PLAYBILL: Mirthful murder mystery mayhem
Things are lighter in the summer – clothing comes to mind. Now think of other things robbed of gravity with the addition of summer: Summer school, summer romance, summer theatre. Hey now: Would you accuse playwright Stewart Lemoine and his Teatro La Quindicina theatre company of being “light”? Certainly their work is often light-hearted. Also […]
PLAYBILL: Streetfest serious about silly
Jesters, jugglers, fools, clowns and buffoons … but enough about Edmonton City Hall. Bah-haha! That joke never gets old. Nor does the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival, for its 33rd year in Churchill Square July 7-16. Performers include the Mellifluous Mr. Bombo, Dan the Balloon Man, The Great Balanzo, Kamikaze Fireflies, Tianna the Traveller, Silver […]
Shakespeare’s ‘problem’ play gets powerful reading
When Shakespeare penned The Merchant of Venice somewhere during the 1590s, there were few Jews in England – they had been thrown out by the King in the late 13th century. But the hatreds and prejudices that these unfortunate people faced were still fresh enough for the Bard to write what has been termed his […]
Dated musical sparkles at Mayfield
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change is one of those small, Off-Broadway musicals that just keep coming back. They are inexpensive to produce and proven crowd pleasers. The show is the summer offering at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre. It runs until July 30. With book and lyrics by Joe DiPietro (Memphis, Nice Work If […]
Jana O’Connor comedy a Teatro triumph
I haven’t laughed so hard at the Varscona Theatre … well, since the last play by Teatro La Quindicina. The current production of the screwball comedy Going, Going, Gone! at the Varscona Theatre until July 1 launches the writing career of a radiant new comic talent. Jana O’Connor is a long time member of the […]
PLAYBILL: Shakespeare rocks
Some people say that maybe William Shakespeare wasn’t such a big deal after all, and therefore maybe his work shouldn’t be taught in schools at the expense of other worthy or more modern playwrights – or remounted again and again to promote 500-year-old sexual and racial morals in one Shakespeare festival after another. To those […]
Classic Carousel colossal challenge
When it debuted in 1945, Rogers and Hammerstein’s Carousel reset the bar for musical theatre. Up until then, most Broadway shows featured flimsy plots on which to hang great songs by Cole Porter or Rogers and Hart. R & H turned to Liliom, a serious 1909 play by the Hungarian Fernec Molnar. Molnar’s dark tale […]
PLAYBILL: No rewrites at Improvaganza
We’re all just making it up as we go along. Every moment of life is an act of spontaneous creativity, and every creative action starts with a decision made in the moment, which leads to another decision, and then an action and so on and so forth, until voila! Congratulations, you’ve written Les Miserables. Improv […]
PLAYBILL: One Pride, many voices
It is that time of year again, when a young man’s (or young woman’s) fancy turns to love – even love that does not hesitate to dare to speak its name, to modernize an old saying a bit awkwardly. In our free country, of course, so many are daring, which is why we have the […]
PLAYBILL: Nnnnnnnnext!
Here’s a fun tip for budding artists, a little “life hack”: The concept of “spring” may be used as metaphor for birth. You see, old life must rust or burn out or fade away to make room for new life, for the next, smarter generation to come. It’s the circle of … er, life! In […]
REVIEW: Talking Turk a delightful entertainment
You remember Zoltar the Talking Turk. In the penny arcades of yore, he was the dapper Eastern-looking chap in the turban who sat in a glass booth. You’d put in your coin and Zoltar would jerk into life. A crystal ball would be lit by an eerie, red mystic light and the seer would forecast […]
PLAYBILL: Teatro’s Talking Turk, take two
Teatro La Quindicina are a bunch of bloody contrarians. While other Edmonton theatre companies are winding down their seasons, playwright Stewart Lemoine’s quirky little troupe is just getting started. May 26 at the Varscona Theatre marks their opposite-world season opener: a Lemoine revival called The Salon of the Talking Turk, starring Mark Meer in the […]
