Two for Tea is an all-ages remount of one of the first shows that production company James and Jamesy brought to the Vancouver Fringe Festival. The company comprises the duo, Aaron Malkin and Alastair Knowles, and their director, David MacMurray Smith.
Before even entering the theatre it is obvious that James and Jamesy are a Fringe favourite. The ticket-holder line is all the way up the stairs out the building and down the stairs of the back porch, despite it being midday on a Sunday.
Slapstick comedy isn't my style, but the charm of these two eked a begrudging giggle (OK guffaw) out of...
A farce, acted out by two men, as travelling players. Beginning in darkness with whispers about an accidental murder of an audience member during last night’s show, you are greeted with gusto and enthusiasm. Perpetual Wednesday is a wonderfully funny and energetic show. Presented by White Collar Crimes, this hilarious and absurd tale is going to have your cheeks aching from laughter.
As my second show at the Fringe I walked in having no idea about what to expect; all I had to go on was something about a murdered audience member. Within the first five minutes my cheeks were...
Maybe it's just luck. This year's Fringe has settled into an overall thematic arc for me about substance abuse and bad decision making. Temptation in this case comes from spirits, and not just the spirit of adventure. We know there is ego involved, as well as power and control. Who has it, and who wants it?
Temptation, history, short term choices balancing long term preferences. Albee and Pinter might nod at the homage. The audience responded well to the continuous reveals, and the plot thickened nicely as the temperature was raised through reluctant alcohol-fuelled reveals.
Kirsty Provan’s He Roars treads familiar territory with its portrayal of journalist Rose’s (Kirsty Provan) struggle as she pursues a relationship with her childhood friend Charlie (Sebastian Kroon) who is a soldier in the Canadian Armed Forces. The play charts their romance between Charlie’...
A minimalist play with only one prop, A Quiet Place relies on its ability to create a sense of pacing through only the motion and dialogue of the two actors. Mark Manning and the delectable Tosh Sutherland are both well-practiced, with depth and charisma to spare. Together, they bring to life a harrowing and enticing performance.
Henry, played Tosh Sutherland, is the in-control one. He's been in the doorless room longer and has grown accustomed to it. He seems to...
The Positive of Power Thinking is a 70-minute play written by Wallace Fessler and Joshua Fisher that runs at Performance Works. It stars Lance Banks who is an egotistic, smarmy motivational speaker, here to get your life on track with the help of his assistant Dave. Together, they demonstrate the power of the LanceLifeTotal Life System program and how it can make you more money, more powerful, more material possessions and more dependent on their multi-step program to success.
My first question going into this production was, "is this about Mars?" The answer to this question did not disappoint. It is about Mars.
It follows a father and daughter on a long road trip to Olympus Mons on a recently colonized Mars. The father (played by Mark Nocent) tells the daughter (played by Valerie Cotic) the story of the first two astronauts to come to the red planet, Strider and Magic (also played by Nocent and Cotic). The story itself is really well put...
It's not often that I find myself sexually titillated by clowns.
The Sama Kutra was one such occasion. And as I go over this colourful and electric performance in my mind, it's clear that there was more motivating it than mere shock value.
A needle swings ever more wildly between silly and sexy as a clowny couple (Sizzle played by Jacqueline Russell and Spark played by Jed Tomlinson) try to revive their crumbling relationship with the help of the eponymous magical erotic book. The makeup, the humorous acting, and the wild props all combine to create a layer of separation...
This production, a two-hander, with Chris W Cook, the playwright as one of the two characters, comes from Edmonton. We are presented with a journalist recently returned from Afghanistan. Time: the present, so the issues are real and important. The representative of an unnamed "agency" abducts the writer (who is conveniently Canadian-American) to the United States, where he has no chance of government protection.
Obliquely at first, the questioner wants to know who he met in Kabul, and whether they might be active terrorists. Soon the unfortunate journalist is tied to a chair...
Genre definition = Intense · In Your Face · Intellectual
What do you do if you are being tormented by an outside force you cannot understand?
George (Kevin Ray) and Byron (Nic Turcotte) are on a camping trip together when mysterious words start appearing. The mechanism of outdoor projection is not clear, but both George and Byron can see the communications. When the entity is asked why "it" speaks of itself in the third person, it says it is a third person--thus, I will refer to the entity doing the communication as "third person" throughout. The third person is somewhat sadistic, as "it" chronicles real-time updates of everything George and Byron...
