God’s Lake: Go there
It’s a tribute to the power of God’s Lake that, after the applause had died down, the audience sat quietly in the theatre for so long that stage manager Jethelo Espaldon Cabilete felt compelled to tell us that the show was over. We knew that God’s Lake was over, of...
Talking Sex on Sunday: doesn’t hit the G-Spot
Why is it so hard to develop a decent script? Show after show goes up in which the script is a mess. That’s certainly the case with Talking Sex on Sunday. Sara-Jeanne Hosie wrote the book and lyrics for this musical and Shawn Macdonald acted as dramaturg. They start...
Steel Magnolias: Better when it’s breathing
I ran into a pal at intermission who floated a genius idea: cast Steel Magnolias with drag queens. Playwright Robert Harling is gay after all and the characters in Steel Magnolias feel very much like women as imagined by a gay man. In the play, we’re in small-town...
BEEP: Incoming
There’s nothing wrong with Beep. Designed by Australia’s Windmill Theatre for kids who are two to seven years old, it’s a simple story — told with puppets — about an outsider who is welcomed into village life. A furry little guy named Mort, who looks a lot like a...
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...
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