The Sea floated my boat — intermittently
Like a kid who has had the wrong kind of home schooling, Edward Bond’s The Sea is wildly creative—and undisciplined. It takes you to a refreshingly original imaginative world but then insists that you linger too long in some of the duller corners. Set in 1907, The...
Dead People’s Things: dump ’em
This play contains one moderately interesting idea. It comes very near the end of the 95-minute runtime. It’s a long wait. In Dave Deveau’s new script, Dead People’s Things, a young woman named Phyllis has inherited a house from her estranged aunt, who was a hoarder....
New York Report
I saw some phenomenal work while I was in New York City last week. I also some saw flawed performances and productions—but Broadway is so intense it felt like everything was on a grand scale. Ruth Wilson’s Fool tries to steady Glenda Jackson’s King Lear....
Bed & Breakfast: Don’t spend the night
The title is a spoiler. The show is called Bed & Breakfast for Christ’s sake so, when gay couple Brett and Drew spend their first half hour onstage together dithering about whether or they’re going to open a B&B, I felt like screaming, “Haven’t you read the...
Cherry Docs: steel-toed and heavy-handed
Guest review by David Johnston It's a good production and, when the script occasionally gets out of its own way, it becomes great. In Cave Canem's latest outing, neo-Nazi skinhead Mike (Kenton Klassen) has stomped a Hindu man to death; liberal Jewish lawyer...
The Tashme Project: The Living Archives – The truth is in the details
The Tashme Project: The Living Archives is an elegantly simple, moving, and important piece of theatre. Julie Tamako Manning and Matt Miwa, who created and perform the show, each have one Japanese parent and, when they met while working at the National Arts Centre a...
New Cackle Sisters: Kitchen Chicken—homemade okayness
New Cackle Sisters: Kitchen Chicken is inventive but not dazzling, an intermittently engaging form of theatrical folk art. In the show, a cast of six prepares a meal of chicken and mashed potatoes as well as appetizers—all while performing popular American songs from...
Chimerica: how many hours do you have to spare?
I thought it was never going to end. Then, after two hours, the lights finally came up—but it was only intermission. We had another hour and a half to go. Playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica is about the current murky codependence between China and the States. To...
The Orchard (After Chekhov): hobbled by imitation
There are good bits, but overall it’s a mess. And the primary faults are in the writing and direction. In The Orchard (After Chekhov), Sarena Parmar, who grew up in Kelowna, resets Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in the Okanagan in 1974. The central...
Subscribe Free!
Sign up for the FRESH SHEET newsletter and get curated local, national, and international arts coverage — all sorts of arts — every week.
Contact
Drop a line to colinthomas@telus.net.
Support
FRESH SHEET, the reviews and FRESH SHEET, the newsletter are available free. But writing them is a full-time job and arts criticism is in peril. Please support FRESH SHEET by sending an e-transfer to colinthomas@telus.net or by becoming a patron on Patreon.
Website by Mighty Sparrow Design.