Arts & Culture

Not unlike last year, Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper Theatre are the big winners at the 2024 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, celebrating theatre, dance and opera performed in the city during the 2023-24 season and handed out tonight by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) at the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre.

Crow’s came out on top with nine wins; Soulpepper took home six. Together, they completed a near-sweep of both the general theatre and musical theatre divisions, shutting out established companies like Canadian Stage, Factory Theatre and Tarragon Theatre. (Canadian Stage’s three wins came in the dance division.)

Both companies have been rewarded for swinging big last season, with most of the general theatre division awards going to productions that featured large acting ensembles — notable in a theatrical ecosystem flooded with solo shows. Admirers of Crow’s and Soulpepper can look forward to next April when the companies will collaborate with the Musical Stage Company to present the Canadian premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical A Strange Loop.

The dominance of those two companies aside, the general theatre division’s awards were distributed evenly, with no production receiving more than a couple.

Soulpepper and Obsidian Theatre’s co-production of Inua Ellams’s Three Sisters, set in Nigeria, took home Outstanding Production as well as Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble. Amaka Umeh, one of Canada’s most exciting actors and a key member of that ensemble, was also awarded Outstanding Performance by an Individual for their highly physical performance in Soulpepper’s Sizwe Banzi Is Dead.

A pair of fall Crow’s Theatre productions received two awards each. Urban planning satire The Master Plan, soon to be remounted at Soulpepper, won Outstanding New Play (for playwright Michael Healey) and Outstanding Scenic/Projection Design (for scenic designer Joshua Quinlan and projection designer Amelia Scott). And Natal’ya Vorozhbit’s Bad Roads, set in the Donbas region of Ukraine, took home Outstanding Direction (for Andrew Kushnir) and Outstanding Lighting Design (for Christian Horoszczak). With the war still devastating Ukraine, Bad Roads may have been the most urgent production of the season; it’s heartening to see Kushnir and Horoszczak’s esthetically daring work recognized.

Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski (sound design) and Moneka Arabic Jazz Band (composition) won Outstanding Sound Design/Composition for King Gilgamesh & The Man of the Wild, a Soulpepper and TRIA Theatre co-production. As the show was almost a musical, I’m unsurprised its strong original music stood out next to the division’s slate of straight plays.

The single general theatre division winner not produced by Crow’s Theatre or Soulpepper was Mad Madge, from Nightwood Theatre in association with VideoCabaret. The historical fiction about Margaret Cavendish, a 17th-century “Jill-of-all-Trades,” was awarded Outstanding Costume Design (for Astrid Janson, Abby Esteireiro and Merle Harley).

The musical theatre division was more focused, with Crow’s Theatre and the Musical Stage Company’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 taking home four of the six awards, including Outstanding Production, Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble, Outstanding Creative direction (for director Chris Abraham, choreographer Ray Hogg and music director Ryan deSouza) and Outstanding Achievement in Design (for scenic designers Julie Fox and Joshua Quinlan — Quinlan’s second of the night). A crowd favourite that was extended many times during its Crow’s Theatre run, the raucous, semi-immersive production is being remounted next summer at Mirvish’s Royal Alexandra Theatre.

Soulpepper’s De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail, a rousing adaptation of a 55,000-word queer love letter Wilde wrote in jail, won the other two awards: Outstanding Performance by an Individual (for Damien Atkins) and Outstanding New Musical/Opera (for Gregory Prest, Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson).

The indie theatre division was led by Coal Mine Theatre’s production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Appropriate, which received awards for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Scenic/Projection Design (for scenic designers Steve Lucas and Rebecca Morris). This comes eight days after a production of Appropriate starring Sarah Paulson won the Tony Award for best revival of a play.

Other highlights include Outstanding New Play winner Peter N. Bailey (for Tyson’s Song, produced by Pleiades Theatre); Outstanding Direction winner Jonathan Seinen (for Access Me, produced by Boys in Chairs Collective) and Outstanding Performance by an Individual winner Lindsey Middleton (for Suddenly Last Summer, produced by Riot King). Middleton was excellent in Kathleen Welch’s super-indie, site-specific production that just barely played enough performances to be award-eligible — her win is a welcome surprise.

 Accomplished comedy troupe Sex T-Rex won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble for SwordPlay, co-produced by Bad Dog Comedy Theatre. In a little over a week, the entertaining group will be back on stage at the Toronto Fringe Festival, performing its lauded Crime After Crime (After Crime).

And, in the opera division, there was a clean sweep by Medea, presented by the Canadian Opera Company in a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera, Greek National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Of particular interest is the award for Outstanding Performance by an Individual, which went to soprano Chiara Isotton, who replaced Sondra Radvanovsky as performer of the famously demanding titular role after opening night. Radvanovsky was also nominated.

The Jon Kaplan Audience Choice Award, voted on by the public, was awarded to Theatre Passe Muraille and Silk Bath Collective’s Woking Phoenix, a show that went un-nominated but well-loved.

A full list of winners will be made available on the TAPA website.