LORENZO: A Love Story
It’s always interesting when you’re won over by a show — completely won over — even after you’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. The first movement of British artist Ben Target’s monologue Lorenzo didn’t engage me. Target’s career has mostly been in stand-up and, as he...
Snow White: like getting stuck in a windstorm
Maybe I caught a particularly rough performance of Carousel Theatre’s Snow White. At the Saturday matinee I attended, the audience was small and there were a lot of adults, which could partly explain why the show didn’t come close to generating the kind of runaway...
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella Caught Me by Surprise
Director Johnna Wright’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella does what it sets out to do extraordinarily well. It’s entertaining, well produced, and moving. This is despite some stiff odds. Rodgers and Hammerstein originally wrote Cinderella for...
A (bumpy) Christmas in Wales
This production is kind of like an old pillow: deliciously comfy sometimes but too often shapeless. Director Sarah Rodgers and her father Denis have adapted Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, a poetic piece of prose that runs about 20 minutes if you speak it...
Disrespectful Hiring Practices in Vancouver Theatre
This is a guest article by a young Vancouver actor who would like to remain anonymous. They are talking about their experiences and expressing their opinions. I am very grateful to them for sharing this articulate piece and I look forward to hearing feedback from...
East Van Panto: Beauty and the Beast — such a beauty
(Photo by Emily Cooper) Year after year, almost without fail, Theatre Replacement’s East Van Pantos are some of the most innovative, entertaining productions we see all season. Beauty and the Beast is one of the best. Co-writers Jivesh Parasram and Christine Quintana...
Hurricane Mona: downgraded to tropical storm
Just a simple family meal with a frog (Photo by Augusto Meza) I’m grateful to every artist who takes on climate change and there are striking elements in Pippa Mackie’s script. Overall, though, Hurricane Mona is a mostly unfunny comedy and its structure sucks. That...
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...
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