MUSICAL REVUE: Plain Jane’s Reign Falls Mainly on the Refrain
We owe a debt to Plain Jane Theatre’s Artistic Director Kate Ryan. Who knew it? While Curley was out there singing Oh, What a Beautiful Morning in Oklahoma – waiting in his hovel was a guy called Judd who was going to sing Poor Judd is Daid. While Robert Weede was warbling The Most Happy […]
REVIEW: Colin MacLean Loves As You Like It, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!
At first it seems rather absurd: a mashup of Shakespeare and the Beatles. But let’s look at this: Shakespeare is the English language’s greatest dramatist, and the Beatles is the most popular band in music history. The two share a romantic sensibility. Upon closer examination the free-spirited music of the Beatles begins in the exuberance […]
LISTEN HERE: Rocking On Mental Health
Lazy bum, good-for-nothing, failure, lacks motivation, can’t even be bothered to get out of bed … these are just some of the invalidations hurled at grown men struggling with mental health. Most come from themselves. It’s quite the pickle. Men are supposed to be strong, it may be hard-wired, and some have trouble getting in […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Tanya Tagaq to Perform New Music With ESO
Tanya Tagaq, the eminently lauded composer and throat singer, is in town this weekend performing a pair of shows with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. The featured work is her newest and epic effort Qiksaaktuq. Translated as “grief,” it is an emotion-laden and driven work paying testament to the lives of missing and murdered Indigenous women. […]
Rage Against the Machine is ENTITLED – to Charge a Lot for Concert Tickets
There’s been a lot of raging against Rage Against the Machine lately because tickets to their May 3 show at Rogers Place are so expensive. The cheapest seats were $170. Note tense. They’re all gone now. The nerve! Now quit complaining because it’s as simple as this: You stole their music from the Internet – […]
LISTEN HERE: Derina Harvey Pining for the Fjords
Do they even have fjords in Labrador? No matter. This rugged, wild, unspoiled slab of Canadian shield is topped by amazing Northern Lights in the winter, according to Derina Harvey, who was born and raised in Wabush, Labrador, pop. 1,906. She hasn’t been back there since the moving to Edmonton 18 years ago, to forge […]
REVIEW: Big Stage Musical Offers Insight Into Serious Teen Struggles
Dear Evan Hansen arrives at the Jubilee Auditorium trailing a tsunami of audience love, a sheaf of great reviews and six Tony Awards – and it’s a musical that deals with mental health. It runs through Feb. 16. Totally contemporary, it’s the story of Evan (Stephen Christopher Anthony), an anti-social, awkward and painfully shy 17-year-old […]
Studio Theatre’s Dog Tale Shows Shakespeare’s Human Side
William Shakespeare used dogs as a metaphor over 200 hundred times in his plays – but there is only one role for an actual dog. It’s Crab, which makes a brief appearance in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and is described by his clownish owner Launce as “the sourest-natured dog that lives.” So it was […]
