I’ve been struggling to make full sentences of this review, the performance was so image-heavy. So I thought I’d start out with some images:
Rolling sky, luscious mountains, fog and mist and forests green, lovers through the landscape running, clowns and antics in their dream.
Now that I have that out of my system...
Vancouver Opera’s Magic Flute is a vivid spectacle. Images projected on a layered scrim swirl and crescendo with the overture, stirring up my emotions then stilling down into a forest or quiet ocean backdrop. The set is truly beautiful and...
The 2013 Alcan Award winner is Theatre Conspiracy. Their newest show, Extraction, is a bilingual documentary-style theatrical experiment that explores the connections between China and Canada in both Mandarin and English. Inspired by the real life experiences of two men and one woman, Extraction offers interesting viewpoints but little depth.
In Extraction, the show creators are exploring some powerful ideas about Canada and China, about tar sands and their environmental impact, about the individual lives of those who toil in resource extraction and those of us who are merely affected by this work. They query the audience repeatedly through...
Extraction featuring Jimmy Mitchell, Sunny Sun and Jason Wilson (photo credit Tim Matheson)
The director's notes for Pi Theatre's Terminus include descriptions such as “classic storytelling. It's an explosive yarn full of chill, spills and a few dark laughs”. . . “surreal, violent tales with an urban focus.”
I'm really not sure I can provide a more accurate description than that.
Mark O'Rowe's Terminus is beautifully written. Its poetic, aggressive style is an effective blend of the mundane and the surreal. Poetic language is always a challenge, but all three actors attacked the text with gusto and the woven monologues kept my rapt attention for the full 115 minutes. John Emmet Tracy was...
Holmes and Watson Save the Empire is a musical farce produced by First Impressions Theatre running in North Vancouver until March 16th. The writers Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner flew in from Oregon to direct the Canadian premiere of their script.
As advertised this is a genre piece, not for seriously intellectual Sherlock Holmes fans. The script is peppered with contemporary word play and the characters indulge in much pomp and silliness. The musical accompaniment is similarly tongue-in-cheek and for the most part the plot progresses with a light-hearted, energetic pace that will keep your feet tapping. The script was fun, but some of the refrains and dialogue became...
Damon Calderwood , Gordon Roberts in Holmes & Watson, photographer Ryan Crocker
Haunted by Daniel Karasik is the winning script from the 2011 Canadian Jewish Playwriting competition. I loved the writing. The dialogue is witty and natural, and the characters are fleshed out and interesting. The subject matter felt a little stretched, not in the believability of the circumstances, but that they invoked such conflict. The play revolves around the way grief affects a mother and a daughter, their relationship and their relationships with others....
Kerry Sandomirsky, Patrick Sabongui, Photographer: Tim Matheson
“Why are you laughing?” Inside the framework of an educational character study, Tim Crouch's I, Malvolio presents a heart-rending portrait of the nature of bullying. Gently confrontational, Crouch asks his audience to look at the relationship between laughter and cruelty and, I hope, sympathy.
Malvolio is the perfect character to tell this story and a perfect opportunity to open up a dialogue not only about Twelfth Night but about contemporary schoolyard issues. Crouch does not preach or presume to force any opinions on his audience, but he does ask a lot of questions, which is exactly what theatre should do....
“If King Lear had understood differential equations, he would have proceeded differently.” Not to give you the impression that Testament is a light analysis of King Lear that doesn't take itself seriously. The actors in She She Pop and their fathers open up a frank discussion about familial obligation, the nature of love and the fear of growing old. It gets really personal. It gets really uncomfortable. And it gets really beautiful.
I really don't want to go too much into the content of the piece, it's better if you discover it for yourself and everything...
taken from website http://www.sheshepop.de/produktionen/testament.html
Coming soon to a theatre near you - a new Canadian musical about six teenagers killed in a roller coaster tragedy in small-town Saskatchewan! Atomic Vaudeville brings a revamped version of Ride The Cyclone to the Arts Club Granville Island Stage under the auspices of the PuSh Festival. It's the second stop on a major Western Canadian tour from Calgary to Vancouver to Edmonton to Winnipeg to Saskatoon to Nanaimo. Not too shabby for a recent group of mostly UVIC grads led by Jacob Richmond (writer/director/music/lyrics), Britt Small (director), Brooke Maxwell (music/lyrics/music director) and Treena Stubel (choreography/staging).
Photog: An Imaginary Look at the Uncompromising Life of Thomas Smith is an ambitious, experimental work combining video, verbatim text and physical theatre to tell the story of a life in conflict photography. The script is developed from a number of verbatim interviews with award-winning war photographers and journalists, and incorporates images from their work.
The lights go down and Madonna's iconic Like a Prayer blasts over the speakers. Salvatore Antonio, in impeccable Madonna-inspired makeup screams out, “Get interpretive, bitches!” and the audience is on their feet; we obey his orders. At this point, we're about half-way through Truth/Dare, a tribute to the iconic documentary of Madonna's 1990-91 tour, and everyone is having a blast, lovingly milking the camp for all it's worth. I don't even like Madonna, so it took me half a song to realize that yes, I do in fact know the words to Papa Don't Preach, and oh hey, yeah Madonna...
Truth / Dare - check it out if you are that brave!
