The Best Brothers has received a lot of great reviews, but one that really stands out for director Dean Gabourie came from a woman in a coffee shop in Stratford, Ontario where the show had its debut in 2012. “She said that anyone who has a brother, a sister, a mother or a pet will […]
Theatre
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Five ways to Macbeth
Macbeth is coming to Neptune, but not in the way you might expect—director Ken Schwartz has reimagined it as a five-actor enterprise, with Jeremy Webb as the titular would-be king, and actors Francine Deschepper, Sarah English, Margaret Legere and Jeff Schwager juggling multiple characters apiece. Deschepper, playing Lady Macbeth and others, says the balancing act is […]
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‘night Mother lets it go
Sherry Smith has seen a lot of plays over the years, but there’s only one that has rendered her speechless. “I saw ‘night, Mother in New York in 1983, and when I left the theatre, I actually couldn’t speak. It was that powerful.” Now Smith is directing the LunaSea Theatre production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning […]
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Fatty Legs’ unbreakable spirit
It’s been almost four years since Xara Choral Theatre presented a version of Christy Jordan-Fenton and Margaret Pokiak-Fenton’s children’s book, Fatty Legs, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Halifax. Anyone who saw it then can attest to its beauty and power. “The reception Fatty Legs got in 2011 was overwhelming,” recalls Xara’s co-artistic […]
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The Addams Family’s deliciously death-obsessed
They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky. They’re all together ooky—The Addams Family. Buh-da-da-dum. Snap, snap. That pesky little ear worm will be familiar to viewers of the 1960s TV series The Addams Family, about the deliciously death-obsessed Addams clan. The show, which featured characters like the hunched and hairless Uncle Fester and Lurch, […]
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Edge of Glory
Director Emmy Alcorn has high praise for Stephanie MacDonald. “She’s riveting. So connected. So focused. What she has goes way beyond just talent.” MacDonald, a two-time Merritt Award-winning actor, showcases this talent in Mulgrave Road Theatre’s production of Watching Glory Die, directed by Alcorn. The play, written by acclaimed Canadian playwright Judith Thompson, is inspired […]
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The Seagull takes flight
Could there be a more fitting play than Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull to launch the graduating class of Dalhousie’s Fountain School of Performing Arts? The show’s director, Tanja Jacobs, doesn’t think so. “This play explores what it is to be an artist and to want love and life in the arts. That’s very much what’s […]
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The Cave Painter goes deep
“How could you not want to understand the world?” That question, asked by an aging, questing artist named Dianne, is a central one to The Cave Painter, Don Hannah’s one-woman show about art, religion, love, loss and growing old. The atheist, bohemian Dianne (played by Jenny Munday) is facing life alone after her fundamentalist Christian […]
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Pillowman talk
If Martin Scorsese, Kafka and The Brothers Grimm were to collaborate, the result would be something along the lines of Martin McDonagh’s macabre and funny The Pillowman. “This isn’t the kind of play you see often in Halifax,” says Theo Pitsiavas, who stars with Jackie Torrens, Mary-Colin Chisholm and Matthew Lumley. “It’s filled with gritty, […]
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Chillin with Villain’s Theatre
If “Vile Passéist Theatre” never rolled easily off your tongue, you’ll be happy to hear that Halifax’s Renaissance-loving theatre company has changed its name to the infinitely more pronounceable The Villain’s Theatre. “After five years as a company, we’re experiencing a kind of rebirth,” explains artistic director Dan Bray “We decided that a new name […]
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Encounters at the opera
Encounters is a collection of six short contemporary operas about what happens when two people meet by chance. This is the first opera staged by the newly formed Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University and it promises lighthearted and funny entertainment. The collection was first presented at the University of Toronto’s New Music […]