While I love Shakespeare, I’m not always comfortable with the unquestioning adulation that he’s accorded in our culture. I don’t for a minute buy the argument that somehow he created modern consciousness (as Harold Bloom contends). Nor do I believe that every word he wrote is somehow sacred. So many people (mostly academics) spend so much time trying to get to the definitive Shakespeare text, yet it’s an impossible task and virtually a fool’s errand. In part because of the forms of transmission we have for his texts are so unreliable (whether it was people frantically copying them down during...
What do you mean they don't have chemistry, Andrew? John Murphy and Jennifer Lines back into love at Bard.
Last week I was asked to review the world premier of Herr Beckmann’s People by Sally Stubbs, produced by Touchstone Theatre. It was the second week of its run and I felt it behooved PLANK for me to not just repeat what had already been made known in other reviews. Taking a look at some of the other reviews I mused about a ‘cut & paste’ job that would include the compliments and criticisms identified by each so I could meet my overnight deadline. Then I read our own interview with Ms Stubbs and realized such glibness...
Most of us know the bare bones of the tale of Madama Butterfly: American Naval Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton takes a Nagasaki bride, one Miss-soon-to-be-Madama Butterfly (also known as Cio-Cio-San). Their Japanese marriage becomes the centre of the fifteen-year-old ex-geisha's existence, while to Pinkerton it is merely an exotic interlude, a kind of delirious mock-up of the real thing, which can only exist in the West – someday in the future-West, when he has finished sewing his wild oats. Pinkerton eventually abandons Butterfly, returning to Nagasaki three years later with a “real” American wife,...
Fenulla Jiwani’s trite comedy 30 Dates, currently at Canadian Stage in a Fenstar Production, follows Priti (played by Jiwani) through one brutal year of ambitious dating. It’s been called My Big Fat Greek Wedding meets Sex and the City. Sure, it’s about the hope, humiliation and heartbreak of searching for love. The difference is, My Big Fat Greek Wedding is funny. And Sex and the City has SJP.
What a great concept for a play. Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument maker who, according to Wikipedia, “was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit (43-tone) just intonation”.
Linda Quibell looking for the boy; photo: Chris Randle
The UNO festival, by it's very nature, has its limitations; there are only two venues, and no production has more than three shows. Some shows deserve both a larger venue, and a longer run, if only to accommodate the number of people who want to see them.
In his review in the Georgia Straight, Colin Thomas describes Deborah Williams, who plays Becky in Becky’s New Car (on now at the Arts Club), as “so perfect for the role—she brings such warmth and comedic skill to it—that it feels like the part could have been written for her”. Thomas is bang on. I can’t imagine what this show would have been without Williams.
Thank God for Deborah Williams as Shirley...we mean Becky
One of the best things about both the UNO Fest (currently on at the moment) and the Victoria Fringe Festival is that it allows room for both the seasoned pros, and the up-and-comers.
