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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
THEATRE REVIEW: Oscar gone Wilde
Since its premiere in 1895, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest has become one of the most successful and oft-produced comedies in the world. Theatre fans may find themselves mouthing the famous epigrams, aphorisms, gags, quips, bon-mots, etc. etc. with the performers on stage. That familiarity can be kind of fun as an audience […]
PLAYBOT: Earnest goes to camp
What great news it is that the respected Edmonton theatre company Teatro La Quindicina has dramatized and condensed for the stage all of the Ernest movies – which starred the late Jim Varney and will now feature Jeff Haslam in the titular role. What? OK, got to read these press releases more carefully. It’s “Earnest,” […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: No Problem amps up doom
Edmonton’s punk rock pride No Problem have always been a bit dark – and in these dark times, what do you do but literally amp it up? The band’s new album Let God Sort Em Out – their seventh since 2010 – is a bold work filled with raging punk rockers interspersed with spooky bookends […]
Finest of Strangers the finest of Lemoines
A new play by Stewart Lemoine is something to celebrate. For some 36 years – since his debut at the first Fringe – he has prolifically turned out play after play, over 70 of them now. The amazing thing about all this is that the playwright has managed to maintain an innate curiosity in a […]
PLAYBOT: The Importance of Being Lemoine
In Upside Down World, while all other Edmonton theatre companies have ended their seasons and are resting up for the Fringe, Teatro la Quindicina is just getting started. It has been said – by PlayBot™ – that Teatro’s permanent resident playwright and artistic director Stewart Lemoine is the Oscar Wilde of Edmonton, so it fits […]
PLAYBOT: Refugees find love in Canada
Canada has always welcomed refugees – and the nation is better for it. The new people just have to get used to the frightful weather. Before the poor Syrians, there were Jews fleeing persecution in Romania 100 years ago. Some of them settled in Canada – and so here is the tale in a concert-theatre […]
PLAYBILL: Shumka keeps it real
The Ukrainian Shumka Dancers have turned down an offer to participate in an all-Shumka parody of West Side Story to tell the tale of Edmonton’s two sides – North Side Story. We were told Shumka’s core subscribers probably wouldn’t go for it (based on a comic by Chad Huculak). Just as well. Keep it real. […]
