The Arts Club is bringing to the stage a holiday one-man show. Starring Ryan Beil as Crumpet, The Santaland Diaries offers one elf's experiences in the New York world of Macy's Santaland. And if you like your Christmas entertainment on the sarcastic side, this may just be for you.
Written by David Sedaris, The Santaland Diaries began as a radio essay read by the author on National Public Radio in 1992. An overnight sensation, it was the author's first big break and led to him continuing to share his diary entries with radio listeners monthly. The onstage version was...
Ryan Beil as the Macy's elf named Crumpet (photo by Tim Matheson)
Dickens’ Women is a one woman show (plus pianist) that explores the relationship between the women Charles Dickens knew in his life and the female characters he portrays in his novels. This potentially dry subject is brought to rambunctious life by Myriam Margolyes. Based on extensive research and including quotes from Dickens’ books and letters, Dickens’ Women also appears in book form, which you can purchase in the lobby after the show.
From the moment her mischievous face peeps around the curtain, Miriam Margolyes is captivating. She introduces the audience to a wide variety of real and fictional characters that...
Touchstone Theatre’s West Coast premiere of Anton Piatigorsky’s Eternal Hydra is a magnificent and dangerous beast, weaving a labyrinth narrative of ambition, loyalty and questionable ethics. You will need both your brain and your heart to make sense of this non-linear play, but don’t be discouraged. It is well worth unraveling!
I ended up with a seat in the back corner, stage left of the thrust and I was pleasantly surprised to feel so included in the action. This production is skillfully staged, making full use of the space and a transformational set. Every now and again blank pages would...
Andrew Wheeler (L) John Murphy (R), Photo credit: Tim Matheson
Directed by Janet Wright, Clybourne Park is the Vancouver premiere production of the award-winning play by Bruce Norris. Set in the neighbourhood of Clybourne Park in Chicago, Illinois, the play's first act happens in 1959 and the second 50 years later in 2009. The play explores the issues of race and housing through an exchange of all-too-human emotions. It's funny, it's sad, it's shocking, it's engaging and very very witty.
The story involves the history of one house in Clybourne Park. In 1959, the house is in a white neighbourhood and being sold by a white...
When I first read the flyer I thought that a life changing on the flip of a dime story would be a morose journey fueled by emotion and probably unashamedly highlighting a few taboo subjects along the way. So as I settled in for what I thought would be a less than humorous play, you can imagine my surprise when the stage erupted with the charismatic and charming Megan Phillips. Watch out - she performs a one-woman all singing all dancing upbeat and funky rendition of how a spilt second changed her life! I speak about her as if she...
Drama, Musical Theatre, Monologue, New Work - http://breakingvelocity.wordpress.com/
A young starlet, her controlling mother, a very much younger sister and a whole slew of other fame related cling ons tell the story of how when the glitter wears off it's really hard to keep reality and fiction separated.
This may sound like a story you have heard so so so many times and for all intense and purposes it is, it's Hollywood, every starlet has the peaks and troughs of fame and fortune, I bet you can name at least three off the top of your head? So why should you come and see this show?
If they are willing to do it in the rain – I’m willing to watch it in the rain. These young artists took on powerboats, reminding us that Vancouver is in a rain forest and the most dreaded of Granville Island obstacles – drunk rich people.
Made up of a combination of verse, modern lines and with a through line of the five steps to acceptance of death, Phycopomp is the story of Glauce (daughter of the king of Corinth and Jason’s second wife) who is murdered by Medea and preparing to cross the river Styx. We stand at the...
Comedy, Drama, New Work - http://www.psychetheatre.com/
Multi-multi term politician Kimberly White White (Priscilla Yakielashek) has returned to the Manitoba riding where she was first elected to give an address and share the “real story” of her rise from the daughter of a white trash criminal (“We weren’t trailer trash, trailers weren’t fast enough for Daddy. We were someone else’s Chevy trash”) to Prime Minister of Canada and ultimately the first Canadian President of the United States of North America.
It is 2084 and the countries of Canada, the United States and Mexico have created the corporate invention of the United States of North America, it only...
Created by a group of Grade 10 students from Carson Graham Secondary in North Vancouver, RIOT explores what happened on June 15, 2011, just before and after game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals. The students are remounting an award-winning show in the first week of school led by teacher Rob Walker.
Taking inspiration from the hit television show GLEE, the Grade 10 students created a play about what happened in their own community. It's exciting to see work by a large group of students (26 in the cast, 2 in the band and likely another 3-4 on the tech...
For this piece created by Liesl Lafferty, essentially a 45-minute walking tour of Granville Island (which you can take at any time between 5pm and 9pm Monday to Friday and between Noon and 9pm on weekends), you are handed a map, a small mp3 player and headphones and are guided by the new “voices inside your head” replacing the ones that are regularly in there. It is an interesting concept, one that I think might have some appeal, though perhaps not as part of a Fringe Festival.
Having spent much time here, I did find it interesting...
