As you enter Studio 16 you are greeted by your host The Hatter (Andrew Wade) who offers you a spot of tea from a table that has piles of all types of tea spread around it. I had a cup of chamomile which was lovely and made me feel welcome at his tea party. This is not just any tea party but one hosted by the famous Mad Hatter, although as we are soon to find out he is not very mad anymore, in fact he is quite sane and thus has been cast out of Wonderland. This show is...
Armed with a guitar, a piano and a bit of a humour, Ellen Johnston deconstructs our notion of “God” through the eyes of various deities – Madonna, Athena, Isis.
“On the run from a terrible pain" our protagonist clings to hope before a shrine found in a dirty parking lot as “waiting for a miracle that doesn’t want to come” she searches for her very own deus ex machina or, as it translates, God from the Machine, to quickly bring her problems to an end.
Ellen Johnston is a competent actor and a talented musician accompanying herself on guitar and piano....
Fringe Description: Musical · In Your Face · Intellectual
MacBeth is part of the new Drama Works series at The Fringe this year. Increasing the allowable show time for this series from 75 minutes to 120 minutes opens up the availability of published scripts. As well, the Fringe is providing a subsidy to cover royalty fees. There are six plays in the series all being performed at that Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab and all are worth supporting.
So far the shows I have seen as part of this series have been sold out, proving that there is the audience support for dramatic, longer pieces. Such is the case with...
Lord of the Flies: Remixed is the result of The Only Animal Summer Theatre Project, a collaboration with Camp Fircom, funded by the B.C. Arts Council and the City of Vancouver, an initiative providing leadership, mentorship, theatre training, creation, production, and performance opportunities to male B.C. youth.
Within a camp experience on Gambier Island and later rehearsals on Granville Island, the chosen teenaged boys (Calvin Campbell, William Canero, Dominic Duff, Raphael Diangkinay and Darragh Lysaght) under the mentorship of theatre professionals Eric Rhys Miller and Chris Ross, mined the novel and their own personal experiences and using dialogue, music and poetry,...
Connection. Humanity. Honesty. A frenetic opening led to brief, (seemingly) autobiographical monologues about what's important to each member of the company. I felt like a welcome guest at an intimate and eclectic discovered space and appreciated the diversity and vulnerability present.
Theatre Terrific's mandate is to support artists of all abilities to develop performance skills and collaborate in the production of theatrical works. This show isn't for everyone. There's not really any characters or traditional story arc. If you're looking for a professional, polished production that is guaranteed to entertain, I'd recommend Peter and Chris. If you're looking to spend...
The show styles itself as a lecture in the form of a play, and I believe that description does this show a disservice. Instead of a lecture, think more along the lines of a revue (and it's appropriately at the Revue Theatre) where the actors are sharing snippets of an artist's work. In this case, scenes from Oscar Wilde's life are included and provide context for his decisions regarding his fall from social grace. The actors were delightful to watch and the play was both informative and entertaining.
My knowledge of Wilde was limited to one play and one children's...
This kind of theatre must be a genre to itself: Creative Nonfiction Historical Documentary. However, Kyle Rakoz doesn’t strike me as a man interested in labels. His solo show, Ludwig and Lohengrin, employs an impressive array of storytelling techniques to familiarize us with the legend of Ludwig II, King of Bavaria.
For those who aren’t familiar, Ludwig II reigned during the mid-nineteenth century, was a close friend and patron of Wagner, and also happened to be obsessed with the building of castles. During his lifetime, many of his own ministers considered him as insane; Rakoz offers a...
I’m sure there are a thousand clichés in this piece which can be criticised – but it’s not by me, at least, not today. I found this simply enjoyable. If you’ve watched any film about a band on a road trip, you know what to expect here. They will fight, they will enhance each other (in that “being a little shit about it” sort of a way), you will laugh, and you will certainly cringe at some of the things these uninhibited musicians get up to.
This particular band is made up of three men and one woman;...
This show takes place at Granville Island’s public waterpark. No, the water is not running. Instead, the dormant yellow waterslide, the rolling cement hills, the intricate playground apparatuses, all are host to a conference of William Shakepeare’s favourite female characters. Sounds interesting? There’s more.
Twenty some odd audience members are split into three groups and then led around the landscape by their Pixie Captain. The aim of the Pixie Captain is to illuminate female/lesbian/queer/trans perspective in Shakespeare’s drama. Only once all of Shakespeare’s female characters are liberated from their subordinate gender roles can anyone go home.
I’m supposed to be reviewing six shows in two days. Four down, two to go. Eye Candy starts at 7:30 at the Performance Works. I’m on Granville Island at 7:15. Plenty of time. I wander over to the Fringe tent and run into an old friend, Benny. Our dads both worked in the theatre industry. I tell Benny I’m now working as a reviewer. He says I must have a pretty good lay of the land. We laugh. Of course I do.
I bid Benny adieu because they’re letting people in at the theatre and I want to...
