Hey Viola! Get a better title!
Representation matters. Viola Desmond’s legacy matters. And I’m a white guy who doesn’t think that this telling of Desmond’s story works very well — which is my way of acknowledging that perspective also matters. Please take it into account. Desmond’s is the Black...
A War of the Worlds: real life is more chilling
Trump is scarier. Climate change is scarier. Covid is scarier. Theatre in the Dark’s production of A War of the Worlds — Mack Gordon and Corey Bradberry adapted the novel by H.G. Wells — has a handful of things going for it. The novel unfolds in and around Victorian...
The Doll’s House Project: theatrical space isn’t digital space
The Doll’s House Project has huge things going for it, including playwright Henrik Ibsen’s shifting moral perspectives and a gallery of fine performances from a bumper crop of student actors. But Laara Sadiq has directed the piece for the stage even though it’s being...
No Child… : Yes, child!
Are you looking for a really good reason to go back to the theatre? Here you go: the Arts Club’s production of Nilaja Sun’s No Child… will remind you what it’s all about. In the story, an actor/teacher named Miss Sun arrives at the impoverished Malcolm X High School...
counterFACTUAL: Maybe FACTUAL would be better
What? Why? So much nothing happens in counterFACTUAL that I was genuinely confused when the lights came up. I couldn’t quite believe it was over. Wasn’t there going to be some kind of ending, some kind of resolution or at least an intriguing cliffhanger? But there was...
Transform Cabaret Festival Opening Night Bash: Revolutionary. Joy.
Last night's Opening Night Bash at the Transform Cabaret Festival was … transformative for me. Moreso than last year's. I don’t think that’s because this year’s edition was artistically “better”, whatever that means; I think it’s because the overwhelming awfulness of...
Incidental Moments of the Day: extraordinary ordinariness
Incidental Moments of the Day is complex, engaging, and so potentially inflammatory that I want to warn you before you watch it. Between 2010 and 2013, playwright Richard Nelson wrote four plays about the Apple family of Rhinebeck,...
Art Heist: nobody knows whodunnit
There’s a lot of foreplay in this show and no orgasm. In Art Heist, playwrights TJ Dawe and Ming Hudson offer an experience in which audiences of up to 10 people sleuth around Granville Island trying to figure out who pulled off a half-billion-dollar theft from...
A Hundred Words for Snow: but where’s the subtlety?
This is the first time I’ve attended a live performance since the beginning of the plague, so I’m going to start off by talking about that. Going in, I was mildly freaked out; I’m 68 and I’m taking immunosuppressant drugs. Because I’m vulnerable, I wore a mask and a...
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