RIDGE IS CLEAR-EYED
This is an odd compliment I know, but, watching Ridge, I kept thinking, “This show is like a block of wood.” It’s so solid and complete: so densely ethical and intelligent, so wholly and naturally itself. Written by Brendan McLeod, brought to fruition with the band...
ECHO: MOSTLY SPECTACULAR, SOMETIMES LESS
Cirque du Soleil’s ECHO gave me so much. I want to talk about those things first. The look of the show is fantastic. The only set piece is an enormous white cube — 12 tons and the size of a two-storey apartment building. Designed by Es Devlin, the cube rotates and...
KEEP CALM AND MURRAY ON: FOR FRIENDS AND FAMILY ONLY
Keep Calm and Murray On is kind of like a kids’ tap recital: the only reason to attend is if you know somebody who’s performing in it and you want to be supportive. With a couple of exceptions, the evening is an amateurish mess. Keep Calm is being billed as an...
CHARLIE AND THE (DARK) CHOCOLATE FACTORY
I haven’t seen the film or read the book, but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the musical comes into its own when it’s at its nastiest. There are upsides and downsides to this. (I’m mostly going to deal with the downsides first, but hang in with this review if you...
EARWORM: WORKS ITS WAY IN
Playwright Mohammad Yaghoubi’s Earworm is such an intriguing combination of elements. They didn’t all work for me, but they sure as hell kept me engaged. The central relationship is between an Iranian-Canadian podcaster named Homa and her adult son Pendar, who lives...
AS YOU LIKE IT OR THE LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT: DIDN’T LIKE IT
Great. I get to be the white guy who says he didn’t much care for Indigenous artist Cliff Cardinal’s solo show As You Like It or The Land Acknowledgement. I went into the evening hoping for challenge and provocation, but I didn’t get either. My expectation and...
MIDDLETOWN: SURPRISING PLEASURES
Artistic adventure is rare in Vancouver theatre these days. Want some? I’ve got a show for you. On so many levels, Sticks and Stones Theatre’s production of Middletown is such a surprising pleasure. Like Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which clearly inspired it,...
JERSEY BOYS: ENTRANCING
There is a particular kind of pleasure that comes from just giving yourself to a show because it’s so seamlessly assured and stimulating. It’s what folks are talking about when they say they were spellbound by a performance. For almost all its running time, that’s the...
OUTER ELSINORE: A SECOND VISIT TO BARD’S HAMLET
I returned to Bard on the Beach’s Hamlet to see Chirag Naik in the title role. (In a scheduled change, he has taken over from Nadeem Phillip Umar Khitab.) The news isn’t good. Naik overacts, and that exacerbates an underlying problem with director Stephen Drover’s...
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