REVIEW: Brilliant play for short attention spans …
With Caryl Churchill’s Love and Information, MacEwan University’s Theatre Arts program introduces a new stage to Edmonton – the Theatre Lab in the impressive new Allard Hall. The play runs until Feb. 10. The new black box, 150-seat space is just what a theatre school needs – an area flexible enough to accommodate productions of […]
Sweet seedy dreams in Slumberland Motel
C.M. Zuby’s set design for the world premiere of Shadow Theatre’s comedy-drama Slumberland Motel drops us down in every seedy motel room you’ve ever seen – shabby tiles on the floor, plastic lampshades, chintzy clown posters on the wall. You can practically smell the sour stench of cheap beer in the air. Into this bereft […]
Corb Lund and Ian Tyson: The Last cowboys
There was an edge of sadness to Saturday night’s Corb Lund-Ian Tyson collaboration at the Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton – a sense of that the cowboy lifestyle they sing so passionately about is going away forever. “Our good times are all gone” goes the line in Four Strong Winds – which ended the concert (as […]
Colin MacLean: Best theatre of 2017
This was the year of Kate Ryan – she probably sprang from her show-biz mother’s loins singing show tunes and grew up as a child of the theatre. She’s the artistic director of the Plain Jane Theatre Company, and this year branched out in a series of outstanding productions. The spring began with Ah, Romance […]
Mayfield’s ‘80s sequel a riot of gnarly fun
The 1980s decade was not the best of times. Following just after the cultural explosion of the ‘60s, it brought us bad hair, gay bashing, Margaret Thatcher and AIDS. But after the astonishing success of the musical revue Back to the ’80s in 2015, the Mayfield Dinner Theatre has deemed to go back to the […]
The Jesus and Mary Chain strangely Canadian
Maybe we were wiping away our tears after burying Gord Downie. Or maybe we’re still rolling our eyeballs over cowering in the shadow of Trump as NAFTA negotiations evaporate. Or maybe we’re just resigned to a fate of frozen sphincters on those ice floes that millennials threaten will make for a fitting farewell to those […]
Constellations a moving multiverse rom-com
The multiverse is a scientific theory that suggests the possibility of not just one universe – but many. They all exist at the same time. So if you’re reading a review about a play at this moment – in another universe you are running a marathon, or lying on a beach in Bali. These universes […]
REVIEW: Lilies bloom in gay opera
The list of successful Canadian operas is a short one indeed. It is a pleasure then to note the emergence of Les Feluettes (Lilies), a full-length, fleshed-out Canadian production in the grand opera tradition, a work that shows all the signs of becoming a major hit. This superlative production by Edmonton Opera at the Jubilee […]
REVIEW: alt-j weirdest band in the universe
If there is such a thing as being the exact opposite of “radio friendly,” the band alt-j would win the prize. Thank God! Radio is getting too friendly as it is. This trio of British nerds have decided to take the rock ‘n’ roll rule book, throw it out the window and reinvent the art […]
Arcade Fire meekly mesmerizes millennials
They came, they saw, they conked the much-despised Boomer generation on their collective noggins with the ferocity of a barbed-wired baseball bat on a hapless Walking Dead captive. OK, the jury’s still out on that third assessment, but it was all to the delight of the devout 10,000 or so hipsters at a pilgrimage showcasing […]
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 […]
REVIEW: Lemoine remount a dark delight
Stewart Lemoine has long been a champion of new talent. Not one to write throwaway material at developing performers, the local playwright-director always brings his full canon of talent to bear on his embryo performers, whether writing for the Citadel, Grant MacEwan or local stage-struck lawyers looking for a new play in which to perform. […]
