Glenn Sumi

Glenn Sumi is a veteran arts writer who uses theatre reviews and features to map the contours of contemporary performing arts, with a particular focus on how live productions land with audiences now. He writes regularly about theatre for the Toronto Star, often concentrating on major productions and local companies while drawing on decades of beat experience to judge what feels fresh, what feels derivative, and why. His through-line is a close, craft-focused reading of shows that balances enthusiasm for live performance with a clear willingness to call out weak writing, thin characterization or mismatched scale, as in his assessment of the recent musical adaptation of The Outsiders.

Reviewing (mostly) Toronto theatre

Sumi’s core work at the Toronto Star is theatre criticism, where he covers a steady stream of plays and musicals alongside smaller runs and festival shows. His reviews of large-scale commercial productions examine not only the performances but also design, pacing and how the show’s elements function together in the room, rather than treating a title’s brand or source material as a guarantee of success.

In writing about stage adaptations like The Outsiders musical, he foregrounds the physical impact of the production - weather effects, movement, fight choreography and ensemble energy - before turning to where the score, lyrics or dramatic structure fall short of that visceral promise.

He applies the same approach to more modest productions, weighing choices in casting, direction and staging against a long memory of how similar stories have been told on local stages. His criticism tends to be specific rather than general: he singles out particular numbers, scenes or performances that crystallize why a show works or falters, and connects them to the production’s stated ambitions.

Through coverage of festival and fringe programming as well as mainstage runs, he shows a consistent interest in how new writing, emerging companies and limited-run experiments contribute to the health of the wider theatre ecosystem.

Reviews, interviews and features about Toronto’s performing arts scene

Alongside his Star work, Sumi runs the independent site So Sumi, described as “reviews, interviews and features about Toronto’s performing arts scene,” which functions as an extension of his beat.

There he publishes show reviews, in-depth conversations with artists, and feature pieces that highlight trends across theatre, dance and related live forms, giving more space to companies and artists who may only get brief mentions in mainstream listings. The site’s framing makes clear that he treats the performing arts as an interconnected scene rather than a string of isolated openings: coverage of individual productions often sits beside interviews, festival previews and roundups that track how artists and venues respond to economic pressure, shifting audiences and new technologies.

Sponsored or partnership pieces in his broader portfolio show that he can also work in an informational or promotional mode while keeping a focus on craft and context. Across outlets, his features tend to pose practical questions - such as how big-budget shows manage costs or how companies rebuild audiences after disruptions - and then answer them with reporting grounded in conversations with producers, performers and directors.

That mix of evaluative criticism and explanatory feature writing gives his coverage a dual function: it reviews what is on stage now while documenting how the performing arts infrastructure is changing around those productions.

My first month as an independent theatre blogger

Sumi’s current vantage point is shaped by a long stretch inside a city weekly’s entertainment section, followed by a deliberate shift to independent and freelance work. He has been an arts writer and editor for more than 25 years, during which he has covered theatre, film, dance and comedy and served as an on-air pop culture commentator, giving him a wide-angle view of how different parts of the entertainment world intersect. In his account of launching his independent theatre blog, he writes about leaving a struggling newspaper employer, building his own platform overnight and re-establishing himself as an independent critic focused on theatre and the performing arts. That experience surfaces in his current writing in the form of close attention to labour, sustainability and the financial realities behind productions, even when a piece is framed primarily as a review.

Beyond the Star and his own site, Sumi contributes arts pieces to other publications and outlets, including writing on how theatre-makers work with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and appearing on broadcast segments about the post-pandemic recovery of large-scale productions. His membership in film and theatre critics’ organizations underlines his position within a community of professional reviewers, and his social media presence distills his career as “25 yrs” at a long-running city magazine with recent work for major daily papers.

Across these roles, he consistently returns to live performance as the centre of his beat, using clear, accessible prose and detailed show-specific examples to help readers understand not just whether a production is worth seeing, but what it reveals about where theatre and the performing arts are heading.