FRINGE: 4 swell musicals
The Fringe is oft a bouquet of music, a transport of melody or even a delirious grab bag of song and dance. Let’s start with the delirious. There was once an East German girly/boy named Hansel who longed to be a singer in a rock band. He also wanted to be a girl but the […]
FRINGE: 3 shows with nudity
Dropping your pants is a sure-fire way to pack a Fringe house. Performances flagged with the “nudity” warning in the program usually have pretty decent crowds, because let’s face it: we’re all a bunch of perverts. However, while the idea of seeing a live naked person on stage is titillating, it’s not something to be […]
FRINGE: 4 spooky shows
Occurring in the doldrums of August, the Fringe might not seem the likeliest place for spooky tales. But each year always presents at least a few shows that dabble in the darker side, that smack of the paranormal, or that aim to generally give the audience a few thrills and chills. They aren’t in particular […]
FRINGE: 5 shows by Masters
They are the Masters of the Fringe. They stand, like the Colossus of old, towering over our annual theatrical binge, carrying a record of past hits. These are the names to check first because they are the ones who quickly sell out. Such is Stewart Lemoine. He wrote his first play, All These Heels for […]
Team GigCity Fringe Rises!
Here’s a first: GigCity is going to be reviewing actual plays at the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival this year – led by esteemed local theatre critic Colin Maclean, who’s still gung-ho at the age of 80. In the past, we merely lurked on the periphery of Edmonton’s most interesting festival – with stories about […]
NEWSIES: Weak story, amazing dance
NEWSIES has certainly had a checkered career. It began its life as a Disney live action film in 1992 and immediately laid an egg, ranking as one of the lowest grossing films ever released by the company. But in its eternal attempts to mine its film canon after the astonishing stage success of Beauty and […]
Chess meets ABBA in Walterdale musical
A musical about chess set to the music of ABBA – what could possibly go wrong? It doesn’t matter. That’s the whole point. The Walterdale Theatre, an amateur theatre company, is used to taking risks. The word “amateur” derives from the Latin “to love.” These actors don’t depend on acting to make a living. They […]
Vow of celibacy FAIL in Shakespeare sex farce
Love’s Labour’s Lost may be the least produced of Shakespeare’s plays. At one time it disappeared from the stage for 200 years. However, many of its pleasures have been rediscovered in recent times. Perhaps that’s because the play, with its sense of fun and zany infectious humour, blending high-flying Shakespearean iambic pentameter with puns, groaners […]
Romeo and Juliet jazzed up in the park
Those two lovestruck teenagers are at it again out there under the moon – which is this time hung over Hawrelak Park for a zesty, stripped-down production of Romeo and Juliet. It’s part of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival until July 16. We are told that this is the third most popular of Shakespeare’s plays and […]
REVIEW: Stephanie Wolfe takes on Lily Tomlin
There are one-person shows that are linked to certain famous actors, such as Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain or, more recently, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as LBJ. In 1977, Lily Tomlin, then a recent grad from the television series Laugh In, brought her one-person show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe […]
Young cast soars in Rent revival
The story of the first night of the rock musical Rent in 1993 could be an opera on its own. The music, lyrics and book were all written by Jonathan Larson, whose day job up until opening night was working in a fast food joint in New York City. He died of a heart attack […]
