From play to movie back to play, Jack Goes Boating proves its stamina

It’s quite a challenge to do play that’s been made into a movie. Everyone’s going to make comparisons, many of them unfair. Good example: Kurt Vonnegut – great novelist, lousy playwright. Fortunately for the cast of Jack Goes Boating – opening Thursday at the Varscona Theatre – the 2010 movie of the same name isn’t […]

Randy Bachman to bring songs, stories about songs, to Winspear Centre

It looks like they just missed another accidental Guess Who reunion. Randy Bachman is coming to town, playing Tuesday, April 9 the Winspear Centre – the same building his compatriot Burton Cummings will be performing on Dec. 1. Tickets for the Bachman show go on sale Friday. Is there no stopping these guys? Bachman will […]

Is Jeff Dunham racist? No, but his puppets might be

Name any movie that doesn’t depict puppeteers as insane or evil. Think about it: They talk to themselves, they play with dolls, they say terribly offensive things they wouldn’t have the courage to say in real life if they weren’t pretending to talk through their creepy puppets. But isn’t that what good comedians are supposed […]

Shakespeare’s words replaced by body language in Alberta Ballet’s Othello

It’s going to take some serious body language to render Shakespeare without words – as the cast of Alberta Ballet’s production of Othello should know well by now. That’s the ballet for you. No dialogue. What would Shakespeare have thought about such a thing? Playing Friday and Saturday at the Jubilee Auditorium, Othello stars Kelley […]

Blue Rodeo to hit Edmonton in January for 25th anniversary tour

Here’s another band hitting a milestone that reminds us how old we’re getting – Blue Rodeo has been at it for 25 years, and will celebrate with what is expected to be a night of pure, sweet nostalgia on an extensive cross-Canada tour. Two nights in Edmonton, actually. The band plays the Jubilee Auditorium January […]

Gay love on the Rez: award-winning play comes out in Edmonton

Gay love on the Rez: award-winning play comes out in Edmonton

The bullying and self-loathing Waawaate Fobister suffered as a gay youth wasn’t derived from his own aboriginal culture – but from the Christian dogma that was forced upon it. “As a teenager growing up as a Christian, I just hated myself because they told me I was going to go to hell because of who […]

WHO NAMED THE BAND: Marianas Trench teaches kids about geography

Some bands are born to weird band names. Others have weird band names thrust upon them. Marianas Trench fits both cases. The Vancouver pop-not-punk group – headlining Monday at Rexall Place – had actually been renamed from its early days as Ramsay Fiction, after singer and founder Josh Ramsay. But while the guy tends to […]

Bon Jovi to play Edmonton in April – ‘Because We Can’

Bon Jovi doesn’t need a reason to tour – “Because We Can” is the name of the band’s latest jaunt around the globe. The band will hit Edmonton’s Rexall Place on April 3, one of six Canadian dates announced by the band this week. Pre-sale tickets go on sale Friday; the public on-sale is expected […]

SCARY TIMES: 13 Halloween events for grown-ups who don’t want to grow up

SCARY TIMES: 13 Halloween events for grown-ups who don’t want to grow up

It’s no mystery why Halloween has been completely co-opted and dominated by grown-ups – it’s because many modern grown-ups have failed to grow up. Joe Flaherty – SCTV’s Count Floyd, so he ought to know about this sort of thing – complained that many of the adult students in his improv classes back East were […]

Is Alberta Avenue Edmonton’s new coolest neighbourhood? New documentary takes a look

Is Alberta Avenue Edmonton’s new coolest neighbourhood? New documentary takes a look

Attending the joyous celebration of community that is the summer Kaleido Festival on 118th Avenue, you’d never know that the area was once a cesspool of depravity, rife with drug dealers, gang members and prostitutes. Respectable citizens just didn’t go there. Now children cavort where johns once skulked. Few vestiges of the Northside neighbourhood’s dodginess […]

CAN-CON CONCERTS: Great Big Sea, Burton Cummings announced

Here’s another Canadian band whose continued existence has caused its Generation X-aged fans to exclaim, “Oh, my gosh, we’re 40!” – Great Big Sea. Yes, it has been 20 years since we first fell in love with these guys in college, and everyone’s favourite Newfoundland Celtic pirate-rock band is hitting the road to celebrate passing […]

MUSIC: Adam Cohen, son of Leonard, embraces the family business

One so rarely gets a chance to talk to the child of a musical superstar that the famous parent tends to become the central thesis of every story about them – including this one about Adam Cohen – or at the very least the elephant in the room that gets tiptoed around. It’s such a […]