If you've read my review of Baba Brinkman's The Rap Guide to Evolution on straight.com, you'll know that I didn't like the show. But I've got more to say.  The guy us clearly very smart but, in my view, his script is maddeningly reductive, especially when it comes to...

The line-up is dizzying. Some of Canada's major playwrights—folks like Daniel MacIvor, George F. Walker, Morris Panych, and Ronnie Burkett—will all be on the bill when Zee Zee Theatre presents Nyet this coming Sunday, October 27 at the Arts Club's Granville Island...

I was dazzled by the horse puppets and I cried a couple of times—but often I was bored. War Horse is a  disappointingly empty spectacle.  The story is about a 16-year-old English lad named Albert, and his hunter, Joey. When his dad sells Joey into military use at the...

  Again this year, the Vancouver Fringe Festival is holding over some of its most popular shows. Of those, I highly recommend 6 Guitars and Unpossible! In 6 Guitars, Chase Padgett becomes half a dozen characters who all play the guitar in different styles. His...

This year at the Victoria Fringe Festival I learned never to trust my intuition: shows that I thought looked like caca turned out to be great; others, that I thought were guaranteed winners, not so much.  I'd read the book version of Alison Wearing's Confessions of a...

There are a bunch of good shows up this summer. Here are my picks.  Of the shows I've seen at Bard on the Beach (Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Elizabeth Rex), I highly recommend Hamlet. In her contemporary staging, director Kim Collier goes a little tech-crazy, but she...

The Arts Club's production of Avenue Q is pretty much perfect. No kidding. A distillation of the concerns of Gen X, Avenue Q explores the struggles of a group of young adults who are finding out they're not as special as they've been brought up to believe. They search...

Last week, I had a fabulous chat with Jonathon Young, who's playing Hamlet at Bard on the Beach this summer. You can read the interview in the Straight by going to www.straight.com. Jon and I had such a rich conversation that I want to pass along some more of what he...

As a substantive editor, one of the most common problems I run into—especially with new writers—is that of the passive protagonist. I suspect that this is because writers are, by nature, observers. We pay close attention to the world around us. That's great, but it's...