I mentioned last week that we were lucky winners of a raffle that includes a number of fun things to do for a Date Night, and on Thursday we went out on our first outing. The prize was tickets to see a play called “The Happy Woman”, at The Berkely Street Theatre.
This was located on the east side of town, so we took the streetcar over. The area was an interesting one that I’ve never explored before. Not to be overly morbid but worth mentioning I think, is that petty well right where we got off the streetcar was the former site of public brandings. According to author and investigative historian, Peter Vronsky, “In Toronto until 1798, prisoners were publicly branded in open court at the bottom of Berkeley Street near the present location of Front Street. Except for the crime of manslaughter, branding was abolished in 1802.” *
The theatre was located just south of this spot, in a building built in 1887. Apparently it was originally built by the Consumer’s Gas Corporation as part of a gas pumping station complex, as remained as such until 1955, “when Consumer’s Gas moved their production out of downtown Toronto. The Greenspoon Brothers wrecking firm was hired to demolish the buildings in February of 1971, but the architectural grandeur of the buildings inspired them to renovate the complex instead of destroying it.” **
I am not a worthy theatre commentator, so I won’t elaborate about the play, except to say that we both thought the acting was excellent. The use of any recording devices was not allowed, otherwise I would have taken a picture of the really cool set.
All in all, we really enjoyed our night out! The raffle prize contains quite a few opportunities to see plays throughout the year, so we’ll be seeing more of them. It’s not something we have done often and we’re happy to try something new.
Tomorrow I’ll do a post of what I wore.
Thanks very much for reading.
xo loulou
* Source: Peter Vronsky, www.russianbooks.org
** Source: www.toronto.ca
