by Colin Thomas | Oct 31, 2016 | Review
I’m telling all the people I love most to see this show. Tetsuro Shigematsu’s Empire of the Son is exquisite. It’s also painstakingly honest. In his script, which Shigematsu performs solo, he explores his relationship with his father, Akira. In a talkback after the...
by Colin Thomas | Oct 26, 2016 | Review
It’s charming. It’s innovative—even daring. And then it peters out. In Straight Jacket Winter, co-writers Esther Duquette and Gilles Poulin-Denis tell an autobiographical story about the alienation they felt when they moved from Montreal to Vancouver in 2011. Duquette...
by Colin Thomas | Oct 24, 2016 | Review
After I stopped panicking, things got really, really good. Three Stories Up unfolds entirely in the dark. Ushers lead blindfolded audience members into the performance space in small groups. When the lights go out, everybody takes their blindfolds off, but it’s pitchy...
by Colin Thomas | Oct 20, 2016 | Review
I’m finding it impossible not to damn Mamahood with faint praise. There’s nothing really wrong with this show, but there’s nothing arrestingly right about it either. In her solo work, Mamahood: turn and face the strange, writer and performer Nicolle Nattrass tells us...
by Colin Thomas | Oct 19, 2016 | Review
Leave a Comment They were manipulating the hell out of me and I loved itIn Fight Night, which is produced by a bunch of companies led by Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed, politics becomes a literal game. Five actors vie for audience members’ votes and everybody in the crowd...
by Colin Thomas | Oct 17, 2016 | Review
Watching Walt Whitman’s Secret is a bit like eating paper—but the paper is often tasty. In Sean O’Leary’s script, which he based on Vancouver author George Fetherling’s novel, the celebrated nineteenth-century American poet Walt Whitman is nearing the end of his life....
