When I was growing up, my first experience with death was the death of Heidi, my guinea pig. She was killed by my lop-eared rabbit, Brownie. Of course, this wasn't a planned "hit" or anything. When we were home, we let them wander around the house and they always got along. They even ignored each other. What I gathered from my mother was she had startled Brownie and the rabbit jumped up on top of Heidi's cage.
“Oooooee” I think as Collette Kendall opens her piece at Performance Works late on Thursday night. She holds a large dildo and proceeds to indulge in cock facts and cock stories.
Collette Kendall shocked by learning what a cock looks like
I don't want to say this play was terrible but I can't say it was good either. I can sum up this production in one sentence: Did I just about sleep through a girl fucking a rock on stage? I uttered this sentence to the person next to me and they smiled back with a "why the hell am I here?" kind of smile and and whispered: "Yes, Shane. Yes you did."
Biographies of the Dead and Dying is a captivating play that clutched me from the opening music until the unpredictable ending. The writer, Andrew Templeton, presents us with a perspective on death. The female lead, played by Heather Lindsay, twists her way through her neurotic need to write and find material while blocked by her own inability to live in the present reality.
As I recall, the first show of last year’s Fringe was, for me, The Spy by Jonno Katz, it started the festival off with a BANG! This year I was happy to repeat the feat with his latest offering The Accident…*whimper*
Vancouver: I will be the first to admit that I was not expecting too much when I walked into Origins Coffee House to see The Hefner Monologues. John Hefner, the self-proclaimed estranged second cousin to the notorious Hugh Hefner, has written his one man show in the hopes of “writing his own Vagina Monologues”.
Vancouver: Hey, remember that guy Shakespeare? He wrote some shit and we totally jizz all over it hundreds of years later? You remember that guy? Well, playwright Steven Berkoff remembers him too and he’s created a letter-writing rendition of the troubled relationship between Hamlet and Ophelia.
Vancouver: The UBC opera ensemble (students or recent graduates of the UBC opera program) sing Mozart’s Cosí Fan Tutte - a presentation of Bard on the Beach'sOpera and Arias program - with irreverent glee. These folks know their business, and Bard’s mainstage theatre is the perfect place to see Mozart’s upbeat opera, since compared to many opera venues it is intimate, as eighteenth century theatres generally were, and the audience can connect more easily with the performers.
UBC Opera Ensemble and members of Vancouver Opera Orchestra perform "Così fan tutte" for Bard on the Beach's 2009 Opera & Arias. Photo: David Blue
