The Bone House will scare you out of your skin
In the dying days of Vaudeville, I attended a traveling production that scared the living daylights out of me – it lingers even now some 70 years later. A virtuoso storyteller told us of the terrors of the night that inhabit our world. As he talked, we realized that they were drawing near. Suddenly, the […]
The Comedy Company balances hilarity with horror
Neil Grahn is a very funny fellow. We first realized that when, with three other jovial people calling themselves Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, Grahn helped solidify the Fringe in its very earliest days. Grahn has been around making us laugh in various ways ever since. (Full disclosure: We worked on a number of […]
PLAYBOT: Comedy Company, ten-HUT!
Long before trolls ruined the Internet for everyone, Edmonton hosted some Trolls of its own. These were good Trolls. Playwright and actor Neil Grahn is well known to us – a comic conspirator in the so-called Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, a legendary sketch comedy troupe that was Edmonton’s answer to Kids in the […]
Blood: a Scientific Romance marred by gothic melodrama
The Maggie Tree is a small feisty local company that dedicates itself to theatrical projects initiated by women. Under that rubric they have given us a series of well-produced plays that have spoken to a wide audience of theatre-goers. Perhaps the best known was Nancy McAlear’s disquieting mounting of Belinda Cornish’s anti-animal testing Category E […]
PLAYBOT: Love means never having to say you’re sorry
Opera buffs claim La Traviata was an inspiration for several Hollywood movies – highbrow stuff like Moulin Rouge or Pretty Woman. But there is another … Giuseppe Verdi’s famous opera bears a striking similarity to Love Story, the 1970 romantic drama starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw. Does anyone remember this? It was the highest […]
Origin of the Species shows it’s time for women to take over
The first thing you notice on entering the intimate Northern Light Theatre space is Trevor Schmidt’s remarkable set. It’s an eccentric collection – all sorts of objects, gadgets, small sculptures, bottles, knick-knacks, doodads and doohickeys. And clocks. Many clocks. At the Arts Barns’ Studio Theatre until Oct. 27, it’s a fitting setting for a play […]
BREAKING VLAD: Lenin’s Embalmers a dark riot
The story of ancient Egypt’s effort to preserve the earthy remains of their citizens is well known – through endless television documentaries, learned books and “B” grade Universal Studio horrors. But the 2600 B.C. Egyptian necromancers are pikers compared to the Soviets. That revered father of the revolution, Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924, lies […]
Triangle Factory Fire Project a distressingly familiar tragedy
To launch its 60th season, Walterdale Theatre has chosen The Triangle Factory Fire Project, a highly dramatic retelling of the deadliest industrial disaster in New York’s history. Similar recent worldwide events have served to tear the Century-old disaster out of the dusty pages of newspapers and into a renewed currency. The play runs until Oct. […]
PLAYBOT: Theatre season off to morbid start
Vern Thiessen is a busy man. His play about Shakespeare’s dead wife Shakespeare’s Will just finished its run – in a graveyard! – and now the esteemed local playwright will star in his own play Lenin’s Embalmers, a Studio Theatre production Oct. 11-20 at the Timms Centre for the Arts. He plays Lenin. Current state: […]
REVIEW: It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad Lemoine world!
Skirts On Fire takes Stewart Lemoine’s usual volatile collection of eccentrics and cheery misfits, vigorously shakes them together and sets them to fizzing like an exotic cocktail. If you’re looking for an existential probe of humanity’s existence you’re searching the wrong planet. A remount playing at the Varscona Theatre through October 13, Lemoine’s 1950s New […]
PLAYBOT: Shakespeare women tell their side of story
Out, damned spot! Five, six, seven, eight … Could you imagine the “Women of Shakespeare” dancing in skimpy attire in a modern burlesque show? And now, four hundred years later, you can – with the return of Shakespeare’s Sirens: A Burlesque Revue, at Fort Edmonton Park’s Capitol Theatre Sept. 28-29. All your favourites will be […]
EDMONTON EXPO-SE: So much money, GTA lives, Bob Ross
The money that flew through the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo this weekend was mind-boggling. The entire event is designed to suck your bank account dry. Do the math, if you dare! Consider the official count of 41,238 people (up from last year) each paying $80 for their pass. That’s about $3.3 million (more when […]
