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While wordy but worthy wordsmith Graham Pilsworth and I disagreed mightily on the merit of Daniel MacIvor’s “Wild Abandon”, we definitely agree on Leslie’s Carvery’s “Me and Josephine”. Carvery has that illusive “it”. She’s a star in need of a vehicle and while the story of entertainer extraordinaire Josephine Baker may well fit the bill, […]

“It’s interesting how things work out”, says a pretty-in- pink young woman seated at a plain basic table; a glass of water near her right hand ; a piece of paper and pen before her. No kidding. In a beautifully, emotionally nuanced performance, actor Mary Fay Coady brings to stunning life American fimmaker and playwright Neil LaBute’s reworking of Euripedes’ classic story of “jealousy and revenge of a woman betrayed by her husband” who dumps her and their two children to free himself up to marry a woman he figures ideal to uplift him romantically and in societal prestige. Wounded

It’s rarely a good thing to leave a playing muttering “What the fuck?” and in the case of “Bone Jacked”, there was simply nothing else to say. Imagine Shakespeare memorized and spouted by a four-year-old. Nope. Scrap that. It would be obscene to hold Shakespeare and “Bone Jacked” in the same thought. Imagine the phone […]

It is to cry. Or have a muffin. Writer/actor/composer/musician Tim Bartsch shoots the pooch, I fear, with Southern Time, his “spectacular two-person original rock opera”. Rock opera squats lumpenly as an odd musical theatre hybrid that, let’s face it, “jumped the shark” at conception. Pete Townsend’s Tommy came close to making rock opera work. And […]

Okay, Fringers. Top Ten Best Comedy Duos. 1. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy 2. Bud Abbott and Lou Costello 3. Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis 4. Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders 5. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore 6. Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster 7. Mike Nichols and Elaine May 8. Tom and Dick Smothers 9. […]

Years ago, sultry-voiced pop singer Peggy Lee sang a very cynical and dark-hued “art” song head-snappingly written by Leiber and Stoller – a songsmith duo better known for a slew of classic rock ‘n’ roll pulse-lifters. The song in question, entitled: Is That All There Is, chimed chorus lyrics which immediately came to mind after […]

Bud Hunter is an affable guy who loves dogs and has filled his life with them. “Dog Town” is a monologue filled with humorous stories and colour pictures of the many mutts that have wormed their way into his heart. There’s a pie-loving three-legged rottweiler, an angry spitz/beagle cross with the habits of a cobra, […]

I’m the first to admit that I’m a big fan of Dartmouth’s Saints Alive! Theatre Company. There’s just something about talented young people singing and dancing their hearts out that I think is inspiring. That being said, I can’t rave about their latest production “Life is a Cabaret.” It could be that I enjoyed last […]

For Joe Mal (performed by gifted clown Rachelle Elie) an open casting call for roles in a production of Shakespeare’s psychodrama-tragedy Macbeth is a chance of his lifetime. Now smudging 60, Joe has been a longtime student of the play he says. And as such, (deep cautionary intake of breath here), he has some ideas […]

2 B (Or Not 2 B) is a bewitching, very funny two-hander about the strange seduction of Franny – a once promising visual artist specializing in the use of bodily fluids on canvas; now, despairingly, reduced to an increasingly empty existence as an inconsequential dead end receptionist: a hapless loser in love and life. When […]

I can’t imagine how it feels to have to perform comedy in front of an almost empty house. After all, laughter feeds and fuels comics. But Toronto’s Neil Cameron pulled off a high-energy set with less than a dozen people in attendance, and I can only imagine he’ll be even better in front of a […]

In a festival crowded with one-man shows, “Swelle” is destined to stand out because of a tour de force performance by Sarah English. The play is actually four pieces created by four different female writers. The first is told by a nerdy teenage girl as she broadcasts her video log—a conceit I found far more […]