Intrusion is presented by anima theatre – a Vancouver theatre company aiming to bridge the gap between University and Professional Theatre. Company Co-Founder Veronique West has penned Intrusion and directs her Co-Founder Afshin Haidari and three time Jessie Richardson Award winning actress Wendy Noel in this production at the Carousel Theatre.
Sadie Goldstein (aka “Knitting Nell”) invites us into her wartime knitting group. (Got your knitting? It’s strongly encouraged. Don’t worry if you can’t bring your own, Sadie may just have a scarf or two in her little basket that you can work on.)
Musical Theatre, Cabaret, Opera, All Ages http://www.melaniegall.com/knittingnell/
I had pretty high expectations for when I arrived at the Havana for the Opening Night of The Furious Anger Fun Hour. I mean this Vancouver Sketch Comedy Troupe is made up of the hilarious physical comedy duo Peter n’ Chris (Peter Carlone, Chris Wilson), Sam Mullins (Tinfoil Dinosaur) and stand-up comic Bryan Nothling. About thirtyish audience members joined me in the theatre (which at the Havana is over half full) and we were greeted by a stage empty except for a microphone in a stand & a well-loved loveseat.
Bravo to this writer/director and the wonderful group of actors for creating a lovely understated piece of theatre. This play is about the microcosm of life that takes place every day in the Net Loft on Granville Island and appropriately is performed in the Net Loft space. Kudos to whoever worked to make that happen, not easy but the result is a really good one.
Simply put, it rises to the challenge of saying something profound about Death and the experience is both heart wrenching and comforting. John Grady lays it out for you, he helps us understand what to do, or rather how to be, when someone is dying and then he gets on with it. He takes on perhaps the greatest task of loving in our lives, which is being supportive and selfless for someone else at the very end.
Mr. Grady says the rest so very well I won’t go into my interpretation but will say he does it simply and efficiently....
This show is a shwack of a lot of fun and LOL funny, the actor has a great grasp of the material and the characters he is playing. We can relax back; we are in good hands.
Mark Shyzer really enjoys being up there on the “boards” and we enjoy watching his characters come to life and talk about their everyday insights into their worlds. His energy is most engaging. Mark flips genders and characters smoothly and dives into their lives and the material to bring them into focus for us larger than life! He uses a lot of pop...
Comedy, Queer, New Work - http://www.shyzer.ca/fishbowl/
Mark Cherniack the playwright/actor is enamoured with the stories and characters he has written about, as is demonstrated by his treatment of each one with great care and sympathy. He worked with these client/patients at the retirement homes, assisted living facilities and nursing homes for over 15 years and is obviously paying homage to their memory every time he steps onto the stage to perform this piece. So he knows the subjects and material of the piece intimately, maybe too intimately.
We would probably all agree that getting old sucks. We see that the elderly are frequently treated as children,...
Playwright Arlen Kristian Tom writes some funny, snappy dialogue in this dynamic two-hander. A tentative groom and his hung over best man are struggling with friendship, commitment and laundry issues in the confines of a small hotel room. The future of the happy couple hangs in the balance while the best man spends a fair bit of time hanging over the toilet.
The return of the all to known wet weather of Vancouver had return as the audience was getting ready for How to Love: The Headphone Play. Headphones were required to be part of the play as everyone was loaded up with an mp3 player. Lead by Darren Boquist (also the playwright), we headed over to the onsite venue right at the docks behind the Granville Island Hotel as instructions were given to us through our mp3s.
The play itself is a heartfelt introspective story but to be part of the story and experience being the characters and participating was...
Comedy, Drama, New Work - http://www.ideafactoryentertainment.com/
I really don't know what was going on for most of Mikhail Tank's The Power of Rejection. At the beginning he related a Greek legend, and then an anecdote from a personal experience, and I figured that the show would be more of that. I could have been fine with more of his stories, because he seemed very comfortable delivering them. But after the second story the show turned into a weird-musical spoken word fusion with very little structure or objective. For thirty minutes I watched Tank wander around, mostly far upstage, relating knee-deep parables about rejection into a microphone....
Multicultural, Drama, Musical Theatre, All Ages http://www.darksoultheatre.com/
