PLAYBILL: We’ve CRADDOCK with you!
Chris Craddock is on a role … ooh, make that roll. You know what? It works both ways. The Edmonton actor-playwright recently made his directorial debut in what turned out to be Alan Thicke’s last starring role in a feature film, It’s Not My Fault and I Don’t Care Anyway (based on one of Craddock’s […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: John Mayer’s split personality
We all know John Mayer has a gift for writing beautiful, heartfelt pop songs to make strong men weep. That’s why he’s famous. We know that he likes to say outrageous things to reporters from time to time. That also makes him famous. Romantic involvements with women like Jessica Simpson, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift […]
PLAYBILL: Superstar rises at Mayfield
Jesus Christ Superstar is the best musical Andrew Lloyd Webber has ever made. FACT. Oh, you don’t want to argue around this time of year, when in some households the annual screening of the 1973 feature film starring dreamy Ted Neeley is as close to religion as they’re going to get all year – and […]
PLAYBILL: 9 Parts of Desire has many faces
Nine very different Iraqi women lead lives as normal as they can manage in the years between the two Gulf wars – imagined by Heather Ruffo in her discussion-provoking play 9 Parts of Desire. The playwright was inspired and disturbed by a trip to an art museum in Baghdad, and from extensive interviews with area […]
Review of the Cat Cafe: HISSSSSSSSS!
FULL DISCLAWSURE: I grew up in a cat house. The rotating clowder of strays my mother took in numbered up to 16. I’d left home by this point, and moved in with a girl who had a cat. Then we split up and she moved out, and I kept the cat until it died. Another […]
INTERVIEW: Weezer from 2 sides
Scott Shriner is the perfect man to help us understand Weezer – an enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a slowly unraveling sweater. While he’s not an original member, he’s the band’s longest serving bassist, since 2001. Shriner was a fan first: a bar band musician from Toledo, Ohio who came to Hollywood in […]
REVIEW: The Lumineers light up Edmonton
The Lumineers sure have matured since they came up with the big Ho Hey that launched their folk-popping star just five years ago. They’d have to – they’ve been working non-stop ever since. The proof was in their stomperific, strumtacular show at Rogers Place on Friday night. It was puzzling to see some 14,000 hip […]
April Fool’s Day cancelled
Because we have reached a tipping point in society where there is more fake news than real news – and not only is the fake news more popular but it often reveals more truth than real news, fiction being less strange than truth – April Fool’s Day has been cancelled by Order of the Government. […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: The Lumineers keep it lit
Now that Mumford and Sons have ditched folk, it is the sacred duty of The Lumineers to carry on the trend of funny stringed instruments, odd drums and fashionable hats in popular music. We just can’t get enough. At Rogers Place Friday night for their first proper headlining show in Edmonton, The Lumineers came to […]
PLAYBILL: A little Peter Pan in all of us
It’s worth asking why there have been so many versions and adaptations of Peter Pan. Is it because that all of us, deep down inside, in our heart of hearts, have a secret desire to fly around while wearing green tights? Or is there something deeper? Maybe it’s because Peter Pan is a magical flying […]
HISTORY: From Hawaii to hockey to Hollywood
Get ready to feel super old, People of a Certain Age: The “Super Oldies” record label has reissued the self-titled 1980 album by the Edmonton band Footloose. Meanwhile, the Wayne Gretzky statue has been uprooted from its original home at Northlands Coliseum after 28 years, and moved to the new Rogers Place arena. It’s no […]
PLAYBILL: Go Into the Woods, we dare you
There’s a weird sort of fractured hindsight at work in the musical Into the Woods. We’ve all seen it – in our bedtime stories. Written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, this award-winning musical is a willy nilly hodge podge of almost every Grimm fairy tale that has since made into an sanitized-animated feature by […]
