Artistic fraud of St. John’s, Newfoundland, is one of Canada’s most imaginative companies, both in staging and subject matter. Oil and Water, which is part of Factory Theatre’s Performance Spring Festival, is the latest show from the fertile minds of writer Robert Chafe and director Jillian Keiley. First, mention must be made of Shawn Kerwin’s […]
About: Four Wal-Mart employees, obsessed with celebrity, breathlessly recount minute details of Céline Dion’s life. What begins with a rapturous account of Dion’s farewell Montreal concert before taking to her bed to have her child, disintegrates into lascivious tabloid speculation. At the same time, these menial workers also savour every horrific fact about the sad […]
The Theatre Centre’s annual Free Fall Festival is a showcase of experimental works, some more finished than others. Liza Balkan’s Out the Window is close to a full-scale production, and let’s hope that will happen very soon. The potency of the play did carry through despite actors being on script. Balkan says in her notes […]
I’ve coined a word for the US equivalent of Eurotrash, and that is Amerijunk. (FYI, the Canadian epithet is Canacrap.) Unfortunately, Amerijunk best describes the World Stage presentation with the ungainly title of The Wooster Group’s Version of Tennessee Williams’ Vieux Carré. (Apparently there were issues with the Williams estate over the production.) I have […]
The more playwrights coming out of Canada’s ethnic communities, the happier I am. They are truly the new Canada, reflecting the fact that we are an immigrant population. That being said, a flawed production can chip away at the enjoyment factor. My Granny the Goldfish by Vancouver’s Anoush Irani seems to be a crowd pleaser. […]
