A hotel art show, a Trump-era drama and six other things to do in Toronto this week
Photo by Gabby Frank
An artsy hotel takeover 1Of all the weird-yet-irresistible trends in 2019, the made-for-Instagram pop-up craze surely tops the list. But fake private-jet booths and neon-coloured velcro walls have nothing on the Gladstone’s OG art maze. Back for its 17th run, Come Up to My Room gives every inch of the hotel an artsy makeover. Among this year’s 27 quirky installations: a collage of floating, ghostly cut-outs, a magical enchanted forest filled with sculptures and fairy lights, and a room packed with neon-orange furniture. January 16 to 19, Gladstone Hotel.
Photo courtesy of Interior Design Show
A design refresher 2New year, new decor? The Interior Design Show is a timely opportunity for those resolving to overhaul their living quarters. It runs three and a half days and features more than 400 exhibitors, plus interactive displays and drool-worthy decor galore. Internationally acclaimed architect Francis Kéré and Oscar-winning Canadian production designerPaul Austerberry—he created The Shape of Water‘s eerie reptilian look—will deliver design motivation via illuminating keynotes. January 16 to 19, Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Photo by Dahlia Katz
A class act 3Hailed as “the first theatrical landmark of the Trump era,” Lynn Nottage’s Pulitzer-winning rust belt drama Sweat digs into the blue-collar discontent that helped put the Donald in the White House. Set in the early 2000s in a Pennsylvania bar, the play charts the economic and racial tensions among a group of factory employees facing an uncertain future. The anger escalates when one of them is promoted to management and layoffs are announced. Nottage interviewed real Pennsylvania steelworkers to write this powerful but compassionate play about the victims of late capitalism, which receives its Toronto premiere from Studio 180 and Canadian Stage. January 14 to February 2, Berkeley Street Theatre.
A bloody royal affair 4Canadian playwright Kate Hennig’s celebrated Queenmaker Trilogy comes to a boil in this blood-soaked final instalment. In Mother’s Daughter, the focus is on Mary I, a.k.a. Bloody Mary, and her tempestuous five-year reign as Queen of England. Urged by memories of her late mother and threatened by her half-sister Elizabeth, Mary sets out to reverse her father Henry VIII’s protestant reforms by any means necessary. Like its predecessors, The Last Wife and The Virgin Trial, Hennig makes Tudor politics thrillingly contemporary in this gynocentric take on English history. January 14 to February 9, Young Centre for the Performing Arts.
A frigid song cycle 5There are usually only two people on stage for a Schubert song cycle: the singer and the pianist. Philippe Sly and Le Chimera Project’s Winterreise breaks with tradition by adding a small chamber ensemble and some seriously dramatic lighting. Winterreise (“winter journey”) is one of the most demanding pieces for any vocalist—24 settings by the German poet Wilhelm Müller that must capture the despair of a man alone on a winter night, hoping to find solace for a broken heart. Bass-baritone Philippe Sly brings a voice of many colours and an assured stage presence to this newly dramatized masterpiece. January 17, Koerner Hall.
Photo courtesy of the COC
A tale as old as time 6The Barber of Seville, Rossini’s comic celebration of wit’s triumph over status, is one of the oldest Italian operas never to have gone out of fashion, thanks to its dazzling coloratura singing and implicit social critique. The titular character, Figaro, helps his former employer, Count Almaviva, wrest his beloved Rosina from her guardian’s grip. Staging by Spanish theatre troupe Els Comediants promises much splash, dash and colour. The endlessly resourceful Figaro is sung by baritone Vito Priante, Count Almaviva by tenor Santiago Ballerini and sought-after Rosina by mezzo Emily D’Angelo. January 19 to February 7, Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.
Still from The Upper Side of the Sky (2019) Photo courtesy of Jawa El Khash
A VR expedition 7Jawa El Khash, a Syrian-born Toronto-based artist, uses virtual reality to archive architecture and greenery that no longer exist in the real world. In her latest exhibit, the Upper Side of the Sky, she recreates the ancient setting of Palmyra, Syria, with its towering ancient ruins and plant life destroyed in the civil war. January 15 to February 15, InterAccess.
Photo by Matt Barnes
An electro-dance party 8The indigenous artist iskwē is Canada’s answer to artists like Florence and the Machine and FKA Twigs. This Friday, she gets the energy pumping with a funky dose of her alt-electronic pop tracks. The show follows up on the release of her latest album, acākosik, which includes the catchy “Night Danger,” co-produced by Red Hot Chili Peppers collaborator Garth Richardson. January 17, Mod Club.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
