Sister Act fills Mayfield pews with wimple-ful whopper of soul and comedy
The musical Sister Act is no Come From Away – but it is the kind of durable example of song and dance entertainment that Broadway is famous for. The musical is taken from the smash 1992 Whoopi Goldberg movie with songs added by Alan Menken (Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, etc.), lyrics by […]
FUN HOME A DARK HOME: Local cast shines in Varscona musical
“You can’t go home again,” said author Thomas Wolfe. Perhaps you can physically go back – but the old Regent Theatre where you first saw Casablanca and Robin Hood is now a strip mall. You can’t build forts any more in Brown’s Fields out back – they don’t exist. And memories of Mom and Dad […]
MUSIC: Bubbly Buble recipe: 2 shots of happy, 1 shot of sad, 1 shot of Frank
It was the goddamned media that anointed Michael Buble “the new Frank Sinatra” – followed shortly by media pronouncements that “Buble ain’t no Sinatra!” This is true! As far as we know, Buble has never threatened chin music on some crummy mook who fucked the deck, never called a female journalist a “ring-a-ding broad!” And […]
Fleetwood Mac postpones again
Nearly a year after it was first announced, the Fleetwood Mac show in Edmonton this weekend has been postponed – again. Stevie Nicks is still recovering from the flu, a press release reads, so the Saturday, April 13 show in Rogers Place has been cancelled, along with five other dates, which will now moved to […]
REVIEW: Mad Mad Mad Mad World at the Citadel!
“We are all walk-ons in other people’s lives,” British playwright Alan Ayckbourn once said. It sounds really wacky – the Citadel is presenting a theatrical concept that boggles the mind. It’s two interconnected full-length plays that add up to one comedy. The two run at the same time in two different theatres with different audiences, […]
LIVE LEAK: Folk fest reveals Hozier, Ani DiFranco, Blue Rodeo ahead of official announce
Back in the day, the most famous headliners at the Edmonton Folk Festival would be leaked long before the official annual announcement was made at the end of May. Exciting news just doesn’t keep! This year, the folk fest itself has decided to leak some names before anyone else can – including Hozier, and Ani […]
Ozzy postpones 2019 tour – but ‘I will be back!’
Heavy metal fans were almost expecting this – Ozzy Osbourne has been forced to postpone all his shows this year, including Edmonton in July. He’d come down with pneumonia earlier this year, which resulted in cancellations of dates in Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. He was recovering at home in Los Angeles […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Is Erin Costelo’s new album named after a candy bar?
Nova Scotia soul-Americana Erin Costelo shows a soaring energy and a steadfast resolve in her work, as she pushes back against the world, and sometimes even the industry that seems to want to fight against her. She plays Thursday, April 4 at The Almanac on the back of her second full-length, Sweet Marie, recorded in […]
TRUE TALES THE ROAD: Edmonton metal band rocks India
“I don’t think it’s advertised that there’s a giant heavy metal fan base in India,” says John Simon Fallon, guitarist for The Order of Chaos, “but certainly the response we got was overwhelming. There was one concert with 15,000 people and every single one of them was going insane over us. I guess you could […]
CHAOS brings Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, more much metal to Edmonton
If it wasn’t the Summer of Metal in Edmonton already what with Ozzy, Maiden and Priest on their way, the Chaos Alberta festival will put it over the top. Alberta’s newest rock festival, taking place July 26-27 at Kinsmen Park, features two titans of modern metal: Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson. Slayer will be playing […]
Slight of Mind takes flight of fancy at the Citadel – just not in a theatre
A couple of years back when current Artistic Director Daryl Cloran first arrived at the Citadel, he kept getting lost. Joe Shoctor’s big brick playhouse had empty rooms, long hallways and all sorts of dark nooks and crannies. Never one to let a theatrical idea go to waste, Cloran searched for a vehicle that would […]
REVIEW: 19 Weeks tackles real life abortion dilemma in devastating detail
In 2016, Australian playwright Emily Steel wrote a raw, highly emotional, intensely personal play that she felt would end her career. At one time, she thought that women who had “late” abortions weren’t very smart or responsible – yet here she was, pregnant for 19 weeks, putting on a hospital gown and having an IV […]
