Gracing The Stage

The lobby of Bread & Circus at its new location, a few hours before the doors opened for the opening night party.

Is this really my first post about a show happening at Bread and Circus? B & C’s move north up Augusta from their old location on Baldwin (now known as Rear View Mirror), to the new one directly on Augusta (between Oxford and College), has increased the venue’s capacity considerably, and patrons going for a drink at the bar no longer become part of the show; in fact, the bar is in the lobby, the stage is well raised, with a proper lighting grid, and there’s even great vertical sightlines. The artists/owners/managers (Jackie English, Kiran Sachdev, & Asher Ettinger) left part of the half pipe that previously occupied the back room (from when the location was a skate shop) intact, so that the back section of the audience area is raised.

Since the move and subsequent re-launch in November, Bread and Circus has played host to a variety of acts and revues. With a flexible mandate that includes theatre, comedy, music, dance, and more, it’s become home to weekly acts like a musical series produced by pop band The Human Statues, the vaudeville revue “Carnegie Hall” (produced by The National Theatre of Canada, who are also behind “Impromptu Splendor“), and has already played host to short run shows like Boylan’s General Motors Circus, and Melissa D’Agostino’s sold out “A Very Lupe Christmas” (which subsequently helped earn D’Agostino a pick as one of Torontoist’s Heroes of 2008).

(More about this weekend’s big draw, the sketch supergroup “The Gents“, after the jump).

(left to right) Patrick McKenna, Matt Baram, Bruce Pirrie, Bob Bainborough, and Doug Morency.

Starting tonight and running until Saturday, Bread and Circus will play host to some true veterans of the sketch comedy scene. All five of the players in “The Gents” are alumni of The Second City, and vary widely in age; youngest member Matt Baram left the Mainstage cast just 2 years ago, while Bruce Pirrie’s stint as an actor in the revue finished back in 1983. But the five comics share a love for live comedy that cuts across generations; when Pirrie, a long time director at the Second City, began pulling together a male troupe (inspired by the success of the similarly constituted female Second City alumni troupe Women Fully Clothed), they all jumped at the chance to start performing live comedy again. It helped that three of the cast members – Pirrie, Bob Bainborough, and Patrick McKenna -  were all cast mates on the long running TV series “The Red Green Show“; not only was this a Second City reunion, but it was a Red Green one as well.

The three shows at Bread and Circus are fundraisers for The Urban Angels charity, and the ticket price of $20 is a real steal, considering the last time this troupe played Toronto, tickets went from $45-$90 (a funder for colorectal cancer research). Baram and Doug Morency have played the Bread and Circus stage before (Baram with “Carnegie Hall”, Morency with his “father & son Cajun music duo” The Williamson Playboys), but the more senior cast members are eager to tread the boards at the hip new venue themselves, and Torontonians will get a chance to see a comedy troupe composed of members who’ve spent far more more time recently on the screen and in concert halls than in an intimate venue like Bread and Circus.

Showtime is 8pm, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and tickets can be purchased in advance at the Bread and Circus website.