Wake Up, Rosie! ★★★★ Adorable! This original take on Red Riding Hood is sweet, fun and clever. It’s tone is just right for a young audience (maybe 8 and under), but also highly entertaining for adults. Rosie is a hilariously precocious four-year-old (perfectly played by Melanie Patten) who’d rather sleep than play outdoors. However, circumstances […]
Neptune Theatre Scotiabank Stage
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Fringe Binge 2014: Day 4
Audiences are building as the buzz gets louder about the 2014 Fringe. So much good comedy at this year’s festival, but also an impressive range of drama from heart-touching to mind-bending. Something for everyone! Watch Out WildKat! (Yer Dealin’ with the Devil) ★★★★★ I’m telling you, run, don’t mosey, to get your tickets for this […]
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Behold! Atlantic Fringe Festival’s 2014 program
Get your scrolling finger ready, the list is a doozy! Advance tickets are now available online at atlanticfringe.ca. All tickets are $10 or less. Catch a sampler show on August 28 at Neptune Studio Theatre, one minute from about every show. Whirlwind! The 24th Atlantic Fringe program is: The Adversary by Andrew Bailey. Drama • […]
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Definitely not the opera
Most of us can remember our first foray into high school theatre. Usually in an auditorium, usually performing—with varying degrees of enthusiasm—a play carefully vetted by the drama teacher, usually about high school, usually written by someone you’ve never heard of, lucky if it was written in the last decade. Contrast that with the youth […]
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Day 7 at Magnetic North
I am a reviewer, not a critic, so I have to admit I was flattered and nervous to be invited to sit on a Magnetic North industry panel called “On Critical Discourse Within Communities”. I wasn’t sure what I’d have to add to the discussion, but as it turned out it was a productive and […]
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Magnetic North Theatre Festival 2014
It was just under a year ago that I began to hear the buzz in Halifax that Magnetic North would be coming here. I had a sense that this was kind of a big deal. Magnetic North is, after all, Canada’s only national theatre festival—-a veritable movable feast that exposes Canadians to theatre from across […]
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Spring Awakening
MJ Photographics A passionate performance by Neptune Theatre School’s Pre-Professional Training Program cast Spring Awakening is an old play (written in 1891) given a new twist by a pop rock score that allows the troubled teen characters to unleash their tortured inner monologues. It’s a work that’s both provocative and disturbing, not because of its […]
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Miss Caledonia
Peggy Ann Douglas—tomboy, farm girl and dreamer—has a plan to escape her dreary rural existence. Against the wishes of her dour father and with the help of her resourceful mother, she’ll climb to the pinnacle of the small town pageant world with the hopes of opening doors to the wide world beyond. Melody A. Johnson’s […]
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Oil and Water
Artistic Fraud’s telling of the true story of Lanier Phillips, the only African-American to survive the sinking of the USS Truxton off the coast of Newfoundland in 1942, is an uplifting, heart-touching, soul-filling experience. It’s gorgeous to behold, with fine acting, a stunningly simple impressionistic set and a powerful a cappella mix of African spirituals […]
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MIMI or A Poisoner’s Comedy
Pleasure in Paris It’s not often that “feather-light”, “sexy” and “serial killer” belong in one sentence, but for MIMI, a light-hearted musical comedy about a comely, hedonistic 17th century mass murderer, the words go well together. This is a show that’s all romp, from its opening ménage à quatre through Mimi’s discovery of the pleasure […]
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Mimi helps you pick your poison
Mary Lou Martin is not a woman who minces words. If a show is shit, she’ll be the first to tell you. So when she has high praise for something like TheatreSpeak’s production of Allen Cole’s musical farce Mimi (or A Poisoner’s Comedy)—which she is directing—it pays to listen. “This show is so funny, so […]
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Greatness awaits
Daniel MacIvor, king of the one-man show and the pared-down aesthetic, set out to explore a different theatrical vision when he conceived of His Greatness. “I wanted to have a play with a set. A door that opens and closes. A chandelier…I wanted to create a well-made play that was an homage to Tennessee Williams, […]