REVIEW: Carmen gets a gritty makeover in Mercury Opera production
The last time I was at Chez Pierre, about 25 years ago, I covered a mud wrestling match between two female behemoths. The venerable Edmonton institution was founded by a gentle, cultured Belgian fellow named Pierre Couchard. The club was the first in Edmonton to go topless (and then bottomless), introduce male nudity, stage the […]
REVIEW: RING OF FIRE: The Music of Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash was born in a shack in Arkansas and grew up on a hardscrabble farm. He started his career as a rockabilly singer in Memphis but from then on followed a path that was all his own. He defiantly turned his back on the growing glitz of what was called “country” music to join […]
Teatro la Quindicina embraces The Bad Seed
Rhoda Penmark is the perfect child. She’s 8 years old and the ideal 50’s realization of what ’30’s movie moppet Shirley Temple might have been in those times. She’s modest, intelligent, sweet, loving and with her perfect braids and freshly pressed dresses, she is a proper daughter for her loving parents. At school she gets […]
Italy comes alive in Walterdale romance
The Light in the Piazza is a rarefied experience. It’s not a brash, glitzy Broadway show. Although some of its demands are operatic, it’s not an opera. It’s more of an operetta. Adam Guettel’s music is lush, but quite complex with unsuspected harmonic shifts. To give you an idea of what it calls for in […]
Opera NUOVA’s Secret Garden blooms in dark musical at Festival Place
Many remember Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved 1911 novel The Secret Garden as a great read from their childhood. It’s about a hidden garden that flowers and brings new life to all who enter. A new production of the Lucy Simon (music) and Marsha Norman (book & lyrics) 1991 musical from Edmonton’s Opera NUOVA – in […]
REVIEW: Two-minded winter play sparkles in summer Shakespeare festival
The Winter’s Tale is Shakespeare’s great “problem play.” It has been staged with varying degrees of success for 500-odd years and is still regularly produced today. At the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Hawrelak Park until July 14, this is the “serious” play to balance the comic one (Two Gentlemen of Verona: READ REVIEW). Actually The […]
Shakespeare sitcom gets a Freewill facelift
Geoffrey Rush’s seedy theatre manager character has a bit of advice for budding young playwright William Shakespeare in the movie Shakespeare in Love. “If you want to succeed as a writer,” he suggests – all you need is “comedy, love and a bit with a dog – that’s all they want.” Tom Stoppard (who won […]
REVIEW: Mayfield masterfully mines mid-Century mystery
British mid-Century writer Anthony Shaffer was an aficionado of gaming. From tic-tac-toe to three dimensional chess, he loved them all. So was his close friend, the Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Back in the late ‘60s Sondheim challenged his game buddy to write a play about a complex battle between two skilled players. Shaffer did just […]
REVIEW: New Lemoine a witty wise whimsical comedy
A Likely Story is a new play by Stewart Lemoine and starts the current season for Teatro La Quindicina. A few years back, his adventurous local company decided to upend their year. Never afraid of striking out into new waters, they decided to ignore the traditional pattern and spread their plays through the summer. It […]
A Little Night Music goes a long way
A Little Night Music whirls to the rhythm of three-quarter time. Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim wrote all the music – mazurka, polonaise, gigue, gallops, waltzes, etc. in different triplicate meters: The “one-two-three” of the waltz. The work is based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night. The composer was intrigued by the notion of […]
Green light for cannabis at the folk fest
Within today’s announcement for Hozier, Ani DiFranco, Brandi Carlile, Bruce Cockburn and other acts we already knew were coming to the 40th annual Edmonton Folk Music Festival was a big green light for marijuana. Oh, yeah, cannabis is legal now. Almost forgot. Producer Terry Wickham addressed the issue at the annual media launch, where there […]
REVIEW: Harold Pinter’s Betrayal unpacks painful love triangle
The new Broken Toys production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, playing in The Studio of the ATB Financial Arts Barns through June 2, is said to be the first Edmonton showing of the play. That’s a rather surprising note in a town that has seen a lot of Pinter over the years. (Movie fans might remember […]
