Post-Democracy: argument instead of discovery

Strong acting. Taut dialogue. Handsome set. But there’s no thematic revelation. In Hannah Moscovitch’s Post-Democracy — which is receiving its world premiere at Winnipeg’s Prairie Theatre Exchange — a Chief Operating Officer named Lee is trying to convince his boss,...

Alice in Wonderland: Alice unchained

All alone in my office, I was laughing out loud and clapping my hands. Bad Hat Theatre’s Alice in Wonderland is streaming online, but it does what theatre does best: it activates the concrete imagination. Without resorting to illusion, it uses sounds, bodies, and...

Silent Sky: a good night under the stars

  Writing this review of United Players’ production of Silent Sky isn’t as challenging as, say, astrophysics, but it’s still tricky, okay? I enjoyed the show a lot. Playwright Lauren Gunderson’s script about the turn-of-the-twentieth-century career of...

Night Passing: You can give it a pass

Well-intentioned and over two-hours long, the audio play Night Passing is, unfortunately, boring. Set in Ottawa in 1958, playwright Scott Button’s script explores the entrapment of gay men and lesbians by the RCMP. Fueled by anti-communist hysteria south of the...

Imagine Van Gogh: Take the leap

Go. But take earplugs. *** I was happy for hours after seeing Imagine Van Gogh. To experience the piece, you enter a huge room — in Vancouver, it’s at the Convention Centre — in which the towering walls and, somehow it seems, the floor, are rear-projection surfaces....

Out of Order: That’s what I call Covid relief!

Oh sweet, sweet sexiness! There’s darkness in this pandemic-themed, pandemic-era production from the circus collective Les 7 Doigts (The 7 Fingers) but, for me, the overriding experience is about the spectacular joys of embodiment and connection. Through The Cultch,...