Panto Come Home!: ghosts of Christmases past

by | Dec 20, 2020 | Review

The whole is less than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are excellent. This year’s (online) East Van Panto is a collection of greatest musical hits from the last seven years of The Cultch and Theatre Replacement’s pantos. Writer Mark Chavez strings the...

Be-Longing embraces double-jointed identities

by | Dec 17, 2020 | Review

A lot of the work in Be-Longing is skilled. And, although not everything in the piece succeeds for me, there’s an underlying integrity to it that makes several passages compelling. Created by Fay Nass, Meghna Halder, and Sammy Chien, Be-Longing is about the double...

Nom Nom Gnomes: Nope

by | Dec 13, 2020 | Review

Carousel Theatre recommends this 30-minute audio play for kids who are three years old and up, but I can’t imagine any kid I know sitting still for it. I could barely manage. In Nom Nom Gnomes, Momoka, her nine-year-old son Taku, and his little sister Kyoko prepare a...

Heroes of the Fourth Turning: Christian Soldiers

by | Dec 3, 2020 | Review

This is the review of Heroes of the Fourth Turning that I included in the December 3, 2020 issue of my newsletter, FRESH SHEET. I’m posting it here so that I can link to it in my November 17, 2022 issue.    I haven’t encountered such a philosophically and...

Pathetic Fallacy: far from pathetic, but not riveting

by | Nov 27, 2020 | Review

  Conceptually, it’s cool and sometimes it’s pretty, but it’s not substantial. Created in 2018, Pathetic Fallacy emerged from core creator Anita Rochon’s determination to share her theatre work internationally without flying all over the place and contributing to...