia based on themes — like freedom and religious and social hypocrisy — that emerged from that work and feel especially relevant and urgent today. Anchored by an electric Damien Atkins, this premiere — also directed by Prest — went way beyond traditional biographical play or musical (music and lyrics by Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson) to become something that miraculously suggested all of the Irish wit’s quirks, contradictions and profundity. See my review here.

Jasmine Case (left) and Déjah Dixon-Green kill it. Photo by Dahlia Katz

6. Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner

Obsidian Theatre in association with Crow’s Theatre, May 14 to June 2

Even if you still own a flip phone, Jasmine Lee-Jones’s 2019 play about two young Black women caught up in an online controversy involving some threatening Tweets (this is pre-X) hit home with major force. Beneath a barrage of social media acronyms — projected onto various screens in Nick Blais’s riotously fun set — was lots of cutting critique about the appropriation and commodification of Black female culture. But thanks to lively performances (Déjah Dixon-Green and Jasmine Case: both lovely discoveries), and imaginative touches by director Jay Northcott, this of-the-moment play also touched the heart with its poignant, hopeful look at a fractured friendship — IRL. See my review here.

Mazin Elsadig (left) and Noah Reid share a moment in A Case for the Existence of God. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann

7. A Case for the Existence of God

Coal Mine Theatre, November 3 to December 6

It’s about time we saw something by the gifted American playwright Samuel D. Hunter here. And this work about two single fathers from different races, socio-economic backgrounds and sexual orientations trying to get by in an Idaho town proved just the right calming, humanity-affirming play to watch the week after the U.S. presidential election. Sensitively directed by Coal Mine’s Ted Dykstra and performed with nuance and commitment by Mazin Elsadig and Noah Reid, this play presented a convincing case for the existence (and necessity) of smart independent theatre. See my review here.

Jordan Baker, photographed by John Lauener

8. Dana H.

The Goodman Theatre, Center Theatre Group, Vinyard Theatre Production, presented by Crow’s Theatre, March 12 to April 14

It’s saying something that while uploading the above production photo of actor Jordan Baker, my palms began to sweat with anxiety. The story playwright Lucas Hnath, director Les Waters and Baker told about Hnath’s mother Dana’s abduction in 1997, was so harrowing and uniquely told that it’s stayed with me like an actual experience. Equal parts documentary theatre and examination of the effects of trauma, the play also made audiences think about the purpose and meaning of storytelling/acting. See my review here.

Photographed by Adrianna Prosser

9. MacBeth: A Tale Told by an Idiot!

Eldritch Theatre, February 8 to 24

The Scottish play has been performed effectively with Goblins (see below), the characters from The Simpsons, and as a solo work. But few non-traditional productions have captured the spirit of the supernatural, the comic and the tragic as effectively as Eric Woolfe has with this one-person, many-puppeted version. Despite the play’s subtitle, there was nothing idiotic about this staging, which from its pared-down text and direction (by Dylan Trowbridge) to its committed performance and design (especially Melanie McNeill’s costumes) signified... everything. Don’t miss it when it returns in May. See my review here.

Izad Etemadi, photographed by Conan Stark

10. Izad Etemadi: Let Me Explain

Green Light Arts, September 26 to 29

Like Big Stuff, I expect this show, which got a very brief run at the Theatre Centre this fall, will have an extended life. Beginning with a stand-up like bit about how he’s always had to explain things — his ethnic background, how to pronounce his name — the irrepressible Etemadi then dug deeper, chronicling his experiences growing up in Victoria, B.C., choosing to go to theatre school and then dealing with casting agents who only want him to play terrorists. Beneath it all was his fear that his hard-working, immigrant parents would reject him if he came out to them. The result, directed by Matt White, whose Green Light Arts helped develop the piece, was gut-bustingly funny yet honest and moving, with one musical sequence that will change how you watch a certain Disney film forever. Wünderbar! See my review here.

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Goblin:Macbeth, by Spontaneous Theatre at the Tarragon, was one of two outside-the-box productions of the Scottish play this year. Photo by Tim Nguyen

Also amazing

Goblin:Macbeth (Spontaneous Theatre/Tarragon); In Seven Days (Harold Green Jewish Theatre/Grand Theatre); My Name is Lucy Barton (Canadian Stage); On the Other Side of the Sea (Aluna Theatre); Playing Shylock (Canadian Stage, in association with Starvox Entertainment); The Tempest (Theatre Rusticle); Three Sisters (Soulpepper/Obsidian Theatre); The Two Noble Kinsmen (Shakespeare BASH’d); What the Constitution Means to Me (Soulpepper/Nightwood Theatre, in association with Necessary Angel and Talk is Free Theatre); Wonderful Joe (TOLive)

Riveting remounts

A Christmas Carol (Theatre Ships Collective/Soup Can Theatre); Come From Away (Mirvish); Hamlet (Solo) (A Hope in Hell/Soulpepper); The Master Plan (Crow’s/Soulpepper); A Streetcar Named Desire (Soulpepper); Uncle Vanya (Crow’s/off-Mirvish)

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Related story: The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2024

Archived Top 10 lists:

The 10 best theatre productions of 2023 (with J. Kelly Nestruck)

The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2023

The breakthrough Toronto theatre artists of 2023

The Top 10 Toronto theatre productions of 2022

The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2022

The breakthrough Toronto stage artists of 2022

The Top 10 Toronto theatre shows of 2019

The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2019

The Top 10 Toronto theatre productions of 2018

The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2018

The Top 10 Toronto theatre productions of 2017

The Top 10 Toronto theatre artists of 2017