History is a black box where nobody in the present can ever really know what happened in the past. Lies become truth through force of attrition, and truths are lost forever to the erosion of records. This unsteady ground is the foundation of Chocolate Moose Theatre Company’s production of Conspiracy!,[Read More…]
Theatre
La vie Boheme: AUTS’ RENT sheds light and darkness on New York’s starving artists
Sentimental is a term that is often used in a derogatory way in criticism. Strong emotions are juxtaposed with a more savvy and self-aware, or clear-headed and objective approach to human issues. ‘Sentimental’ is a label frequently applied to musicals, and this year’s Arts Undergraduate Theatre Society (AUTS) production, RENT[Read More…]
Anonymous Monsters: Players’ Theatre examines the legacy of evil in East of Berlin
Part of growing up is coming to the realization that your parents aren’t exactly who you thought they were when you were a child. They lived for a relatively long time before your birth, had their own careers, loves, and transgressions. Though that specific version of them is lost forever[Read More…]
Peer Review: Alegria Contemporary Ballet Company
Alegria Contemporary Ballet Company expresses the emotional side of dance in a way that is personal for both the dancers and the audience as the pieces capture the transformative power of dance. It is McGill’s first and only contemporary ballet company, founded in 2014 by Karen Chen and Zoë Goldstein.[Read More…]
Heartfelt, Funny, and Politically Incorrect: James Davis is everything stand-up should be
Nestled atop a bar on Rue Bishop, Comedy Works is a small and intimate venue reminiscent of old-timey comedy clubs, complete with dim lighting and an exposed brick wall. On Saturday night, the usually low-key club was abuzz, as stand-up veteran and cast member of Kevin Hart’s TV Show Real[Read More…]
McGill English department’s “In the Next Room” flicks back to a complicated era
The McGill Department of English’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) is all about electricity. The play takes the audience to early 20th century Saratoga Springs, New York, a time when on-off switches were a technological marvel, a Victorian-level of propriety was imposed on every[Read More…]
Horror and hilarity converge on TNC stage in Blue Heart
Strange and elusive energies crackle with abandon on the Tuesday Night Café (TNC) stage in Caryl Churchill’s unnerving Blue Heart, a production of two one-act plays performed as a set. Teasing apart cruel dimensions of language and longing in a theatrical experiment in form, the self-sabotaging construction of the play suggests[Read More…]
Shaking up Shakespeare: Players’ Theatre gives new spin on timeless classic in Fortinbras
Centuries after its composition, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet remains a powerful cultural force in the world. Its oft-quoted words, “to be or not to be” are particularly salient with the approach of final exams. The breadth of its impact on popular culture, ranging from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Paul Cernea’s Hamlet[Read More…]
Laughs in the loft at the Danger Dulgar Comedy Show
The Danger Dulgar Comedy Show gathers a wide variety of Montreal comics together for one Sunday every month to showcase their material to whoever will listen, and throw a few dollars into an empty pitcher. It offers comedy at its rawest, with no lights nor even a stage—just a comedian,[Read More…]
Play Review: Butcher question ideas of justice, revenge, and love
Playwright Nicolas Billon premiered Butcher last year in Calgary, having previously won the 2013 Governor-General’s Award for Fault Lines, a work of three plays including Greenland, Iceland, and Faroe Islands. While Billon’s previous plays have had darker themes, they look like comedy sketches in comparison to his latest work. Butcher[Read More…]
