A Doll’s House, Part 2: I got plenty and wanted more
(Photo of Melissa Oei and Tom McBeath by Javier Sotres) There’s a knock on the door. How else could it start? In Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 script A Doll’s House, Nora, the heroine, leaves her suffocating marriage, her husband Torvald, her three young children, and her...
Elf, the Musical: hits within a miss
Can't get enough of this guy: Andrew McNee as Buddy (Costume by Christine Reimer, photo by David Cooper) This might sound weird but Andrew McNee is playing Buddy the elf in this production and, when I was watching him, I had a sudden — glorious — flash of his...
The Wizard of Oz — again, but well done
Don't make me cry, you two, I'm going to rust. (Photo of Preston Wilder and Camryn Macdonald by Canna Zhou) I’ve seen The Wizard of Oz approximately one million times, so there weren’t a lot of surprises for me in this CTORA Theatre production. But CTORA Theatre...
How Black Mothers Say I Love You: slowly
Kerën Burkett and Alisha Davidson deliver solid performances. (Photo: Kimberly Ho) Playwright Trey Anthony’s How Black Mothers Say I Love You is about the experiences of three Black women — four if you count the ghost. More specifically, it’s about immigration. I’m a...
Assembly Hall: Motion to Dissolve
Gosh. So many great things. Assembly Hall, the latest creation from choreographer Crystal Pite and playwright Jonathon Young, is so narratively eccentric it will resonant in different ways for every person who sees it. Let me tell you a bit about what it meant to me....
Peace Country: Go there
Peace Country is a huge accomplishment. I love its urgency, its complexity, its humour — and its weirdness. Its weirdness — well, its eccentricity — lies in the play’s structure. Pedro Chamale’s new script is set in an area also known as Peace River Country, an aspen...
Someone Like You: predigested
There are things I liked in Someone Like You, but so many more that I didn’t that it’s going to take a while to get there. Mostly what bugged me is that I felt like playwright Christine Quintana was cutting my meat for me. So much of her script is predetermined and...
The Empire of the Son: setting
The thrill is gone. When I first saw Tetsuro Shigematsu’s solo show Empire of the Son, when Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre produced its premiere seven years ago, I was so moved that, two weeks after seeing it, I still couldn’t talk about it without crying. But this...
Fairview: disorienting — and reorienting
What can I tell you about Fairview? Since Jackie Sibblies Drury’s script is about the distorting power of the white gaze and the nightmarish inescapability of white opinion — and since I’m a white guy — I’m going to opt for not telling you much. The play’s central...
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