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Though he’s Vancouver-based, Morris Panych has enjoyed a long association with Toronto audiences. Here are highlights of his work during the past two decades — at the Tarragon unless indicated.
EARSHOT (2001)
Audiences laughed at and commiserated with a twitchy recluse cursed with hypersensitive hearing, a man who fantasized romantically about his neighbour.
THE OVERCOAT (2000, CanStage)
Panych co-authored this superb tragicomic piece of movement theatre, a wordless show based on Gogol’s story about a shy clerk (Peter Anderson) who invests his entire being in a fine new overcoat.
LAWRENCE & HOLLOMAN (1998)
Two men, a vainglorious optimist and an inhibited nebbish, meet seemingly by chance and find themselves caught in a Hitchcockian roller-coaster game of cat and mouse.
VIGIL (1996)
A self-centred, garrulous man moves in with his aunt, a mute invalid, and takes over her life in this darkly funny tale of mistaken identities and twisted logic.
7 STORIES (1991)
A man balanced precariously on an apartment ledge is distracted from committing suicide by the bizarre tales and lives of the residents who pop out of various windows.
PAL JOEY (1986)
Panych played the title role in this 40s Rodgers and Hart musical, a manipulative gigolo who romances an older society dame (Martha Henry) to secure his future.
LAST CALL (1982, Adelaide Court)
This post-nuclear cabaret, complete with songs, marked Panych’s first performance inToronto.JK
