Stuff I like: Relic Radio
Admittedly, this one won’t be for all tastes. There’s a cheesiness to vintage radio plays that will either come across as comforting and well-worn, or impossibly distancing. The scripts pull liberally from the hoariest pulp cliches, but their reliance on family-friendly advertising money means they can’t embrace grit and gallows humour with the gusto of … Read more
Best Stuff Day 8: No Exit
Three people enter, no one ever leaves: an existential grudge-match and eternal suffering of the most mundane variety. With their production of No Exit at this year’s High Performance Rodeo, Vancouver’s Electric Company took one of the most beautifully minimalist stage set-ups in theatre — one small room that accounts for an eternity of torment … Read more
Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites in brief — three plays, exactly 100 words each
How Do I Love Thee?, by Florence Gibson MacDonald: Given my near-complete lack of literary training, I only know Elizabeth Barrett Browning for her titular question, and even less of Robert Browning. Maybe an emotional connection to their poetry would’ve made How Do I Love Thee go down easier, but as it stands, the florid … Read more
Relative quickies: Extreme Measures, Book of Eli, Pajama Men (theatre)
FILM: Extraordinary Measures (review originally from ffwdweekly.com) Extraordinary Measures is a saccharine, heartstring-tugging Hallmark card of a movie, an inspirational tale jury-rigged to provide as much cockle-warming as can be uncomfortably wedged into 105 minutes. If watching wheelchair-bound children delivering life lessons to cantankerous scientists while the soundtrack plays Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” is … Read more
A mildly inebriated White Cabin review (High Performance Rodeo)
Thank goodness I’m not reviewing this officially. I’ve been considering starting theatre reviews, given that Fast Forward only has one theatre reviewer, which is hardly enough, but starting with a tricky piece of Russian surrealism would be daunting, to say the least. In the most basic terms, White Cabin is a highly surreal piece of … Read more
The Consumption: Nov 19-22
Man… I need to stay on top of this. THEATRE: TheatreJunction – The Country: Martin Crimp’s script is a tongue-twister, looping back on itself, interrupting itself, repeating phrases and traveling on hairpin tangents. As delivered by Mark Lawes and Fiona Byrne, though, it’s not much more than two actors getting through their lines as best … Read more
Daily consumption: Nov. 7
COMEDY: Louis CK: His second set of the day, and he did seem a bit worn down, but that didn’t particularly detract. Aside from seeming to drop one anecdote, everything was pretty much spot on, with the usual knack for finding the right vulgarity for any situation and the right mix of insight and depression. … Read more
