Fado: The Saddest Music in the World — is just a bit sulky
Fado: The Saddest Music in the World is an odd title for a play that evokes so little feeling. The problem is the script. In playwright Elaine Ávila’s story, a young Portuguese Canadian woman named Luisa travels to Lisbon with her widowed mom, Rosida. Luisa,...
East Van Panto: Pinocchio (gets his strings twisted)
If Pinocchio was my first East Van Panto, I’d be writing a different review. But I’ve seen all seven and some — especially Little Red Riding Hood (2016) and The Wizard of Oz (last year) — have been so much better that, although Pinocchio is a good show in some ways,...
The Father: a mother of a production
My smart, charismatic mom, who had always feared dementia, sank deeper and deeper into it for the last six years of her life. She’s gone. And now I fear dementia. So, when I was keeping notes as I watched The Father and I thought, “Fuck! Did I get that character’s...
Anon(ymous): no need to introduce yourself
If good intentions were all that mattered, Anon(ymous) would be worth seeing. In playwright Naomi Iizuka’s riff on Homer’s Odyssey, a rogue wave sideswipes the boat that a refugee mother and her son are escaping on. The two are separated: the boy is washed...
The Double Axe Murders: one would be more than enough
I think The Double Axe Murders wants to be atmospheric but, in this production at least, it’s not. In the story, which is based on real murders that happened in Newfoundland in 1809, Sarah Singleton has come looking for her fiancé and her brother, who have disappeared...
The Sound of Music: decorative Nazis, delirious music
Going into the Arts Club’s production of The Sound of Music I could hardly have been more resistant. I doubt you could find a more conventional, less adventuresome Christmas show. And the politics of The Sound of Music are weird: it tells the story of the Nazi...
Crystal Pite’s Body and Soul
THIS IS A GUEST REVIEW BY MAX WYMAN What has made Crystal Pite “one of the dance world’s most sought-after artists” (The Guardian) is not simply the ravishing movement sequences that she invents. Her dance-works are animated thoughts about the complicated...
Kuroko: All dressed up
Sure, Kim Kardashian wears great clothes, but does she have a soul? There’s a similar problem — although it’s not nearly as severe or creepy — with Kuroko: the production is stunning but, narratively and emotionally, Tetsuro Shigematsu’s script is perfunctory. On...
Turn of the Screw: Fails to twist
There’s too much too soon. From the get-go, we know things are going to be creepy. In the story, which playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has adapted from Henry James’s 1898 novella, a young governess accepts a position from an eccentric Londoner: she will journey to Bly, the...
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