Cuisine and Confessions: Eat it up
Friends, don’t even read to the end of the review before you book tickets for Cuisine and Confessions. Do it now. Here’s the link: . Having done that, you should know: Cuisine and Confessions is one of the most sublime acrobatic performances you’ll ever see. Québec...
Vancouver theatre: top ten 2016
It’s true: in many ways, 2016 has been terrifying. The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States promises concrete horrors for years to come. But, the way I see things, theatre provides an alternative to the values and impulses that will soon put...
A Christmas Carol reinvented—with delightful weirdness
The pleasure is in the storytelling—and in everything from the words to the light that’s used to tell the tale. In Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, playwright Tom Mula examines the motivation—and metaphysical placement—of Jacob Marley, who is a bit player, the ghost of...
The Music Man: buoyant songs, antique perspective
It’s charming. It’s tightly produced. And it’s antique. Weirdly, The Music Man endorses lying. In Meredith Willson and Frank Lacey’s story for this musical, a con man who calls himself Professor Harold Hill arrives in River City, Iowa with plans to sell the townsfolk...
Mary Poppins kicks butt
Mary Poppins is back and she’s kicking butt. The Arts Club first mounted the musical in 2013 and they’ve been reviving it as holiday entertainment intermittently since then. This latest iteration is as strong as the first. The stage musical is significantly different...
British Columbia artists are winning over New York and London
Local artists are standing on top of the world in New York and London. Charles Isherwood of The New York Times named Ride the Cyclone one of the best shows to open in the Big Apple in 2016. And the Guardian’s Luke Jennings chose Betroffenheit as one of the year’s top...
Creeps packs a sucker punch worth taking
It’s a stealth operation. I was watching Creeps, admiring the performances and considering the structure of the play when, all of a sudden, the emotional impact hit me and I was stifling sobs. Creeps, which premiered at Toronto’s Factory Theatre Lab in 1971,...
Holy Mo! There might actually be a point here
I wrote a whole other version of this review before I realized that Holy Mo! A Christmas Show actually has a point. I suspect that’s because playwright Lucia Frangione is speaking an almost private language. In her new script, Frangione retells the story of the birth...
The Day Before Christmas is this year’s most annoying holiday entertainment
God, I hate these people—okay, these characters. Act 1 of The Day Before Christmas digs itself into a deep hole artistically. Act 2 displays moderate improvement. This new script by local writers Stacey Kaser and Alison Kelly features Alex, a busy Vancouver...
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