OK, The 39 Steps isn’t a straight-up theatrical rendition of the classic thriller film of the same name. And that’s just fine. The play is very funny, with compelling acting and imaginative use of stagecraft to keep the audience engaged.
The play follows the trials and tribulations of Richard Hannay, a man on the run for a crime he didn’t commit. While rambling through the English countryside on the lam from Scotland Yard, he finds himself immersed in a mysterious spy plot with consequences that could affect the future of the nation. Along the...
Diana Coatsworth and Martin Happer in the Arts Club Theatre Company’s production of The 39 Steps. Photo by David Cooper.
Anyone who has had the misfortune of listening to me blabber on about playwrighting will have heard the following: theatre uses simplicity to convey complex ideas. In working through my own scripts I identify what I think of as “literary conceits” versus “theatrical moments”. By literary, I mean those ideas that are best savoured in the mind; ones that make you look up from a page and ponder for a few moments. Because of its relentless, forward movement, theatre doesn’t easily allow for these sorts of mental breaks. Any moment that puts an audience into a reflective state also pulls...
American monologist Mike Daisey is a god. Two and a half hours passed in an instant. I definitely was glad I made an effort to get out to this one night PuSh+ presentation. Kudos to Norman Armour and the PuSh Festival for bringing it to a sold-out Vancouver audience at the Vancity Theatre.
Oh my god I have to write a review! It’s 10am, the Sunday after seeing the play What You Want on Friday night at the Havana Theatre, and I still haven’t written the damn review.
Andrew, I sympathize. What to write? How to write it? The never ending torture a writer must go through.
Random notes I took while watching the play:
Entertaining, Funny, Quirky
I laughed A LOT (use another word)
Learned about a new term – ASV (Anal Sex Virgin) – can people really do that on Craigslist? Could I do that? What am I thinking?!
If you can only go to one show this festival, 52 Pick Up would be a good choice. Fifty two playing cards are thrown into the air. Each card dictates a scene that Gemma Wilcox and Sam Elmor perform in the order they are chosen, gradually revealing a romantic relationship that is complex, funny, infuriating, passionate, Mars vs. Venus typical, funny (oh, did I already say funny?, well, it’s very funny), and frighteningly familiar.
Wilcox and Elmor pull off this amazing feat of acting with extraordinary subtlety. Each scene is compelling and I was moved in every direction. I...
Playwright Andrew Templeton returned to Vancouver after a fifteen-year absence and What You Want is the almost-true story of what he got. He has written himself into the play, and the cast takes turns playing him, themselves and their characters. Actors Rachel Aberle, Gillian Bennett, Russell Bennett and Sean Tyson, ramp up the comedy when they bicker about whether they’re actually improvising or if their improvised rebellion is merely scripted dialogue. The pacing is brisk and precise and the delivery naturalistic.
On a bare stage, with just a few boxes to perch on, we’re introduced to Dave and Laura, Starling...
First of all, let us get the obvious out of the way: what the hell does "bildungsroman" mean and how do you pronounce it? With the help of Wikipedia, here is what you need to know:
The bildungsroman (German pronunciation: [?b?ld??s.?o?ma?n]; German: "formation novel") is a genre of the novel which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. Change is thus extremely important. The genre is further characterized by a number
Allan Girod has a captivating physical presence on stage. He is truly mesmerizing. I liked nothing more than watching this six-foot-nine Australian man contort himself into a child, a louche motivational speaker and an asocial perfectionist.
When Harry Met Harry introduces us to a lonely man so isolated even from himself his dreams retell the moment he was abandoned as a boy. (Hats off to the lighting design for the eerie mindscape.)
Girod’s flawless control of his long limbs transformed the stage. He built his characters on the physical movement and shape of their bodies, transforming his own to fit...
Canary is a show about two things. It is a story about a woman's journey down a yellow brick road of confusion and desperation and how the people around her try to help even when they don't know what it is they should be doing to help her. The second thing this play is about is the dangers of electromagnetic energy and how it can affect people in ways we don't fully understand. I admit that this is something I have always been interested in and I lucked out when this play was randomly chosen for me to review.
Capital, Alice!, playing at Studio 16, is a retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll. In this production, Alice is a worker in a retail store and has her adventure inside of a typical suburban mall.
The story begins, of course, with Alice. She is folding jeans in an average retail establishment, a boss type person enters, says something I didn’t quite understand, and then the character of Alice falls asleep on a pile of jeans for no discernible reason. Where was the White Rabbit or some mysterious hole in a wall for Alice to investigate? Why didn’t...
