The Messiah: The silliest story ever told (That’s a compliment.)
You have to be smart to be dumb. Or wily. Or at least have good instincts. Okay, I don’t really know how they do it, but, playing a couple of goofballs in Pacific Theatre’s production of The Messiah, Peter Carlone and John Voth are very funny and very engaging. For...
Stiles & Drewe’s The 3 Little Pigs: disappointing
Absolutely the best thing about going to a kids’ show is that you get to take a kid. My friend Mathias, who’s six, accompanied my partner and me to Carousel Theatre’s production of Stiles & Drewe’s The 3 Little Pigs. Mati had never been to the theatre before and,...
Wittenberg: You might want to consider another school
Director Adam Henderson and his team are giving Wittenberg a precise, committed, and creative production. But, despite its intellectual ambitions, the play itself is boring. Writer David Davalos has set his script at Hamlet’s university, Wittenberg, in Germany, and...
Courage Now: We need this production
I was afraid that Courage Now might be ploddingly literal, but it’s a moving piece of art. There is no doubt that more people need to know the real-life story of Chiune Sugihara, who was Japan’s vice-consul in Kaunas, Lithuania near the beginning of World War II. In...
East Van Panto: The Little Mermaid – underwater heaven
It’s spectacular, a stupidly good time — and I mean that in the most enthusiastic way possible. For this year’s East Van Panto, playwright Sonja Bennett has turned the 1989 Disney animation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid inside out, so it...
The Sound of Music: It’s all about the kids
Brace yourselves: this is going to be a rave. I was so moved during the first act of the Arts Club’s production of The Sound of Music that I was in serious danger of making embarrassing sounds. And I wasn’t alone in suppressing sobs. Damien Atkins’s performance as...
Seventeen to seventy in seventy minutes
As is so often the case, the acting is better than the writing. Seventeen is about a group of friends (mostly), who have gathered in a playground to celebrate their last day of high school by getting hammered. As determined by Seventeen’s playwright Matthew Whittet,...
Mom’s the Word: Talkin’ Turkey is not a turkey
I cried. I was bored. I laughed. Mom’s the Word: Talkin’ Turkey, the latest in the Mom’s the Word series, is inconsistent but, when it lands, you feel it. The Mom’s the Word shows date way back to 1993, when a group of theatre professionals, who were all raising young...
Yaga: Tell me a (better) story
Despite the sometimes superlative strengths of this production, the evening doesn’t satisfy — at least it didn’t satisfy me. That’s because, although there’s a lot of plot in Kat Sandler’s twisty script, there isn’t an engaging story. Right off the top, we meet Yaga...
Subscribe Free!
Sign up for the FRESH SHEET newsletter and get curated local, national, and international arts coverage — all sorts of arts — every week.
Contact
Drop a line to colinthomas@telus.net.
Support
FRESH SHEET, the reviews and FRESH SHEET, the newsletter are available free. But writing them is a full-time job and arts criticism is in peril. Please support FRESH SHEET by sending an e-transfer to colinthomas@telus.net or by becoming a patron on Patreon.
Website by Mighty Sparrow Design.