Tricky at the best of times with a full cast of stellar players to present a broad comedy that relies heavily on lightning speed, big, big character acting and crisp, well-timed stage business. Perhaps a well-known comparable example of this type of play is Noises Off. Hard Candy (not a theatrical version of the movie […]
Graham Pilsworth
Posted inArts + Music
This Is A Play
Maybe, possibly, ought-to-be, this outing of inspired lunacy is a bona fide Fringe hit. Smart, achingly funny (the audience last night spent the better part of their time in the theatre convulsed with laughter) and damned clever. There are four characters in Daniel MacIvor’s play: a Voice Over playwright fretting about theatre’s Big Questions such […]
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A Bar Scene
Allison Amirault’s Fringe offering, A Bar Scene, plays like an extended SNL sketch during which two men and two women (late-twenties/early thirty somethings) over drinks in a “meat market” play kickball with the hoary, age-old question: What is love? We scarcely know at A Bar Scene’s conclusion. Why? This swift comedy of Eros sallies forth […]
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tent shows in monsoon season
It was a life-changing event when sax player and educator Jeff Goodspeed went over to the Cuban side. Since then, for years, he has tirelessly engineered musical interchanges between Nova Scotia and the Caribbean Island famous for some of the hottest music this side of planet Mercury. High school-aged Nova Scotia honour jazz students and […]
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Simon Fisk at the Argyle Gallery
Stuff happens. Like travel funding falling through for your band mates in Calgary when you’ve got a gig at the Atlantic Jazz Festival in Halifax. And continues to happen. You arrive at the gig. You, with your double bass. You, the one-man trio. But then, in strolls a pal from St. FX jazz school days, […]
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The See Through Trio at the Argyle Gallery
The Argyle Gallery acquitted itself well as the ideal venue in which to present the three year old Toronto-based See Through Trio’s delightful set of jazz miniatures. The ten pieces, performed with crisp eloquence, a lightness of being, and extraordinary technical facility on double-bass, soprano sax and electric piano, ranged from a couple of hymn-based […]
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Sound Sights on Paul Cram’s Guerrilla Vacation
“Before I start”, Paul Cram, at the bar in the Holiday Inn’s Commons Room, said between sips from a cold beverage with lime slices, “it’s like an an ax blow to the head. Once up there playing, I’m fine.” This was to be no Jane Goodall lecture as the emcee quipped for the benefit of […]
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Ellen McIlwaine and Cassius Khan at The Commons Room
A couple of ways to size up last night’s performance by renowned “blues” guitarist and singer, partnered up with tabla player, Cassius Khan. Black (she wore black) and white and sped all over. A blisteringly hot night of Delta blues – Nile Delta to be more specific. As the emcee observed in his halting but […]
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Love of the game
Lukas Pearse’s hands were bound. Worse yet, a sheet had been draped over him, covering both him and his double bass. Nearby stood a woman, also hand-bound. Duct tape sealed her lips beneath a baggy hood pulled over her head. Not long ago, this discombobulating scene confronted a hip crowd comprised of visual artists, NSCAD […]
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The couple next door
Now I’m getting more than a little anxious. Worried that this warm bath of a sunny September afternoon might be all shot to hell. I am knocking on the front door of a colourful house on a central Halifax street, lined on both sides with late-Victorian style domiciles. So far, nobody inside has been roused […]
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The Butleress
Some wag once wrote: a farce is a type of play that critics laugh at and then pan. Not in this case. The Butleress is a jolly outing nicely living up to farce’s raison d’etre – to entertain an audience, eliciting laughs using broad humoured comedy, a ridiculous situation or scenario, played by shameless farceurs. […]
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Pussy Star
Before video, and way before DVDs, dirty ol’ men and chronic sexual adolescents over voting age, bent on keeping their hand in with the “love connection”, frequented sleazy movie theatres known as Porno Palaces. Every movie had its “dramatic” moments before its inevitable bump and grunt, passion-free finale. Ohh, the mental anguish there had to […]