by Colin Thomas | Dec 10, 2021 | Review
If you listen to the first two lines of The Power of the Dog, you will know exactly where this movie is going, so do yourself a favour: listen and save yourself from two (mostly) tedious hours. I say “mostly” because, thanks to cinematographer Ari Wegner, The Power of...
by Colin Thomas | Dec 4, 2021 | Review
On opening night, several people told me that they enjoyed Touchstone Theatre’s production of Adam Grant Warren’s new play Lights. I did not. I’m going to lay out my reasons, not because I’m trying to suck the pleasure out of anybody’s experience, but...
by Colin Thomas | Nov 29, 2021 | Review
I love this show about as much as I’ve loved anything in two years. Early on in Everybody, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s adaptation of the fifth-century morality play Everyman, Death, who kickstarts the action, says, “You’re all dying, starting now.” Of course, we’re all...
by Colin Thomas | Nov 29, 2021 | Review
Act 1 is weird. Technically, it’s slick, but it’s so aggressively entertaining and relentlessly uplifting that, watching it, I started to feel like I was on a ride in Disneyland — or maybe Dollywood. Are those real people on the stage or are they robots? In Charles...
by Colin Thomas | Nov 27, 2021 | Review
Covid, climate change, and November are conspiring to deplete my capacity for joy. I know I’m not alone in my exhaustion and dread. So the East Van Panto comes as a sorely-needed gift this year, a celebration of life — of community and fun. Now in its ninth...
by Colin Thomas | Nov 21, 2021 | Review
I wasn’t bored by this two-and-a-half-hour production, which is saying something. But I wasn’t horrified either — and I should have been. In Martin McDonagh’s 2003 script, a writer named Katurian is being interrogated by “good cop” Tupolski and “bad cop” Ariel....
