Victoria: The words “marionettes”, “rape” and “substance abuse” in the program description of Collette Suspended set up what could be an hour of perverse, torturous performing. Bizarre puppet orgies . . . dolls with crass mouths and needles in their arms… definitely a clown or two. One could be lead to expect the worst in terms of disconcerting, disturbing theatre.
Victoria: First off, if you want to see a cockroach, a cat, an ant, a hoard of crickets, an army of insects and a dancing, prancing tabby cat with nine lives with different toms, all acted by a scruffy guy in a white-polka dot green shirt, you should go to this show. Second, who really doesn’t want to see a show about a cockroach? The concept is creative genius at its best.
Victoria: Abridging Macbeth down to just over an hour is a feat in itself, but Maria Lakes distills Shakespeare’s great tragedy down to its most potent parts. Lakes abandons Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (Serge Saika and Lakes herself, respectively) to a blank and lonely stage for their love to boil and their sanity to dwindle. The results both haunt and astonish- often in the same scene.
Victoria: Opening night for Full Blast drew in only a modest crowd (though something lured in Atomic Vaudeville’s Morgan Cranny), but the premise seemed promising. It seemed like something madcap and fun! A real spectacle!
Victoria: Need a way to get hot for the Fringe? Just head on down to the Metro Studio where four sexy performers will weave a musical tale of love, sex, shattered illusions and coming up short in this 75-minute show.
Watching From Grandma’s Attic, I wanted to feel nostalgic, as it's not only in old age that we look back on our lives. Barbara Eadie plays Bea, an elderly woman who reminisces and connects with her memories through song.
Victoria: This is a Howling Cow Theatre two-hander, a 60-minute quickie evisceration of William Shakespeare's original script adapted by Maria Lakes. The actors have many exits and no moments. There's more blackouts than bloodshed. Offstage killings sound like someone taking a shit. One actor, passionate as an empty chair, speaks with stones in her mouth. The other mumbles "I shall be king" as if hesitating to order bacon n' eggs for breakfast. He wears enough harness around his neck to hang himself several times. "All is had. All is spent." Pity it takes an hour before they're dead because the...
Vancouver: Director Rachel Ditor’s All’s Well that Ends Well at Bard on the Beach has lots to recommend it, including well-thought-out set and costume design, good timing, and accomplished acting. But what most struck me about this production is its cheerfulness. Although the play begins in mourning and ends with a possible repetition of the same mistake that put its plot into gear in the first place, Ditor has cut and spliced Shakespeare’s play to produce a lean, sweet comedy. Lois Anderson’s appealing Helena, both wholeheartedly loving and pleasantly self-aware, becomes the heart of the play, lively and warm,...
Lois Anderson, Craig Erickson and Celine Stubel and some bed trickery
Victoria: Ella Fitzgerald’s voice crackles the title song through the speakers, and immediately we are warm and think of home. But home is far from where we are taken. We are imprisoned, in Lebanon, perhaps underground, perhaps forgotten.
Victoria: On its opening night, technical glitches got the better of this dark Russian Folktale featuring the Tsar’s son Ivan, the Great Grey Wolf and a rather peculiar narrator. In a tale about choices Ken Lang, who wrote the show as well as plays the role of narrator and the wolf, leads us through the Ivan’s bleak journey towards his “happily ever after.”
