Although you might gain an extra hour of sleep this weekend when the clocks turn back one hour, if you snooze too long you’ll lose the opportunity to check out some of our recommendations in Toronto.
Here’s what our culture critics suggest you make time for this weekend.
Theatre: Dead Broke
Through Nov. 10 at Theatre Centre
”Dead Broke,” playwright Will King’s macabre thriller, was one of the breakout hits of the 2022 Toronto Fringe Festival. It’s now back — after further development — for a short run at the Theatre Centre. Featuring a script packed with dark comedy, along with more twists and turns than you can count, King’s play follows a university student who squats in an abandoned house next to his stoner friends. But what begins as an average kitchen-sink drama, about a group of scrappy bohemians, soon turns into full-throttle horror. I’m thrilled to see much of the original cast and creative team returning for this new production. If you go: be prepared to howl with laughter and scream in terror — all in a single breath. — Joshua Chong
Movies: Laws of Desire: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar
Nov. 1 through December at TIFF Cinematheque
If it’s possible for art to locate authenticity in artifice, Pedro Almodóvar’s twisty, genre-hopping movies document their maker’s five-decade quest to unveil a series of carnal, cathartic truths about love, lust and other basic instincts. His work will be on display in “Laws of Desire: The Films of Pedro Almodóvar,” a retrospective from TIFF Cinematheque.
For viewers familiar with Almodóvar’s most famous movies — the delectably accessible “All About My Mother” (1999) and “Talk to Her” (2002), both of which won Academy Awards — the punky, transgressive sensibility of his formative work may come as a shock. His earliest features are still bracing, like slaps in the face from a velvet glove.
One way to look at a movie like 1982’s “Labyrinth of Passion” — a raucous, polymorphously perverse romp about a sex-addicted pop star who becomes besotted with a Middle Eastern prince against a zany backdrop of orgies, punk shows and religious terrorism (screening Dec. 14) — is as a kamikaze course correction away from the repression of the Franco years. If the dictator’s death in 1975 represented a shot in the arm for Spain’s countercultural vanguard, Almodóvar’s low-budget, high-concept provocations were tantamount to celluloid adrenalin. — Adam Nayman
Visual Arts: People, Places, Things — Part II
Until Dec. 21 at Stephen Bulger Gallery
This exhibition brings together photographs taken over 150 years from around the world. Everything from a portrait of Picasso to a candid shot of the original “Saturday Night Live” cast is here. Whether it’s a portrait of a celebrity, a landscape or a moody abstraction, all images freeze a moment in time. Susan Sontag described this experience as the way photos “testify to time’s relentless melt.” At Stephen Bulger Gallery, “People, Places, Things” reminds us of how fleeting time is — each picture an image of the past we can see but never return to. — Brandon Kaufman
Documentary: Echoes of the Indus
Nov. 2 at the Centre for Social Innovation Spadina
“Echoes of the Indus” is a series of four films from Indigenous filmmakers that highlight the impact of climate change on the Indus region. t The Indus River is one of the oldest and longest rivers in the world, running through South and Central Asia; it acts as a fundamental water supplier to Pakistan’s Sindh province, which saw some of the world’s most deadly floods in 2022.
After the screenings, there will be discussions featuring filmmakers and experts. . — Asma Sahebzada
Music: Tkaronto Music Festival
Nov. 7 to Nov. 9 at TD Music Hall
The Tkaronto Music Festival returns next week with three nights of live music featuring Indigenous artists, including Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq, Haudenosaunee DJ duo the Halluci Nation and Juno-winning swing band Blue Moon Marquee.
I spoke to Tagaq, who will close the festival on Nov. 9, over the phone this week. The Polaris Prize-winning artist’s most recent album, “Tongues,” borrowed lyrics lifted from her award-winning novel “Split Tooth.”
“The Indigenous community is so exciting to be around,” she said. “I get to be myself and be warm and laugh and let everything fall to the ground.”
I asked Tagaq if she believes that festivals like this one are evidence of a revival in Indigenous music among Canadians.
“People are starting to understand more about how our languages, music and art came directly from this land,” she said. “I love that Canada is going, ‘Hey, wait a minute, this feels so pure and so good because this is actually the music and art that was cultivated over thousands and thousands of years from here. It is here. It is the culture.’
“For many, many years, people didn’t want to listen to (Indigenous music) because of the shame involved with Canada basically being a capitalist development project. But now people are realizing it’s OK to cherish this and celebrate it and grow it together. We originated here. And everyone can sense it, taste it. It doesn’t matter where you come from. Those old, old stories and our old way of being and how we speak, how we love, everything — that comes from here. And it’s beautiful. And to see it being cherished is an honour and a delight.” — Richie Assaly
