The Wonderful is misnamed
The Wonderful is not wonderful. You can’t beat the venue, but Luke Reece’s script is bad. A riff on the 1946 movie It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wonderful is Caravan Farm Theatre’s winter show. That means it takes place outdoors on a farm near Armstrong in the north...
Me Love Bingo!: Best in Snow — Save your money. Don’t waste your time.
How did this show ever get programmed into the Arts Club’s season? The Arts Club is a professional company. Me Love Bingo!: Best in Snow is not of a professional standard. For Best in Snow, set designer Ted Roberts has turned the Newmont Stage into a bingo hall, so...
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,...
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