Imagine Dragons breathes fire at Rogers Place
“We will never be stopped!” Take heed of the inspirational rallying cry from the Las Vegas band Imagine Dragons in the wake of the horrific mass shooting in their hometown. The show must go on. They pretty much had to bring it up during their concert at Rogers Place on Tuesday night, especially seeing as […]
PLAYBILL: I Am Because You Are
Never let it be said that the Citadel Theatre is an ivory tower that never takes chances. Those two “nevers” just cancel each other right out in the hands of their bold new artistic director Daryl Cloran. In the second play of his first Citadel season in Edmonton, he has wrangled an ambitious new play […]
PLAYBILL: Fortuitous Endings just the beginning
You know that point near the end of a relationship when you start lying to your friends? Ha, ha! Yeah, we always yell at each other like that. Everything is JUST FINE. It can get a bit awkward. The title of the season opener for the provocatively-named local “Toy Guns Dance Theatre” is too long […]
REVIEW: Working for The Weeknd
A lot of batteries were drained at the Weeknd concert in Edmonton on Monday night. That’s because there were so many slow songs. It was like rich cannabis syrup in there. Great singers like Abel Tesfaye are suckers for ballads – which always demand a tribute of light from fans. In the old days people […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Not the worst band in the world
Make no mistake: Nickelback has been bullied. They are victims of bullies. You should all be ashamed of yourselves! What did they do to deserve such treatment? All they did was create bland, massively popular rock hits that made millions of dollars by catering to the lowest common denominator, by sounding like catchy pop-country hits […]
REVIEW: All hail Coldplay
Coldplay gave everybody a free LED wristband, so the audience could become a spectacular part of the light show at Rogers Place on Tuesday night – and then they blew off the confetti cannons in the first song. Usually that comes at the end. It figures. Coldplay has always set the bar high for themselves. […]
PLAYBILL: Shockers Delight! revives, renews
When you’ve written dozens of plays over 35 years like Stewart Lemoine, you’re entitled to a few reruns – but, like Star Trek, occasionally you want to get some fresh faces into the story. Shocker’s Delight! was a hit when it was first produced in 1993, and will now enjoy its third remounting at the […]
Remand Centre haunts Edmonton singer
Going back to the decrepit, ugly, shut-down old Edmonton Remand Centre for a recent film shoot was an emotionally wrenching experience for Stephanie Harpe – because the local singer and actor was there as a prisoner in the past, “before I got sober,” she says. Harpe tells her story openly, “I was in and out […]
PLAYBILL: The Hills are ALIVE! Aieeee!
If you didn’t know what comes after “The hills are alive …,” you might get the wrong idea and think you’re at a horror movie. What aforementioned sentient buttes are alive with is of course the title of one of the most famous musicals of all time, The Sound of Music – the Broadway Across […]
Protest erupts at BreakOut West
It’s interesting to reflect on the slow and steady increase of how often and in how many ways musicians have been convinced to perform for free – for “exposure.” On the flip side, shouldn’t they be free to do so? The music business is a different beast than it used to be. So here we […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Kaleido scope astounding
What the Fringe is for theatre, the Kaleido Family Arts Festival is for the Edmonton music scene. For there’s a blithering bonanza of live music descending on the Alberta Avenue community this weekend. A not-so-quick count reveals more than 180 different gigs in almost every genre in 14 different venues, indoors and out, alleyways, patios, […]
PLAYBILL: From tragedy comes comedy
It turns out that Taylor Swift isn’t the first person in the history of the world to create art inspired by heartbreak. About 500-something years ago, a British playwright named Will Shakespeare had a torrid love affair with someone else’s fiancé – and as one might expect, it ended badly. But then he finished Romeo […]
