FRINGE 2019: 1 marvelous magical mystery
Minerva – Queen of the Handcuffs Stage 17 The name Houdini still hovers over the world of magic – almost 100 years after his death. The master of “escapology” took the hocus pocus out of the ancient prerogatives of priests and charlatans and turned it into show business gold. There weren’t many females in the […]
REVIEW: Carmen gets a gritty makeover in Mercury Opera production
The last time I was at Chez Pierre, about 25 years ago, I covered a mud wrestling match between two female behemoths. The venerable Edmonton institution was founded by a gentle, cultured Belgian fellow named Pierre Couchard. The club was the first in Edmonton to go topless (and then bottomless), introduce male nudity, stage the […]
Italy comes alive in Walterdale romance
The Light in the Piazza is a rarefied experience. It’s not a brash, glitzy Broadway show. Although some of its demands are operatic, it’s not an opera. It’s more of an operetta. Adam Guettel’s music is lush, but quite complex with unsuspected harmonic shifts. To give you an idea of what it calls for in […]
Opera NUOVA’s Secret Garden blooms in dark musical at Festival Place
Many remember Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved 1911 novel The Secret Garden as a great read from their childhood. It’s about a hidden garden that flowers and brings new life to all who enter. A new production of the Lucy Simon (music) and Marsha Norman (book & lyrics) 1991 musical from Edmonton’s Opera NUOVA – in […]
REVIEW: Two-minded winter play sparkles in summer Shakespeare festival
The Winter’s Tale is Shakespeare’s great “problem play.” It has been staged with varying degrees of success for 500-odd years and is still regularly produced today. At the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Hawrelak Park until July 14, this is the “serious” play to balance the comic one (Two Gentlemen of Verona: READ REVIEW). Actually The […]
Shakespeare sitcom gets a Freewill facelift
Geoffrey Rush’s seedy theatre manager character has a bit of advice for budding young playwright William Shakespeare in the movie Shakespeare in Love. “If you want to succeed as a writer,” he suggests – all you need is “comedy, love and a bit with a dog – that’s all they want.” Tom Stoppard (who won […]
REVIEW: Mayfield masterfully mines mid-Century mystery
British mid-Century writer Anthony Shaffer was an aficionado of gaming. From tic-tac-toe to three dimensional chess, he loved them all. So was his close friend, the Broadway composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Back in the late ‘60s Sondheim challenged his game buddy to write a play about a complex battle between two skilled players. Shaffer did just […]
REVIEW: New Lemoine a witty wise whimsical comedy
A Likely Story is a new play by Stewart Lemoine and starts the current season for Teatro La Quindicina. A few years back, his adventurous local company decided to upend their year. Never afraid of striking out into new waters, they decided to ignore the traditional pattern and spread their plays through the summer. It […]
A Little Night Music goes a long way
A Little Night Music whirls to the rhythm of three-quarter time. Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim wrote all the music – mazurka, polonaise, gigue, gallops, waltzes, etc. in different triplicate meters: The “one-two-three” of the waltz. The work is based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night. The composer was intrigued by the notion of […]
REVIEW: Harold Pinter’s Betrayal unpacks painful love triangle
The new Broken Toys production of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, playing in The Studio of the ATB Financial Arts Barns through June 2, is said to be the first Edmonton showing of the play. That’s a rather surprising note in a town that has seen a lot of Pinter over the years. (Movie fans might remember […]
REVIEW: Silence screams #MeToo from a thousand years ago
Silence, the season closer for the U of A’s Studio Theatre, takes us back 1,000 years to the time of King Ethelred, known to history as “The Unready” – who ruled the English from 966 to 1016 AD. Moira Buffini’s sprawling saga is set in the shadow of the end of the world. Like many […]
REVIEW: Life is a Cabaret, old chum!
Edmonton’s ambitious ELOPE Musical Theatre company is attempting to take us back to 1930s Germany in a new production of the classic musical Cabaret. As we enter the Westbury Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barns – where the show plays until May 11 – we immediately find ourselves in the “Kit Kat Club,” a […]
