"Tiny Replicas” succeeds in taking gender issues out of the politically correct minefield they usually inhabit and gives them room to live and breathe in a fresh, funny romp that doesn't sacrifice substance for style.
This is theatre at its best, full of urgent physicality, humour and heart. You'll laugh. You may not cry, but you'll certainly feel stirrings in your chest cavity.
Simon and Ethan Want a baby. Simon is 30 and ready for the responsibility. His slightly younger partner Ethan says he is too. Combining Simon's lesbian friend's aspirated egg, his sperm and Ethan's hetero friend's womb, they...
The contemporary dance duet enables unparalleled expression of intimacy between two people, while the solo often represents a quest within the self. Edge 4, consisting of a duet and two solos, delivers on the promise of these forms, and more: we learn that individuality persists in the most interconnected of couples, while the imperative to relate—to oneself, to externally-imposed ideals, or to the social and physical world—exerts itself over even the most self-contained of individuals
They’re going to revoke my membership of the Cynics Society of Canada for the following statement but what the hell: I loved The Lion King. There, I said it, it’s out there. Let the chair of the membership committee come after me. Let other CSC members cross the street when they see me coming.
Quell (part of this year's Dancing on the Edge Festival) is an interesting, if half baked, piece of modern dance that starts strong and ends poorly. Two dancers, Lin Snelling and Peter Bingham, share the stage to varying degrees of success. They're accompanied by Peggy Lee on cello playing the kind of music that could only be defined as experimental or avant-garde. Lee's cello alternates between beautiful and grating but she is always technically masterful. You've really got to know your instrument to fuck with it the way Lee does and as a result she's the first highlight of...
From the side-by-side civility of Caesura, through the manic attacks of Blood, to the final card game in “A pocket full of questions,” Edge One, a well-danced program of lively contemporary movement, explores various danceable modes of human interaction with energy, clarity, and grace.
Standing at the seaside in CRAB/Portside Park, looking across Burrard inlet toward the north shore mountains, who doesn’t want to bow and undulate in harmony? Mal de Mer, by Anatomica/ Proximity Arts, begins with the exquisitely satisfying tableau of two women (Susan Elliott and Tanya Marquart) swathed in sails, swaying in the thigh-high waves. What a pleasure to spend an hour in this gorgeous outdoors, as it is animated and given further shape by the engaging narratives (our sea-monkey origins? swimming with whales? drowning?), sound design (Emma Hendrix), sets (Jesse Garlick and Barnaby Killam) and movement structures of Mal de...
Inveterate monologuist TJ Dawe returns from a Fringe sabbatical with his newest show Lucky 9, though something seems different this year. Notorious for his rapid fire, scattershot diatribes on any number of interwoven topics, Dawe usually comes across like Jerry Seinfeld on speed. In this instance the topics on hand include parenting, personality tests, addiction and HBO’s hit crime drama The Wire, though the most noteworthy theme weaving betwixt all his anecdotes and observations is the developments in the performer’s life over the previous year.
While I love Shakespeare, I’m not always comfortable with the unquestioning adulation that he’s accorded in our culture. I don’t for a minute buy the argument that somehow he created modern consciousness (as Harold Bloom contends). Nor do I believe that every word he wrote is somehow sacred. So many people (mostly academics) spend so much time trying to get to the definitive Shakespeare text, yet it’s an impossible task and virtually a fool’s errand. In part because of the forms of transmission we have for his texts are so unreliable (whether it was people frantically copying them down during...
What do you mean they don't have chemistry, Andrew? John Murphy and Jennifer Lines back into love at Bard.
Last week I was asked to review the world premier of Herr Beckmann’s People by Sally Stubbs, produced by Touchstone Theatre. It was the second week of its run and I felt it behooved PLANK for me to not just repeat what had already been made known in other reviews. Taking a look at some of the other reviews I mused about a ‘cut & paste’ job that would include the compliments and criticisms identified by each so I could meet my overnight deadline. Then I read our own interview with Ms Stubbs and realized such glibness...
