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 […]
Catalyst Playwright’s Artistic Vision Comes to Life in Stunning Spy Thriller
Edmonton’s edgy and adventurous Catalyst Theatre has been pushing toward its new production The Invisible – Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare since its earliest beginnings. Over the years it has excelled in award-winning forays into Gothic thrillers (like Frankenstein, Hunchback, and Nevermore) and with its last production here about the Black Donnellys (based on the 19th […]
REVIEW: The Farce is Strong With Manic Mayfield Comedy
Michael Frayn’s backstage comedy Noises Off premiered in 1982 and has gone on to become the ultimate classic farce and theatrical in-joke – displaying to hilarious effect how private passions can intrude on public performance. The comedy has been around for so long that anyone who spends much time in the theatre will have endured […]
John Ullyatt Soars in Life-Affirming Theatrical Experiment at the Citadel
Every Brilliant Thing is another effort by the Citadel to pry open our concept of what theatre is. Part of the “Highwire Series” of small experimental productions, it’s a one-person show featuring Edmonton actor John Ullyatt. It runs at the Citadel’s Rice Theatre through Feb. 23. The show was originally a big hit at the […]
LISTEN HERE: The Confusionaires Put Bourbon Into Friend Zone
On first rush, The Confusionaires’ new song Sour Mash comes off like a celebration of whiskey. Man, these rockabilly guys sure like to drink. But no, there’s a twist (of lime): The whole song turns out to be an anthem for moderation, using “Sour Mash” – a type of bourbon perhaps best known in the […]
Mile Zero Dance Goes Punk in SNFU Tribute Show
To mash together punk rock with modern dance seems like an insane idea. You know how punks “dance” – they mosh, crowd surf, stage dive, slam together, elbows akimbo, mohawks flailing, running madly in a circle (always counter-clockwise. Why? Short answer: The right foot goes a little further. Long answer in this highly scientific study). […]
REVIEW: Walterdale’s 1984 Doubleplus Good!
In the last two weeks Edmonton theatre has presented two remarkably prescient stories of how easily corruption, dehumanization and fear can overtake a society. Both were written in the past, and chart many misuses of power that are so sadly obvious today. MacEwan’s drama department is currently running an excellent version of Arthur Miller’s 1954 […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Bedouin Soundclash reformed, renewed, returning to Edmonton
Next Tuesday the venerable Starlite Room hosts the almighty Bedouin Soundclash. This reggae-ska-pop band out of Kingston, Ontario, recently returned from a nine-year hiatus with a monstrous creation of an album, 2019’s Mass. It’s the fifth album in their catalog, and the return was anything but assured, with lead singer Jay Malinowski writing a novel […]
