REVIEW: Starcatcher flies like Peter Pan
Avast there, matey, prepare to go aloft! And I abide that ye’ll have a crew of plundering picaroons at yer back. The Citadel’s current show Peter and the Starcatcher does briefly soar aloft, but that comes later. James MacDonald’s rollicking, inventive production starts small with what is known as “physical theatre,” or the more poetic […]
PLAYBILL: 9 Parts of Desire has many faces
Nine very different Iraqi women lead lives as normal as they can manage in the years between the two Gulf wars – imagined by Heather Ruffo in her discussion-provoking play 9 Parts of Desire. The playwright was inspired and disturbed by a trip to an art museum in Baghdad, and from extensive interviews with area […]
PLAYBILL: A little Peter Pan in all of us
It’s worth asking why there have been so many versions and adaptations of Peter Pan. Is it because that all of us, deep down inside, in our heart of hearts, have a secret desire to fly around while wearing green tights? Or is there something deeper? Maybe it’s because Peter Pan is a magical flying […]
PLAYBILL: Go Into the Woods, we dare you
There’s a weird sort of fractured hindsight at work in the musical Into the Woods. We’ve all seen it – in our bedtime stories. Written by Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine, this award-winning musical is a willy nilly hodge podge of almost every Grimm fairy tale that has since made into an sanitized-animated feature by […]
PLAYBILL: Elektra electrifying
Today’s spooky teens have nothing on the ancient Greeks. Kids in those days didn’t have smartphones – just lots of time on their hands and easy access to a wide variety of poisons and deadly weapons. Got a lot of rending and hewing to do. Edmonton Opera’s latest show Elektra is about as edgy as […]
The Believers an unbelievable scare
The first thing you notice is a deep blackness, a dark menacing cloud that hangs over everything. It bleeds down in ragged sheets of rain. There is a wall, a staircase and a table. After the creepy preamble, around that table are two people engaged in a heated argument. They are slowly and painfully trying […]
Prostitution play fails to grasp serious subject
When it premiered in Toronto in 2014, Erin Shield’s new play Soliciting Temptation conflicted the reviewers. The Globe and Mail could only eek out “tolerable” while The National Post found it “the season’s best new play.” A new co-production from Calgary’s Sage Theatre and Edmonton’s Shadow Theatre – at the Varscona Theatre until March 26 […]
Crazy for You makes old hat new again
You want an escape from the March blahs? Crazy for You, the joyous “New Gershwin Musical” playing at the Citadel Theatre until March 26, is just the medicine you need for melancholy. This two hours and 40 minutes of grace, wit and great music is part screwball, part vaudeville, part Busby Berkeley and all cheerfully […]
PLAYBILL: Sexual tourism takes a hit
Sex is good. Tourism is good. Now put the two together and what do we have? A bunch of creepy perverts going to Thailand or wherever to hire prostitutes that would be legally underage in North America. Off with their heads! The perverts … not the girls. So in case we’re not riled up enough […]
Stupid Fucking Bird gives wing to Chekhov
Anton Chekhov is best known outside of Russia as a playwright of yearning disappointment, unrequited love, missed opportunities and unsatisfactory relationships. He actually thought he was writing a comedy when he penned a play called The Seagull in 1896 – and therein lies a part of the problem. According to those who know about these […]
PLAYBILL: Chekhov gets pecked
As if Anton Chekhov weren’t weird enough that he needs modernizing, what with that creepy story about him turning into a cockroach … whoops, wrong depressing Eastern European and/or Russian author. Kafka was the bug. Chekhov is the cipher. The work set to the thumb screws here is Chekhov’s The Seagull, considered a masterpiece despite […]
Ah, Romance! welcome as spring breeze
“In spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” burbled Tennyson in 1835. Apparently, so does the fancy of Edmonton’s accomplished Plain Jane Theatre Company, whose latest offering Ah, Romance! A Revue of Song, Dance and Other Passionate Musings, is on stage at the Varscona Theatre until Feb. 25. The Plain Janes, […]
