Going To St. Ives a powerful conversation
Lee Blessing is an American playwright who specializes in minimalist works with small casts that encompass such universal problems as guilt, moral responsibility, personal ethics and political attitudes. If you remember his Citadel hit from a few years ago, A Walk in the Woods, he does so in a fluid, thoughtful way that renders the […]
SLUT: Let’s talk about sex
Northern Light Theatre artistic director Trevor Schmidt announced his 2017-2018 season as three plays that explore women’s identities with regards to sexuality, religion and the Christian morality of the societies in which they had been raised. “The Virgin, the Whore and Something in Between,” was his tongue-in-cheek subtitle. The Virgin was the ultimate unspotted female, […]
Undercover best game of Clue ever
The detective story is one of the most durable of genres. The first one was Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. Since then Sherlock survives, Agatha Christie has become a cottage industry and the world-weary Sam Spade continues to stalk the modern shamus. The latest to (metaphorically) don Bogart’s old […]
The School for Scandal shockingly relevant today
The School for Scandal was written by Richard Brindsley Sheridan in 1777. As a piece of satire about Georgian-era social intrigues, it has proven to have remarkable durability and has spoken to successive generations of theatregoers about their own times. It not only probes some of society’s more outrageous and viperous self-aggrandizers, it does so […]
City of Angels a cynical work for young MacEwan cast
City of Angels is one of those Broadway shows that bubbles along just below the surface of the great ones. Sure, it’s no Sound of Music but it is a solid, ingenious and entertaining evening. First produced in 1989, the book by Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H*, Tootsie) is a witty satire on Hollywood, a spoof with […]
Emotional Poison lets the healing begin
A man and a woman sit in a bleak room under an unforgiving white light. Rain falls incessantly and thunder beats a distant tattoo. Their halting conversation begins painfully as they attempt to overcome the emotional residue of a relationship that ended a long time ago. The two are in a holding room in the […]
New Cat Walsh play full of dead ends and detours
Edmonton Playwright Cat Walsh writes in a Ray Bradbury-ish style of sci-fi: horror, creatures and the end of the world. She’s no horrormeister looking for a cheap scare, but fills her unsettling works in an ever growing suspense-filled environment acted upon by threatening exterior forces. She is more Hitchcock then George A. Romero. You may […]
Outside Mullingar charming Irish blarney
John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright equally at home in whimsy – the Oscar-winning Moonstruck – or serious drama – the Tony-winning Doubt. In his new play Outside Mullingar, currently in production from Edmonton’s Shadow Theatre at the Varscona Theatre until March 25, he descends deep into Martin McDonagh’s patented Irish territory to attempt […]
Children of God an intensely powerful experience
The Citadel Theatre’s production of Corey Payette’s new work, Children of God, is the most unusual musical you’ve ever seen. It is a noble and surprisingly successful, an effort at marrying two of theatre’s most widely divergent aspects – the musical and a social drama so raw that it has traumatized an entire country. It […]
Mamma Mia! How can I resist you?
It would appear that we can’t get enough of Mamma Mia! Large theatrical productions of the show have played the Jube at least three times now. For a while, before Beauty and the Beast and The Greatest Showman came along, the movie was the biggest grossing musical film of all time. And, bets the Citadel […]
Laugh, cringe and think: Metis Mutt a triumph over racism
“My name is Sheldon Elter and I’ll be your native comedian for the night” – and thus the Edmonton-based actor-musician-comic (and a whole pile of other talents) launches into Metis Mutt, his semi-autobiographical one-man show at Theatre Network until March 4. Be prepared to be immediately outraged. We live in an age where various ethnic […]
REVIEW: Janes stage another successful rescue musical
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a daunting musical for even so fruitful a production company as Plain Jane Theatre. The play started life as a 1988 Pedro Almodovar film – the Spanish director’s first successful international hit. Now regarded as a classic, its track record as a stage musical has been […]
