Cipher: as in zero
A cipher can be a code. It can also be a zero. Cipher is a play about a code — and a play that adds up to very little. In Cipher, playwrights Ellen Close and Braden Griffiths invent a 63-year-old cold case. In that fictional mystery, a man’s body is found on the beach...
Straight White Men: Aliens
The motto of Young Jean Lee’s Theatre Company is “Destroy the audience!” and the Village Voice has crowned her “the queen of unease”. But Itsazoo’s production of Lee’s Straight White Men left me disappointingly untroubled and unimplicated. In Straight White Men, which...
Anywhere But Here: Go there
Carmen Aguirre’s script for Anywhere But Here takes a long time to find its groove but, when it does, it’s thrilling. Really. Although I was ambivalent about the text after the first act, I rocketed out of my seat for the ovation at the end. And the production is...
Forget Me Not: Forget the script, remember the rest
Ronnie Burkett is a phenomenal performer. The puppets that he and his team creates are works of art. And he needs a whole lot more help with storytelling than he’s getting. Lots of things about Burkett’s newest show, Forget Me Not, are very cool. For starters, it’s in...
Kismet, things have changed: compare and contrast
Comparison is odious. It can also be instructive. I really like Kismet, things have changed and recommend you see it. I loved KISMET, one to one hundred and I strongly suggest you go back in time and see if you can catch that show ten years ago. The same four creators...
Gardens Speak: Listen
A handful of times during Tanya El Khoury’s sound installation Gardens Speak, I had to slow myself down, to stop, to let the gravity of the information I was receiving land, and to honestly consider my response to it. That means that Gardens Speak was doing its job. ...
Noises Off: Right On
There’s something sublime about farce when it’s well done and this Arts Club production of Noises Off is very well done. In Michael Frayn’s 1982 farce, a hapless company of English actors rehearses and then performs … a farce. In Nothing On, the...
Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story – hilarious, devastating, political
Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story is equal parts outraged and outrageous, compassionate and hilarious — klezmer concert and play. It’s a fictionalized account of the marriage of playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s great grandparents, Chaim and Chaya, who met in Halifax in...
Unikkaaqtuat: a gift from the North
Unikkaaqtuat, which is billed as a circus, is a sincere and generous gift from the rich traditions of several northern peoples. From my southern settler perspective, some of the show is gorgeous and some of it is boring. In its framing device, Levy, a young Indigenous...
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