by Colin Thomas | Dec 14, 2017 | Review
You want a big show like Disney’s Beauty and the Beast to be lavish and dazzling but, in crucial ways, the Arts Club’s production is stingy and incomplete. Fortunately, there are also some excellent performances in the mix and the story itself is strong. In Beauty and...
by Colin Thomas | Dec 9, 2017 | Review
In The Realistic Joneses, playwright Will Eno behaves like a compassionate—and funny—palliative care nurse. In the play, Pony and John Jones have just moved in next door to Jennifer and Bob Jones. Now they all live in the same small town. Bob has a degenerative...
by Colin Thomas | Dec 7, 2017 | Review
Puppeteer Ronnie Burkett is a genius. He just is. Another blunt truth: Little Dickens isn’t his best show—at least it isn’t yet. As the full title makes clear, Little Dickens: The Daisy Theatre Presents A Christmas Carol is yet another riff on Charles Dickens’s...
by Colin Thomas | Dec 7, 2017 | Review
How Star Wars Saved My Life is an important personal witness. Structurally, it could be stronger, but that almost doesn’t matter. Nicholas Harrison is a well-known Vancouver fight choreographer. He’s got a PhD in directing from UBC. He lectures at Capilano University....
by Colin Thomas | Dec 5, 2017 | Review
(This is a repost of an essay that I wrote a while back.) A few years ago, I was talking with a local director in a theatre lobby. I had recently given a show of his a mixed review and, as we spoke, he became so enraged that I braced myself for a blow to the head. He...
