Hiro Kanagawa's new play, The Patron Saint of Stanley Park currently on at the Arts Club, is about a harried mother, a troubled teenage daughter and a brainy ten year old son coming to terms with the death of the husband and the childrens' father on Christmas eve the previous year.
The two children are sent by bus to visit their uncle on Christmas Eve but they take a detour into Stanley Park to do their own private memorial to their father, who was a seaplane pilot that regularly flew past Prospect Point. They get caught in a major...
2010 is drawing to a close and we are still dealing with haywire news sources and mediums messaging messages of all sorts – not much conducive to a good night’s sleep or to enjoying seasonal holidays designed for celebrating peace on Earth.
Bevin Poole, Cai Glover, Vanessa Goodman, Robert Halley and Janine Kamonzeki. cred David Cooper
Jade in the Coal is about a Chinese immigrant coal mining community in Cumberland BC during 1900. It begins with vignettes of some common events in the miners lives such as working underground in the mine, sending letters and money back to families in China, gambling and eating. An underground explosion has killed many miners including the beloved father of Sally, the wife of Wu Kwun, the town's Chinese power broker. Sally and a young miner, Lew Chong, had hoped to marry before her father arranged her marriage to Wu Kwun. Wu Kwun has built a new hall and brought...
Collisions between dance and science or dance and technology seem de rigeur these days. In Vancouver, October 2010 saw the premiere of Co. ERASGA’s Shadow Machine, which professed to explore “the conflicting relationships humanity has held with machines and the industrial process since the first years of the industrial revolution.” VIDF 2010 gave us Kitt Johnson’s Rankefod, an “evolutionary solo performance in celebration of the origin of the species.” In the summer of 2010 the Plastic Orchid Factory offered the “contemporary dysfunction” of endDORPHIN, a work expressing an alienated, over-medicated 21st century neurosis through dance. Common to each of these...
Ballet BC opened its 25th season with Songs of a Wayfarer and Other Works. The evening began with the titular work, “Songs of a Wayfarer,” a four-movement piece set to the music of Gustav Mahler, choreographed by Emily Molnar. In many respects, the piece radiated the aura of classical refinement that one associates with ballet: cherished music is translated with lyrical gesture by dancers whose bodies are highly-trained instruments of interpretation. Mahler's Songs 1-V and VII suffused the theatre with an atmosphere of delicate melancholy, and the setting felt like a moody, early 19th century Romantic painting: dancers navigated a...
Combine Michel Marc Bouchard’s admirable script, UBC’s talented Bachelor of Fine Arts students, and skilful director, Craig Holzschuh, and what do you get? A stunning, professional and praiseworthy production by Theatre at UBC.
Sankai Juku has blown me away at least three times now. The first was when I initially learned about them in my Japanese Performance class during my undergraduate degree. The second time was when I saw them perform their piece Kagemi at Place des Arts in Montreal in 2006, and most recently, they did it once more through their piece Tobari: As if in an Inexhaustible Flux.
Mimi (or A Poisoner’s Comedy) set in seventeenth century France, is a modern musical, with a clever and creepy feel that I loved. In this Touchstone production currently on at the Firehall Arts Centre, lavish costumes and wigs transport the audience to a world where debauchery rules. The opening scene is a rich romp in a Paris boudoir with sex, music, and Louis XIV's lavish draped material. Even the pianist plays in costume and wig.
Debauchery is fun but when Mimi’s lover introduces death to her it proves even more titillating. Mimi uses pigeons to bake her poisonous pies so...
Love Fights is Solo Collective Theatre’s latest production featuring two one-act plays - Coffee Makes Me Cry by Adam Underwood, and The Trolley Car by Amiel Gladstone. Both plays are essentially about love and how it can affect the choices we make, but in two very different, and somewhat absurd, situations.
Coffee Makes Me Cry tells the story of Steven (Raphael Kepinski), and Jasmine (Emelia Symington Fedy), who agree to go on a blind date together after the match-making efforts of a mutual friend. The date could not begin more awkwardly, with clumsy conversation and a poorly-timed waiter (Hamza...
Raphael Kepinski and Emelia Symington Fedy make love in Coffee Makes Me Cry
On the night I saw Dr Egg and the Man with No Ear the audience was resolutely adult. This is a shame because this Australian production, which was re-staged recently in Chicago and is currently on at the Cultch, would be a great introduction for young people to the power of theatre to create beautiful and evocative imagery. The visual flair that the production exhibits – which ranges from crisp projections (animated by Jamie Clennett) through to puppets (built by Graeme Davis) to the clever set and costume (designed by Jonathon Oxlade), all supported by a wonderful musical score (by...
