FRINGE: 9 Best Shows
Posted on August 19, 2016 By Staff Entertainment, entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
So we had a total of three (3) members on Team GigCity Fringe – and we still screwed up the schedule and reviewed the same play twice. Damn it! Still, let’s make the best of it and see how both Colin MacLean (ex-Sun, CBC) and Mel Priestley (ex-Vue) heaped praise upon 70 Scenes of Halloween […]
FRINGE: 4 comedies
Posted on August 17, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
Laughter is the grease that keeps the Fringe rolling along. From sophisticated British burlesques to the pie-in-the-face American vaudeville farce, the comedy listing in the Fringe program is longer than any other – some 65 shows promise to get you laughing. Here are four wide-ranging productions that you might consider. There is a lively stand-up […]
FRINGE: 5 shows by Masters
Posted on August 15, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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!
Posted on August 12, 2016 By Staff Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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
Posted on July 14, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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 […]
Vow of celibacy FAIL in Shakespeare sex farce
Posted on July 2, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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
Posted on June 29, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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
Posted on June 24, 2016 By Colin MacLean Comedy, Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
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
Posted on June 12, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Music, Theatre
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 […]
REVIEW: New Lemoine an absurdist delight
Posted on June 3, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
I’ll bet you didn’t know there was a tiny, forgotten kingdom, called Cynthia, near Lodgepole, Alberta. It’s only about 50 acres but it functions as a real principality. There’s a King, a Chancellor of the Interior and a small population of Cynthonian citizens. The kingdom was discovered by a Canadian census taker in 1956. All […]
Varscona Theatre REBORN!
Posted on May 29, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
A packed house of enthusiastic friends and supporters helped raise the curtain on Edmonton’s newest theatre on Saturday night – the new Varscona. The curtain is more than a metaphor. For the first time in its history the Varscona actually has a curtain – a large, voluptuous wine coloured velvet drape that splits apart to […]
Moby Dick comes alive in brilliant Studio Theatre play
Posted on May 13, 2016 By Colin MacLean Entertainment, Front Slider, Theatre
Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick; or, The Whale was published in 1851. It may have flopped then, but we have not escaped this watery tale of Captain Ahab’s obsessive quest for the white whale since. There have been many movies, television shows, adaptations, plays, college English essays – even Orson Wells became obsessed with it, but that’s […]