musical

Trump: The Musical – Makes You Smile Once Again

This show was sold out within a few days of opening at the Fringe. If you were lucky like me to get to see the performance you most likely enjoyed it. However I am attributing the success of the sales mainly to the character in the center – D. Trump. I mean he is already funny so it is no brainer to make a comedy out of it.

The show runs in a musical format with many great song parodies and I found the singing to be quite good. The story line takes many turns into Star Wars with characters twisted to reflect...

September 13th, 2016 · By Elena Krasnova

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How to Adult: the Musical - Hilariously Relatable

Fantastic! This is definitely worth seeing, as any musical usually is. But there is something about How to Adult that just hits the nail on the head. Set in a co-housing situation in Vancouver, 4 young 20-somethings live together and try to be adults. With a runtime of just under an hour, it will leave you humming the tunes and wanting more.

Together these four young millennials write out a list of things they think they each need to do in order to become more adult-like. The list includes things like: getting a job, eliminating co-dependent relationships, and...

September 13th, 2016 · By Selene Dublanko

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Richard Lett: Sober But Never Clean - Bravery, Humility and Pure Creative Spark

What I expected was stand-up, with a definite nod to the 12 steps of recovery, as so many comics before have been through. What I didn’t expect was original songs, wrenched from the gut slam poetry forged in bodily fluids and the feverish imaginings of a person scraping through the mud, and tales of comrades on the same campaign, struggling with the same demons, searching for those angels of their better nature. Richard Lett has been a moderately successful stand-up comic for several decades, but like so many performers, courage, creativity and reactions came supercharged from external chemical changes. Not...

September 13th, 2016 · By Bruce M. Campbell

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Sink or Swim - Boomer-centric

Sharing an audience with Stuart MacLean's Vinyl Cafe crowd, Elliott's homage to a semi-rural Ontario childhood nostalgia-fest is a sure-fire crowd pleaser for anyone from the generation prior to the last three letters of the alphabet. This musical and moving image performance is a confident, well performed and very personal visit to a past that is comforting to the intended audience and likely quite foreign to anyone born after 1970. The subject matter and imagery described and shown is both familiar and nostalgic. The reminiscences are important to recognize, as history informs who we are, even as emotionally reliving...

September 13th, 2016 · By Bruce M. Campbell

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AFTER LOVE, LIFE: Lots of Plot, but Lack of Pacing

By Colleen Ann Fee
Directed by Tammy Bentz
After Love, Life is a play in progress by Advance Theatre: New Works by Women.

Birgit:
The title instantly attracted me. I am just starting to live after years of paralysis after the end of a 25-year marriage. But this play was not about this kind of loss at all. It addressed only the grief of losing a spouse to death. But that was covered thoroughly. How many ways can you lose the love of your life? Natural causes like heart attack or old age, natural disasters, accidents or suicide...

September 19th, 2015 · By Birgit and Mattias Martens

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The Traveller – Unremarkable

I like travelling. I like storytelling. I also like music. So I expected Daniel Morton’s play, The Traveller, would be just my cup of tea. Regrettably, it was not.

The stage felt cluttered and cramped, restricting actor-musician Max Kashetsky’s movements in this one-man show. The script repeatedly promised deeper meaning – some striking message that would turn my idea of life and travel on its head – but I’m sorry to admit the only message I got out of the experience was simple and cliché: death reaffirms life. Either I really missed something or the play’s script is too inarticulate to express...

September 17th, 2015 · By Sonja Cvoric

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The O.C.: The Musical - So Many Feelings

It was clear to me right from the start there was a lot of love put into this project. The cast were having so much FUN on stage, how could we not have a blast as well in the audience?

I'm not quite sure how to capture this show in words...after all, I knew nothing about the tv show going into it. I had to actually watch the tv show afterwards out of morbid curiosity and what I have to say to the creative team...

September 16th, 2015 · By Lori Watt

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TITUS! The Light and Delightful Musical Comedy of Titus Andronicus - Ingeniously Gruesome Musical Comedy

Is this a parody or an adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most gruesome plays? Well it is both I think. Shakespeare himself (Kazz Leskard) makes many flavoured directorial appearances throughout the show, trying his best to keep the vision of the play on a “happy” path. That’s a tall order, for this story has more abominations per act than any other of Shakespeare’s works. Not much love and joy to draw from. Director Andy Toth and the amazing cast knock this side-splitting musical out of the park. The singing, lyrics, dance choreography, and musical...

September 16th, 2015 · By Christopher Steffler

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LOCO + HERO + JOE - Charming Historical Production

LOCO + HERO + JOE tells the story of local (local = LOCO > LOCOOOOOOOL > LOCAAALLLL, see?) hero Joe Fortes.

The production tells the story with three characters. Surprisingly not Loco, Hero, and Joe, as I had surmised. (When I first heard the title I thought the show would be a comedy set in the Old West.) The cast was comprised of a young woman with an interest in history (played by Jina Anika) who took notes while talking to a lady who was a little girl in Joe's time (played by Sue Sparlin) and Joe himself (played...

September 13th, 2015 · By Kit Martens

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The Sama Kutra - One Lucky Cantaloupe

It's not often that I find myself sexually titillated by clowns.

The Sama Kutra was one such occasion. And as I go over this colourful and electric performance in my mind, it's clear that there was more motivating it than mere shock value.

A needle swings ever more wildly between silly and sexy as a clowny couple (Sizzle played by Jacqueline Russell and Spark played by Jed Tomlinson) try to revive their crumbling relationship with the help of the eponymous magical erotic book. The makeup, the humorous acting, and the wild props all combine to create a layer of separation...