MUSIC PREVIEW: From one Sloan to another
Here’s a tonsorial shocker: One of the guys in Sloan – Patrick Pentland – has gone full-on Greg Keelor. The guitarist’s suddenly hairy visage contrasts sharply with the rest of the guys (Chris Murphy, Jay Ferguson and Andrew Scott), and with the image of the freshly-scrubbed college pop-sters they used to be when they released […]
PLAYBILL: Can’t go wrong with Elvis
One of the things the Mayfield Dinner Theatre does very well is the dependable “jukebox musical.” This is due mainly to artistic director Van Wilmott – a hardcore music and gear geek, songwriter, performer, arranger and producer who’s been active in Edmonton’s music scene for at least 40 years, many of them working hard at […]
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 […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Attack on Sonic Titan
The Starlite Room’s Temple venue plays host to one of the nation’s most compelling musical projects on Thursday night. Yamantaka // Sonic Titan is an experimental-progressive music and art collective originating in Montreal. They started getting a lot of attention in 2012 with a number of festival appearances and their debut full-length titled YT//ST, which […]
WHO NAMED THE BAND: Scenic Route to Alaska beautiful and mysterious
With their abundant talent, deep Alberta roots, strong work ethic and a career on the rise, Scenic Route to Alaska is the perfect subject for Who Named the Band – an ongoing series of essays in which much more than just the unusual or ridiculous band name is examined. Scenic Route to Alaska plays the […]
PLAYBILL: Women rule Edmonton theatre
The only thing that’s missing from the new interactive murder mystery at the Citadel Theatre is the murder. Spoiler: It’s not a real murder. Also missing is any notion that the improvisational crime thriller Undercover (A Spontaneous Theatre Creation) is going to be your usual audience-interactive murder mystery – because in the hands of the […]
REVIEW: Ministry shoots easy targets
Al Jourgensen is “tired of it” – a sentiment emphasized on the song of the same name taken from AmeriKKKant, the latest album by Ministry, the industrial band he’s led on and off since 1981. But you never would have known it when the seven-piece leftist congregation entertained a rabid following of some 900 strong, […]
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 […]
