VANCOUVER FRINGE 2022: Blueberries Are Assholes
Okay, first off, why is TJ Dawe not aging? Dawe’s lanky self comes striding out onto the Waterfront Stage and it’s like he hasn’t aged in the last 35 years. Second point: It’s a pleasure to watch such a seasoned pro having so much fun. In his surreal stand-up show...
Romeo and Juliet: holey palmers
As an ex of mine said just before he stopped talking to me forever, “This is not how I hoped things would work out.” I have huge respect for the body of director Anita Rochon’s work and for the skills of many of the other creatives on this team but, in my experience,...
Dooja Ghar: the pleasures of a summer night
It was like a holiday. A friend and I drove out to Langley to see Dooja Ghar, Paneet Singh and Andy Kalirai’s modern retelling of a...
We Will Rock You: Nostalgia Bucks
We Will Rock You is dripping with so much old-fart attitude you can almost smell it. A jukebox musical built to cash in on the songs of Queen, We Will Rock You is relentlessly nostalgic and condescending. The thesis of Ben Elton’s book can be boiled down to: “The...
Something Rotten! is so tasty!
Much to my surprise, Something Rotten! is very entertaining. I went in wary. I’d never heard of the show and all I knew about the plot was that somebody in Elizabethan England invents musical theatre. Okay, I thought, we’ll see … But then I got there, and I fell into...
Harlem Duet: intriguing, but (for me) muffled music
Something is out of focus here. Maybe it’s me. Djanet Sears’s 1997 script Harlem Duet riffs on Othello — and it takes on a lot. The action of Sears’s play unfolds in three time periods. In the core narrative, we’re in Harlem in 1997. In the event that triggers the...
Marjorie Prime is pretty prime
Playwright Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime provides a rewarding and unique theatrical experience. How often do I get to say that? In the first scene, we meet Marjorie and her husband Walter. She’s 85. He might be 30. She has significant memory loss. If he hears...
Don’t Pass Over this acting
In Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, an urban street corner is also a slave plantation and Egypt — because Moses and Kitch, the two Black friends who are hanging out there, can’t leave. Nwandu is taking inspiration from both the Bible’s Book of Exodus and Samuel...
Kinky Boots: Say yes to the heels!
Star power, baby! Stewart Adam McKensy, who plays Lola, the drag queen at the centre of the Arts Club’s mounting of Kinky Boots, has so much of it he’s like a constellation. And McKensy isn’t alone: there are many, many bright lights in director Barbara Tomasic’s...
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