Television sets, computer screens, tangled cords and bundles of wires adorned the stage. Technology is ubiquitous - at least it was in the small theatre where The Mechanical Bride was playing.
Mechanical Bride, technology will tear us apart again
Exposure X 2 is billed as a program of two solo plays, but the first of the evening - Mrs. Sorken by Christopher Durang - serves more as an intro to Vancouver playwright Sally Stubbs' new one-woman piece Eyes.Two.
In Tow begins with writer/performer Bob Legare bursting forth from behind a curtain, portraying a thirteen year old boy who tells you all about “my little town” and the characters in it, where everything is normal and nothing happens.
After being fly-ered by a boisterous man in a banana suit the other day that was pitching his show The Banana Monologues, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into it. Usually I try to go in with an open mind and no expectations.
The Banana Monologues; sometimes a banana's just a fruit
Since the set for Balls! consists simply of a basketball hoop and a couple of backpacks containing some small props, the script for the play has to hold the weight of this show, and it does so most of the time.
An offer of two shows in one. Dylan Kilgour and Jake Spencer each perform a 50-minute piece, luring you in with "pay for one, stay the second for free."
Art is a bona fide international monster hit play. Written in the early 1990s, its impressive pedigree includes a premiere in Paris followed by runs in London, New York, Berlin, Moscow, Madrid, Lima, Hong Kong, Prague and Stuttgart.
I roared my pants off. Come on, what isn’t inherently funny about a musical based on the supposed life and times of a medieval printing press inventor?
Gutenberg! The Musical! so good she lost her pants
City of Control is a science fiction story that borrows heavily from George Orwell's 1984. Instead of Big Brother we get a sort of Big Sister - called Control - whose face appears as a giant projection against the back wall of the small theatre. (It was fantastic to see this small space in the basement of Heritage Hall on Main Street used once more).
Her emphasis on all the trappings of the “modern urban yogini” are funny and fitting: the cell phone in the breast-emphasizing yoga shirt; the desire to “do this for yourself” because by doing things for yourself, you’re actually giving to the world; and even the constant peddling of her snake-oil. The only thing missing was a to-go coffee cup.
I wanted to like this show, because I agree with the message, but Ahuja’s slap-stick mimicry of the real world did nothing new to convey it.
Ahuja’s character is going through a nervous breakdown. The more successful she becomes in the...
