Vancouver play
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
Three Days of Rain
Saturday, July 2nd, 2011
Tuesday, June 7th, 2011
The Will Rogers Follies
Another Home Invasion
How To Disappear Completely: Guest review by Sean Cummings
Book launch: C.E. Gatchalian talks about Crossing
The Pillowman
Death of a Salesman
Dead Man's Cell Phone
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Vancouver, BC: Under the able direction of Amiel Gladstone, with a luminous Megan Follows leading an accomplished cast of actors, Melissa James Gibson's This sparkles with humour while touching on the internal angsts and troubled relationships of this group of thirty-something friends.
The Secret in the Wings
Brown Girl in the Ring: Huh? Guest Review by Rachel Scott
39 and Ticking! The musical
Monday, June 21st, 2010
Contest Closed: Congratulations to the winners
Friday, May 21st, 2010
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story
CONTEST :Win two tickets to Dangerous Corner
Dangerous Corner. Guest Review
Preview: Collected Stories at PAL Theatre, Vancouver
SPINE: Guest review
The Passion Project
Vancouver, BC: When I initially read the description of The Passion Project as "video art installation- meets theatre" I wasn't sure what to think about it other than that it would be novel and different. After seeing it, I concluded that think is the wrong word. It is more a sensory experience than a cognitive experience. And what on earth do I mean by that? Let me try and articulate my experience.
Vancouver, BC. If you have not already got your tickets to see this show pick up the phone or hit the keyboard soon because this is going to be another sellout holiday hit for the Vancouver Playhouse.
The Vertical Hour: Guest Review by Sean Allan
I applaud United Players for bringing this intellectually engaging play to the Jericho Arts Centre. The work of David Hare is always good for lively discussion on the way home from the theatre. But this production is like having three really nice, interesting people over for dinner; and you discuss politics, doctors, psychiatry, war, relationships, sex, marriage; and they stay way too late. There is a lot of talk about what is really going on during the evening with very little evidence of anything but talk.
The Master Builder
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
Vancouver, BC: Don't miss this production of Ibsen's The Master Builder. Re-shaped with a surgical precision by Errol Durbach's concise adaptation and Gerald Vanderwoude's taut direction, it is a sharply focused portrait of a man at the pinnacle of his profession, brought down by his desire for a nubile young thing. The play may have been written in 1892, but the story is played out frequently in the media today as politicians, business executives, perfomers and preachers publically beat their chests crying "mea culpa" as their wives file for divorce and half their assets. I tried to count on one hand such situations in the recent past but soon ran out of fingers!
Evil Dead: Guest Review by Sean Allan
Saturday, October 31st, 2009
The set is crappy (and very cleverly designed), the costumes are deliberately tacky, there have not been worse wigs since Dynel was invented, the props fall apart, the acting is over the top, and my cheeks ached from grinning through the whole show. This is cheesy as an art form. The evening is a riot of bad puns, brilliantly bad acting, great singing and fun choreography.
Nelly Boy
Friday, October 23rd, 2009
Vancouver, BC: For 75 minutes you could have heard a pin drop in the small space of the PAL theatre. As the actors exited and the lights went to black, the words "brave, terrifying, sad" competed in my head with "so that's the real Allan Zinyk". I think this is the first time I have seen him playing a normal person in a straight as opposed to a comedic role, and it brought to mind a handsome Allan Rickman - as Steven Spurrier (Bottle Shock) not the infamous Snape, of course.
DIARY/JOURNAL INTIME: Guest Review by Sean Allan
Thursday, October 1st, 2009
This is dance theatre that you can take your husband to….and your teens…and anyone else you can think of. The opening offering of the Cultch Family Series is a knock-out. The re-furbished Cultch main stage was bathed in the light of a thousand candles being arranged and moved about by the seven members of the company, the men in jeans and the women in point shoes, as the audience entered the theatre.
The Veil - Guest Review by Sean Allan
Vancouver. BC: The evening opened with a welcome from Brenda Leadley, the Artistic Director of Presentation House with a message about why we should protest damaging government cuts to grants for the arts, and then The Veil, written and directed by Shahin Sayadi proved to the audience why we should be taking to the streets.
Monday, September 21st, 2009
Vancouver, BC: The Arts Club opened its 46th season with a riotously funny evening of two plays by writers who would not at first come to my mind as writers of comedy. Peter Shaffer after all, is probably best known for Equus - a intensely disturbing psychological drama. And I have never really found the Chekhov plays that I have seen or read to be exactly a bundle of laughs.
Way of the World - Reviewed by Sean Allan
Vancouver, BC: William Congreve certainly had a way with words and is justifiably referred to as "the English Moliere". The United Players has chosen to open it's 50th Anniversary Season with his most famous comedy. It is an inspired choice. The Way of the World minced into the Jericho Arts Centre last night and gob-smacked the crowd with wit, repartee, epigrams, raillery, cant and delightful double-dealing.
Altar Boyz
Vancouver, BC: Matthew (Jeremy Crittenden), Mark (David Hurwitz), Luke (Jak Barradell), Juan (Vincent Tong) and Abraham (Geoff Stevens) are the Altar Boyz, members of a boy band who are playing the final concert of their "Raise the Praise" tour - at the Granville Island Stage - and, according to their impressive digital electronic device, the Soul-Sensor DX-12, they have several hundred heavily burdened souls in the audience to save, by the end of the concert. That's the premise of the show. A thin story-line to be sure, but that is all that is needed to thread twelve high-energy song and dance routines into a swinging, toe-tapping non-stop 90 minutes of pure entertainment.
Vancouver,BC: Of Shakespeare's great tragedies. Othello ranks as number one in my list of faves, just ahead of King Lear. I think it is for me that the play is about an epic battle between two larger than life characters - Iago, arguably Shakespeare's greatest villain, and Othello, the archetype "hero with a fatal flaw." The immense dramatic irony is that Othello, the great warrior General , doesn't even know he is involved in this battle, yet the audience knows that bit by bit he is losing the most important war of his life. As Harold Bloom puts it, it is Othello's tragedy but it is Iago's play. Iago, the master manipulator pulls strings like a puppeteer, weaving a web of deceit that ensnares everyone - including ultimately, himself.
[Re]View from the House: Twelfth Night
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Vancouver, BC: Last year's Bard production of Taming of the Shrew was one of my all-time Bard on the Beach favorites garnering a rave in my Rants, Raves and Reviews column, but David Mackay's production of Twelfth Night has displaced Shrew from number one on my BOTB hit parade. And this, despite the fact that in more than a decade of seeing performances in Vanier Park, I have never been as miserably cold as on Thursday's opening night.
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