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...
The Café: Make your reservations now
I love it when a show makes me work and The Café had me hoppin’. The evening also offers a tasty tasting menu of emerging and established local talent. In The Café, which was conceived by Fay Nass, seven short plays are performed at tables scattered around Kafka’s,...
Bad Parent: Yeah, kinda
I’m going to suspend judgment on this one. Okay, no, I’m not, I have opinions. But I will acknowledge the context of my response. First opinion: an hour is long time to watch a couple bickering, especially if you don’t like them very much. In Ins Choi’s new play Bad...
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