“First Day Back” tackles the complex situation a school and its students face when one of the students takes their life due to bullying. Rob Salerno, creator/performer, delivers the thoughts and feelings of the teacher who started a safe space after school and the six teenagers who came to reflect.
Drama, Queer, Monologue, New Work - http://www.tenfootpole.ca/
I entered “CAPS LOCK: The Musical” wondering what is in the water in Vancouver that two theatre companies in two months have produced musicals about life in the office (Delinquent Theatre recently premiered “Stationary” at the Neanderthal Arts Festival).
Presented by Not My Cup of Theatre Productions, Smudge is an original new play created by writer/directors Kazz Leskard and Jennica Grienke with support from producer Emmelia Gordon. Starring a group of four Studio 58 grads (Sara Andrina Brown, Joy Castro, Kazz Leskard and Caitlin McCarthy), Smudge is happening at the Ocean Concrete Maintenance Building on Granville Island.
Hanafuda Denki only has three performances in total (last one is Sunday at 10:10pm) so get your tickets while you can! Imported from Tokyo, the experience of this show was so frantic, fantastical and fragmented that prose cannot do it justice. I recommend that you go and see it with your own eyes.
Comedy, Dance, Drama, Musical Theatre, All Ages - http://www.ryuzanji.com/
I may not be a professional reviewer but I see a LOT of theatre and I’ve studied theatre, created theatre etc etc. And I know that (as much as I would like there to be) there is no objective standard for my favourite medium, all art is subjective. That disclaimer made: This is possibly the best show I have ever seen. Ever.
Underbelly is by far my favorite show I’ve seen yet at the Fringe (and I’ve seen a lot so far). It’s an unforgettable performance inspired by the hallucinatory semi-biographical story of novelist junkie essayist homosexual wife-shooting literary exterminator and frequent defendant William S. Burroughs.
Sylvestre wants a husband. This funny, sad, often silly woman thought her troubles were over when her cousin sent her in a crate as a mail-order bride to a Canadian man. Sadly, her groom-to-be died as she emerged from the box, so she must keep searching for the man who will complete her life.
James Melcher puts on a touching performance in his autobiographical play, My Marvelous Melcher Machine, about growing up with more than his fair share of funerals and near-constant change. The themes of death and change are up-front the whole time, oddly without being overly sad or tear-jerky – though the story seems a bit random throughout, with jumps in chronology that I didn’t always get.
Melcher makes very effective use of his outdoor space by the marina on Granville Island (and after sitting in a slightly stuffy theatre earlier, laying out on a picnic blanket under a...
Comedy, Improv, Physical Theatre, All Ages - http://www.jamesmelcher.net/
I tend to like political drama, so The Troubles gets an automatic +1 magic boost from me. This one-woman show by Stephanie Henderson is all about “the Troubles” of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. She ambitiously plays a number of characters, trying to show what motivates everyone from the Molotov Cocktail-throwing thug to an old man who has seen the violence and laments his helplessness, to the eight-year old girl who has already made up her mind to seek vengeance for her blown-up brother and mother. The characters certainly give a broader perspective, even if each of them is a...
Drama, Multimedia, Monologue, New Work - http://www.resoundingscreamtheatre.com/
I suspect that Burnt at the Steak will be one of the most talked-about shows at the Fringe. Carolann Valentino delivers a brilliant and bombastic performance in the story of a New York-born Italian who is raised in Texas and returns to Manhattan to make a career in acting – and in the meantime, managing a high-end steakhouse.
