Yeah! Saturate those hues! (Set by Carolyn Rapanos, lighting by Andrew Pye, costumes by Christina Sinosich.
Photo by Tim Matheson)
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is a supremely dumb musical but, if you get its exuberance right, you have something — and director Barbara Tomasic’s production gets the exuberance right. [Read more…]
This guy: David Underhill (centre) with Emilie Leclerc and Emma Slipp.
(Photo by Tim Matheson)
Where’s the script? It feels like playwright Dave Deveau has forgotten to write one. [Read more…]
Boys! Kiss already! (Photo of Julien Galipeau and Scott McGowan by Javier R. Sotres Photography)
If this show was a date, every person in the audience would have blue balls — and I’m including the people with ovaries. Girlfriend is an endless tease. [Read more…]
A romance that’s both hot and cold — like Barkerville cold.
(Photo of Zach Running Coyote and Shelby Wyminga by Courtney Brice)
Sometimes old friends turn up at Christmas and you’re not sure at first what to do with them. Although I remembered it fondly, it’s been years since I’ve seen Lucia Frangione’s Cariboo Magi and it took me a while to renegotiate the terms of our relationship. [Read more…]
Check out the cool horns that costumer Kiara Lawson has given Slightly (Victor Dolhai)
(Photo by Tim Matheson)
Peter Pan is not the most progressive story in the world. Even in this adaptation, which has excised Tiger Lily along with all of the other Indians, reactionary gender norms haunt the tale like the ghosts of every frickin’ Christmas past. Through Wendy, girls are taught that their highest calling — their only calling — is to become dutiful little mothers: to take care of absolutely everybody else’s emotional needs and to stitch Peter’s shadow back onto his feet. The boys? When Captain Hook is forcing some of the Lost Boys to walk the plank, Wendy pulls herself up to her full Victorian glory and declares, “I think I speak for all mothers when I say we hope our sons will die like proper gentlemen.”
At the end of the show, the actors introduce themselves and state their preferred pronouns but, given the script, that gesture feels empty.
Okay. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me offer another perspective. I attended this performance with my three-year-old neighbour Nola. It was Nola’s first time at the theatre. When I asked her what her favourite part was, she replied, “All of it.” [Read more…]
