Let me say preface this review by saying that I saw Legoland three times, and still believe that it’s one of the best pieces of whimsical theatre we’ve seen nationally in recent years. The pressure for Atomic Vaudeville’s latest Ride the Cyclone to at least live up to its predecessor was huge.
In word! sound! powah!, the third installment in monodramatist d’bi.young.anitafrika’s incredible matrilineal saga that started with the Dora award-winning blood.claat, anitafrika offers a distinctly different perspective.
The gods of the chick flick, or whatever its stage equivalent may be, have smiled on Nora Ephron once again. She teamed up with fellow writer of many mediums, Delia Ephron, to create a five-woman stage show that has audiences laughing to their hearts’ content. The actors sit behind music stands, literally reading the stories of their lives. The stories represent all women’s lives, so an audience full of women on the night I attended welcomed them with open arms.
Mary Walsh, left, Louise Pitre, Andrea Martin, Paula Brancati and Sharron Matthews in Love, Loss, and What I Wore
"Tiny Replicas” succeeds in taking gender issues out of the politically correct minefield they usually inhabit and gives them room to live and breathe in a fresh, funny romp that doesn't sacrifice substance for style.
This is theatre at its best, full of urgent physicality, humour and heart. You'll laugh. You may not cry, but you'll certainly feel stirrings in your chest cavity.
Simon and Ethan Want a baby. Simon is 30 and ready for the responsibility. His slightly younger partner Ethan says he is too. Combining Simon's lesbian friend's aspirated egg, his sperm and Ethan's hetero friend's womb, they...
They’re going to revoke my membership of the Cynics Society of Canada for the following statement but what the hell: I loved The Lion King. There, I said it, it’s out there. Let the chair of the membership committee come after me. Let other CSC members cross the street when they see me coming.
Fairy Tale Ending Although this show from Role Your Own Theatre is part of the Fringe Kids programming, they have obviously not sacrificed quality or attention to detail just because their youthful target audience are perhaps not as discriminating as more experienced theatre-goers. In fact there is a real maturity to this piece about Jill, a girl whose favourite fairy tales’ endings have suddenly been turned on their heads; unlike many kids shows which end neatly and toothlessly or with a simplistic moral statement, Fairy Tale Ending rests on a far more complex and profound note than...
Jack Frost folk are left to right: Aaron Knight (Diktak Montag), Jackie Pijper (Trudy Montag), Michael Balazo (Jack Frost), Kathleen Phillips (Mayor)
Powerpoint-utilizing autobiographical storyteller extraordinaire Barry Smith is back with a show that is billed as being about his habit of keeping every record, photo, and scrap of personal information that passes through his life, but is more accurately about his colourful youth spent growing up in backwater Mississippi and southern California.
This latest offering from under-recognized writer/director Maya Rabinovitch is yet another fantastic example of how ensemble casts can be used to great effect, but does lack some of the narrative elegance of her previous works.
Double Double: From left: Erin Fleck, Claire Acott, Daniel Sadavoy, Kate Kudelka, Jaclyn Zaltz, Matthew Eger, Shannon Currie, Perrie Olthuis Photo by Dan Epstein
This award-winning comedy about three neurotic tenants living in a New York apartment building, their never-seen mutual friend Larry, and a seemingly impossible love triangle is a must see for writers of any ilk. The script from Vancouver-born playwright Melissa James Gibson (produced here by Theatre Best/Before) is precise, linguistically rich, and contains some truly phenomenal one-liners.
Alison Lynne Ward delivers an honest, funny one-woman show in ¼ Life Crisis. It’s a lively monologue about the struggles of being twenty-something, single and an artist with too many degrees and no career worth mentioning. The show is revealing, relatable and had the audience falling out of their chairs with laughter. The disappointment was the ending, which was a sadly cliché.
