When I met with 11 other theatre critics in the Toronto Star newsroom on Monday to hash out the 2025 Toronto Theatre Critics’ Awards (TTCAs), my colleague Glenn Sumi cheekily compared our process to that of the Catholic cardinals participating in this week’s conclave. While those Vatican electors were seeking candidates who were papabile (that is, cardinals worthy of being pope), we were looking for shows that could be considered “critibile.”
Joking aside, it’s an apt analogy. My fellow critics and I entered voting day with nomination lists that could likely rival in length those of the papabile. More than 100 theatre productions opened in the city between mid-May 2024 and the end of this April, the eligibility period for this season’s TTCAs.
We all had our favourites coming in. But Monday’s three-and-a-half hour deliberation process was, more than anything, about finding consensus in a crowded and competitive field.
In the end, a pair of shows emerged as this year’s biggest winners: “Mahabharata,” a genre-defying, two-part retelling of the ancient Sanskrit epic, along with the Canadian premiere of “A Strange Loop,” Michael R. Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. Both works earned three awards each, including the coveted prizes for best production of a play and best production of a musical, respectively.
“A Strange Loop,” which follows a 25-year-old fat, Black and queer musical theatre writer stuck in a self-referential loop with his six pestering Thoughts, additionally won the awards for best ensemble performance in a musical (to Charlie Clark, Sierra Holder, Nathanael Judah, David Lopez, Marcus Nance, Matt Nethersole, David Andrew Reid and Amaka Umeh) and best lead performance in a musical, going to Malachi McCaskill.
“Mahabharata,” created by Why Not Theatre co-artistic directors Ravi Jain and Miriam Fernandes, was also jointly awarded the prize for best new Canadian work with Veronica Hortigüela and Annie Luján’s “Monks,” a critically acclaimed clown comedy from the 2024 Toronto Fringe Festival that was remounted by the Theatre Centre earlier this year, and which follows two monks who get terribly distracted while counting millions of lentils.
The prize for best international work was likewise awarded to two plays that premiered in Toronto this past season: Annie Baker’s “Infinite Life,” about a group of people living with chronic pain, and Heidi Schreck’s “What the Constitution Means to Me,” an American play that was adapted in its Canadian premiere to focus instead on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Schitt’s Creek” star Noah Reid earned a TTCA for best lead performance in a play for his heart-rending turn in Coal Mine Theatre’s “A Case for the Existence of God,” in which he played a single father in middle America looking to provide for his daughter. He shares the award with “Kim’s Convenience” playwright Ins Choi, who starred as Appa in Soulpepper’s latest revival of the show and stunned critics for his exceptional performance, delivering big laughs and tons of tears.
In the best supporting performance in a play category, Toronto stage veteran Nancy Palk won for “Infinite Life,” alongside Dan Mousseau for his dexterous portrayal of several characters in “There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death, or, The Born-Again Crow.”
The off-Mirvish presentation of the Canadian musical “Life After,” one of the largest productions of the past season, was ineligible in certain categories, including best new Canadian work, because the musical was previously mounted in Toronto in 2017. However, rising star Julia Pulo nabbed the show’s only TTCA this year for best supporting performance in a musical.
The award for best ensemble performance in a play went to the three actors in “Goblin:Macbeth,” Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak’s retelling of the classic Shakespearean play. (The names of the actors have been purposefully withheld by the creative team.)
The two TTCAs for direction were awarded to a pair of directors whose artistic visions helped to elevate the material they were staging. They were given to Dylan Trowbridge for his revival of the British play “Cock” and Ilana Khanin for the new musical “I Was Unbecoming Then,” by Lyndsey Bourne and Sam Kaseta.
There were several new TTCA awards created this year, including a category for best solo performance in a play or musical. The inaugural prize went to Haley McGee for “Age is a Feeling,” charting the highs and lows of one woman’s adult life.
For the first time, the TTCAs also split the sole design prize into four separate categories. This year, the award for best scenic design of a play or musical went to Ken Mackenzie for “Last Landscape”; Bonnie Beecher and Jeff Pybus were recognized for their lighting on “People Places and Things” alongside Chris Malkowski for House + Body’s production of “Measure for Measure”; drag performer Pythia won the best costume design TTCA for “Oraculum,” which they co-created with fellow drag performer Denim; and the TTCA for best sound design and music was awarded to John Gzowski and Suba Sankaran of “Mahabharata.”
The TTCA jury — comprised of critics from publications such as the Star, the Globe and Mail, and Intermission Magazine — also issued two special citations recognizing extraordinary achievement in the theatre. The first was awarded to the Buddies in Bad Times and Native Earth Performing Arts co-production of “There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death, or, The Born-Again Crow,” by Caleigh Crow.
“‘The Born-Again Crow’ was a spectacle in a slow cooker that uniquely captured the disenchantment of a younger working class,” critic Stephanie Fung said in the citation, adding that the co-production was a “perfect fusion” of both companies’ “styles and ethos.”
The second special citation went to Weyni Mengesha, the outgoing artistic director of Soulpepper who helmed several shows this past season, including “What the Constitution Means to Me” and the recent revival of “Kim’s Convenience.”
“Mengesha shored up Soulpepper during a period of intense change — and a global pandemic not long after that — and today leaves behind a company in stellar artistic shape,” said Globe and Mail theatre reporter Aisling Murphy in Mengesha’s citation.
