The problem with this season is there’s simply too much to do. Too many tortured opera divas. Too many ballerinas with toe cramps. Too many new sitcoms set in psychiatric offices. Too many touring exhibits of curiosities once touched by now-dead silver screen stars. Too many washed-up TV actors with a surprise talent for stage comedy. It’s all too, too much.
Our coping strategy: pick 10. Here, recommendations for an absolutely satisfying, perfectly proportioned fall
#1 MEZZO IDOL
Susan Graham, the renowned mezzo-soprano, performs as an anguished princess in Iphigenia in Tauris, another major coup for the COC READ MORE
#2 THE CHAMELEON
Herbie Hancock’s jazz experiments—fusion, folk, hip hop, disco—earned him as many detractors as fans. Backed by an orchestra and performing standards, he’s no less a provocateur READ MORE
#3 A TALENT FOR SCANDAL
The rising director Brendan Healy makes Toronto theatre exciting again with Jean Genet’s psychosexual thriller The MaidsREAD MORE
#4 HER SERENE HIGHNESS
Grace Kelly gets the royal treatment with a TIFF Lightbox exhibit of her dresses and artifacts and a program of her greatest movies READ MORE
#5 DAINTY DANCING
How the National Ballet’s Elena Lobsanova is preparing for her big debut in Romeo and JulietREAD MORE
#6 MAGICAL THINKING
Thirty-two of Marc Chagall’s spellbinding artworks are the main draw of a Russian avante-garde show at the AGO READ MORE
#7 EMOTIONAL RESCUE
Johanna Skibsrud’s first book catapulted her into the CanLit canon. Her second, a collection of short stories, is packed with gunshots, ill-timed vacations and terror at the circus READ MORE
#8 AN EARFUL
Jonathan Crow, the TSO’s new concertmaster, makes his debut with a multi-million-dollar violin READ MORE
#9 BETTER THAN SEX
Kim Cattrall, proving she’s much more than Carrie Bradshaw’s sidekick, dazzles as the brittle Amanda in Noël Coward’s Private LivesREAD MORE
#10 LAUGH ADDICTS
Don McKellar and Bob Martin’s new TV series, Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays, finds the funny in depression READ MORE
