RED DEMON: DREAMY AND RESONANT
How often do you get to walk into a folktale? Japanese playwright Hideki Noda’s Red Demon, which premiered in Japan in 1996, feels both timeless and timely. A red creature has washed up on a beach below a Japanese village and most of the villagers, immediately...
VASCULAR NECROSIS: EAT ME (PLEASE)
Jordyn Wood can really write. In Vascular Necrosis, they take a fantastic premise and sustain their exploration of its potential for almost two hours. Halle-frickin’-lujah! Wood is a young playwright, a brand-new playwright to me, so their success is cause for...
DOGFIGHT: TAKES A WHILE
The Act 1 set-up of the musical Dogfight takes too long, the premise is off-putting, and the story doesn’t hit a persuasive groove until Act 2. On the upside, Dogfight is the inaugural production of JBM Theatre, a new local company dedicated to producing musical...
JOB: Performance Review
The Search Party’s production is excellent. My sense of the play’s fundamental flaw has hardened considerably in the hours since I’ve seen it. But keep in mind, as you read this review, that both the play and production contain riches you might want to experience....
HEIST: TIME BANDITS
I wish I had something more interesting to write about. There are positive things to say about this production, but let’s start with the script, which is a meaningless puzzle. In Calgary playwright Arun Lakra's Heist, an Irishman named Marvin recruits a team of...
AVENUE Q: A Desirable Neighbourhood
Puppet sex. That should be enough to get you out to see Metro Theatre’s mounting of the musical Avenue Q. But there’s a lot more. This is an excellent production. Avenue Q looks very much like Sesame Street, but with a skewed Gen X slant. In his opening lyrics,...
JIMMY HOGG: MASHED (VANCOUVER FRINGE)
Want to know how to tell a story? Watch Jimmy Hogg. In Jimmy Hogg: Mashed his story is about how he hitchhiked from Plymouth to the West Midlands to meet his girlfriend’s wealthy parents. It’s also about how desperate he was to be cool when he was 19 and how, through...
THE IVORY TOWER POWER HOUR (VANCOUVER FRINGE)
There are no theatrical chops on display in The Ivory Tower Power Hour. In this mostly one-woman show (a couple of back-up dancers join her at one point), creator/performer Dr. Heather McLean, who is a real-life academic, tries to send up “higher education in late...
LAS MUJERONAS
Ay, me! The flamenco performance Las Mujeronas had me hollering “Olé!”, laughing, and crying all sorts of tears — from pain, from joy, and from the sheer, extravagant beauty of it. The program that Jhoely Triana Flamenco is presenting at the Vancouver Fringe combines...
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