Vangroovy is a Theatre Ocean Production written and directed by Christopher Ross-Ewart. The show got off to a bit of a rough start. Our Box Office manager playfully got upset at the crowd for not reacting during the preshow speech. We weren't exactly brimming with energy. Unfortunately the show didn't help get us out of our stupor.
Vangroovy is about Vancouver. And what a terrible place is it to live. It focuses mainly on how screwed we all are because of the pipeline and global warming and how we are all self obsessed zombies who are incapable of creating...
If this was the first time I was learning about Jack the Ripper and if the existence of serial killers wasn’t part of my social consciousness, I may have had a different experience of this play.
But we all know the story. Whitechapel Productions’ rendition may have been historically accurate, but it was also dry and largely lifeless. There is so much potential to explore the full range of human experience in this mysterious tale and perhaps my expectations were high but all I saw was a bunch of safe choices on that stage. Even the murder scenes...
In Michael Beamish's Mac Attack, born-again Christian Darrel travels to the remote bomb shelter his best friend Teevo calls home with the intent of asking him to be his best man. It soon becomes clear that Teevo has long been an athiest and is not at all happy to see his best friend marry "some church bimbo you hardly know".
A battle of wits ensues, escalates and eventually reaches the point where Teevo locks Darrel inside the bomb shelter with him with no means of escape. Teevo reveals that he has been preparing this bomb shelter for some time,...
Glowing explores adoption, infertility, morning sickness and the sudden desire for a child at 40. When I attended, there were around 60 people in the house. These people sprung to their feet as soon as the show finished showering Mary-Jo Dionne and her repressed subconscious, Andrea Polz, with applause. I can see why they may have liked it. The show is well written, emotional, authentic, delivered with expert timing and funny. I heard some people say it was the best show they've seen so far.
Alas it was not for me. I have an abnormal knowledge of adoption...
Genre Description = Funny · Warm and Fuzzy · Intimate
The Cultch hosts this musical-dance production by the 49th Parallel Dance Company out of Calgary was energetic, and full of colourful, sexy movement. The performance is set in a tavern with all the usual suspects. A bar-maid, tender, group of party girls,a player, a couple, and of course...a lush.
Through a series of dance skits set to an amazing soundtrack, we are taken through "a day in a life" at The Watering Hole. Love, lust, pain, brawls, and celebrations. All beautifully displayed with grace, and athletic precision. The plot is soft...on purpose I suspect. So this is all about the...
What do you do when your sister goes to a psychic to get a reading for herself and the psychic brings forth from the great beyond YOUR future mother-in-law? Why go on an epic quest to meet her yourself of course! I mean you'd be pretty jealous of your sister for meeting your future mother-in-law first.
Tara Travis has met, befriended, and is finally marrying the man of her dreams...literally...I mean she literally dreamed of this guy! She always knew his name would be Jim, and of course she wants to meet his family, but, as his mother...
Although Colin Thomas in Georgia Straight faulted this show, with all due respect, I disagree. Jones, an Englishman and Cambridge graduate (as he points out three times), tells us how, a healthy young man of 30, he had heart failure - not heart disease - caused, he discovers, by a puzzlingly enlarged heart (so a pun on 'big heart').
On the screen before the start: "Has caused fainting: I'll warn you of squeamish bits," which he does twice, though no-one looked anywhere near fainting. He records, in a linear and sometimes emotional way, his...
Actually the rain was perfect. The black umbrellas thoughtfully provided by the production crew framed the story with an appropriately funereal atmosphere. And having to peep around the umbrella of the person in front of me made me feel a bit voyeuristic, like I really was witnessing the intimate details of someone else’s life.
I’m not sure about the choir. They were a good plot device in that they caught us up to speed on the action, which wasn’t really necessary, and the allowed for the actors to change, which really was necessary. It just felt a bit...
I’ve had some very bad experiences with improv in the past so when I’m assigned to review a genre that I don’t particularly care for, I tend to grit my teeth and do my best to focus on the positive. To my relief I actually quite enjoyed the Lorax Improv show.
What Lorax Improv performed was a long-form improv, which I’m not sure I’ve seen before. I like a through-line, I don’t need much but my brain likes something to hold on to. So that really helped.
Mostly though, the actors were great. The Lorax...
Andrew Bailey’s “The Adversary” is hilarious, poignant and a little disturbing. Almost introverted and beautifully simple, Bailey himself is a bit of character with a unique vocal rhythm and a delivery style that incorporates . . . dramatic pauses. But he is charming and vulnerable and honest and his portrayal of the characters that he has encountered in his life is vivid, empathetic and, well . . . exciting.
In the beginning, the use of “locations” with light and moving from one spot to another felt a bit unnecessary for one guy up on a stage, but...
