The Wizard of Oz is a Ross Petty pantomime, which, in the time honoured British tradition, totally skewers the norm. Lorna Wright and Nicholas Hune-Brown have adapted L. Frank Baum’s famous novel to ensure that the little kiddies will be entertained by all the crazy goings on, but have included enough adult references and double […]
Forget tawdry lap dance and vulgar pole dance. Le burlesque nouveau puts class back into an art form that has fallen into serious disrepute. Les Coquettes Cabaret Burlesque’s latest show Gala! is a case in point. Modern day striptease is dance theatre that is naughty but nice. The emphasis is on the “tease”, and nothing […]
Tara Beagan’s play Jesus Chrysler focuses on the tortured relationship between two women who worked for social justice during the Great Depression – the iconic Canadian poet Dorothy Livesay, and her erstwhile lover, Eugenia Watts, called Jim by her friends. Both would marry men in their future, but Beagan’s play is set around the mid-1930s […]
The Tony Award-winning musical Memphis is based on the life of Dewey Phillips, in the show call Huey Calhoun, who was the first southern white DJ in the 1950s to play black music. The show suffers from a weak book, sloppy ending and director Christopher Ashley’s cliché characterizations. But…making up for the faults is the […]
Hume Baugh’s play Crush was inspired by a 1995 incident on the sensationalist Jenny Jones TV talk show. Three days after taping, a male guest killed a gay man who had openly said he had a crush on him on national television. The killer clearly had homosexual identity issues. Baugh makes a brave stamp at […]
