Die-Nasty wraps Game of Thrones homage
One million idiots put their name on a petition demanding that Game of Thrones producers remake the last season – prompting an instant backlash: “Hey, if you’re so smart, then you do it!” The Die-Nasty live improvised soap opera is way ahead of the game: Since mid-October every Monday at the Varscona Theatre their theme […]
REVIEW: Silence screams #MeToo from a thousand years ago
Silence, the season closer for the U of A’s Studio Theatre, takes us back 1,000 years to the time of King Ethelred, known to history as “The Unready” – who ruled the English from 966 to 1016 AD. Moira Buffini’s sprawling saga is set in the shadow of the end of the world. Like many […]
REVIEW: Life is a Cabaret, old chum!
Edmonton’s ambitious ELOPE Musical Theatre company is attempting to take us back to 1930s Germany in a new production of the classic musical Cabaret. As we enter the Westbury Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barns – where the show plays until May 11 – we immediately find ourselves in the “Kit Kat Club,” a […]
LISTEN HERE: Dancing to Joni Mitchell
Hear music from Alberta Ballet’s The Fiddle & The Drum Joni Mitchell was the first pop star that Canadian ballet-meister Jean Grand-Maitre pitched to do a ballet. Jean has since done so-called “portrait” ballets about Elton John, Sarah McLachlan, Gordon Lightfoot, k.d. lang, and The Tragically Hip – but Joni was the first. Ten […]
REVIEW: Literary mash-up a farce to be reckoned with at the Varscona Theatre
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is a 2012 comedy written by Christopher Durang. His playful sense of humour can be seen in such hits as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, Beyond Therapy and The Idiot Karamazov. He also has written serious plays on child abuse, Roman Catholic dogma and homosexuality. […]
REVIEW: Banned in Iran, Nassim an experimental trip at the Citadel
Nassim Soleimanpour is something of a world-wide theatrical phenomenon. The Iranian playwright now has several international hits to his credit. Alas, his own country has never seen his work – he’s banned back home. His latest play, simply titled Nassim, has played in many venues including both the West End and Off-Broadway – where it […]
THE TEMPEST: Shakespeare all shook up at the Citadel
Citadel Artistic Director Daryl Cloran promised us a “Reimagine Season” this year – and has largely validated that mandate. He is closing his year with an elemental, uncompromising, inventive staging of Shakespeare’s last great play, The Tempest – performed by hearing and deaf actors in both English and American Sign Language. It certainly demonstrates how […]
The Empress and the Prime Minister a gripping gay docu-drama
Darrin Hagen refuses to be catalogued. The actor, playwright, sound designer, composer and director has energized our theatre scene since his first play The Edmonton Queen premiered at the 1996 Fringe. Although he may be associated with gay theatre, his subject matters have ranged through a bewildering number of topics – and along the way […]
THEATRE PEOPLE: Darrin Hagen: ‘The man I am is because of the woman I was’
There was no Gay-Straight Alliance at Darrin Hagen’s high school in Rocky Mountain House in the late ‘70s – but there was a drama club. He was the only boy in the group. “It was no problem to find an all girl play and cast me in drag,” Hagen says. “Nobody seemed to mind – […]
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 […]
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, […]
