Canoes Literally Fly at Flying Canoe Volant Festival
If you’ve noticed people doing inexplicable things with canoes this weekend, don’t worry, it’s not some kind of French-Canadian uprising: The Flying Canoe Volant is in full swing. The annual winter festival calls itself “a cultural, creative and interactive event designed to celebrate local history and the magic of a long winter night.” Wrapping up […]
THE CRUCIBLE: It’s the Greatest Witch Hunt in History!
Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a partly-fictionalized allegory based on the 1692 witch trials in colonial Salem, Massachusetts. The subject of the play is the paranoia and persecution that came out of the so-called “Witch Hunts” undertaken by the American House of Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s. They were trying to unearth Communists that […]
REVIEW: Evil Clowns Slaughter Shakespeare in Disturbing New Play
The audacious new production from Theatre Network will have you helpless with laughter – as long you don’t mind humour that is outrageous, dark and discomforting. It’s called The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Buffonius – and it’s a clown show. There are no red noses or seltzer bottles. It’s bloody, bawdy and grotesquely […]
Gender Wars Reach Fever Pitch in Hilarious Happy Birthday Baby J
Here’s a play for those of us who are endeavouring to come to grips with the increasing complexities of living in a gender-diverse society where sexuality is expressed in a very fluid and ever-changing manner. Even the lexicon of describing this rainbow-coloured world is full of traps for those who may have missed the subtleties […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Renewed Alexisonfire Rocks Edmonton
The pit was packed for Alexisonfire in Edmonton – but keep your hats to yourself! That was just one of the messages from this very accessible Canadian post-hardcore band, which played Rogers Place Wednesday night – just two months after its singer Dallas Green was in same building with City and Colour. While their initial […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Colditus Winterruption
The biggest gigs this weekend are all part of the inaugural Winterruption festival, which stretches from Thursday all the way through Sunday, with some pretty big names in some common, and some not so common, venues. Opening night – Thursday – sees Toronto’s Weaves (above) headline a monster lineup at the Starlite Room. The indie […]
LISTEN HERE: Is it worth feeling sad and sorry all the time? Yikes!
“I care a lot more about the song than I do about her.” Whoa, man. That’s a dark burn from Edmonton songwriter Scott Deshane, frontman of a band called Yikes. He’s talking about his melancholy new song Tighter – about a personal and once-painful break-up. He says he wrote song several years ago with his […]
REVIEW: Emotional Impact of Disability Probed in Pulitzer-Winning Play
Cost of Living is about society’s marginalized people isolated by poverty or disability. It features four excellent performers who fashion fully-functioning characters out of subjects that are anything but functional. The play deeply probes the problems of living with disability, and the loss and the sacrifice that entails. It minutely examines the lives of people […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Alexisonfire, not broken up after all, returns to Edmonton
There are few things that can boost a band’s popularity more than breaking up. You do the tearful farewell tour, a lot of your fans show up to see you off, you make some retirement money, and everyone’s happy. Yet still a bit sad – until of course said band gets back together again. Behold […]
REVIEW: Everybody Loves Robbie a Heartfelt Heartbreaking Musical Comedy
In the first moments of Northern Lights Theatre’s Everybody Loves Robbie, two young people are dancing up a frenzied give-her-all bubble gum roughhouse. The two are obviously lost in delirium – and each other. A few minutes later she pauses and asks plaintively, “Don’t you just love it when you’re making out and your partner […]
LISTEN HERE: Nebular Wave wipes out the dinosaurs
The trick with creating instrumental music is how to name it. Composers of yore didn’t sweat it. Beethoven got to No. 5 and named it his Fifth. Boom. Done. Ever since, instrumental nomenclature has been a struggle. Like bands themselves, music without lyrics resists being named. For the guys in the Edmonton experimental acoustic-electronic trio […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Don’t hand me no lines and keep your hands to yourself!
Best known for Keep Your Hands To Yourself, the Georgia Satellites land in Edmonton Saturday night to play a gig at the River Cree Resort & Casino. Since that hit, off the band’s 1986 eponymous release, the band has seen three of its four members move on, with only Rick Richards remaining from the roster […]
