Theatre

Song and dance for the tortured soul

Alice Walker What do you do when you’re trapped in a Buenos Aires prison? You fantasize about movie stars, of course. That, at least, is how Molina—a gay window-dresser in prison for “corrupting a minor”—has gotten through his darkest hours. When Valentin, a hunky Marxist revolutionary accused of attempting to[Read More…]

In Goethe-inspired opera, a fatal attraction

Opera of Montreal Shortly after the curtain rises on Opera of Montreal’s production of Werther, a young boy wheels a bicycle across the stage, laughing and carousing with his friends. The bicycle remains onstage through the first act, occasionally pedaled by the boy but mostly left in a corner, untouched[Read More…]

Before there were hipsters…

Holly Stewart Though it usually operates on a smaller scale, this week Opera McGill will debut a big-budget, big-cast version of what is arguably the world’s biggest-name opera: Giacomo Puccini’s La Bohème. “It’s the world’s favourite opera, in some way,” says Patrick Hansen, the director of McGill’s Opera Studies program.[Read More…]

Rewriting the classics

Perhaps inspired by the trials of his conflicted protagonist, director Max Zidel ambitiously attacks Aeschylus’ three-part tragedy in The Oresteia Rewritten, now on at Players’ Theatre. The result of his efforts: a powerful and unexpectedly fast-paced reproduction full of sound and fury. From early on in the play it is[Read More…]

The Tempest

Many of the films that will be contending in this year’s Academy Awards were released during the holiday season. For this reason, we bring you a rundown of the best movies from December 2010 that you should be sure to catch in theatres before school starts taking over.

Don’t cheat on the queen

Sophie Silkes  As a broke college student, attending an opera can be jarring and strange: spectators are dressed to the nines, songs are sung in languages most of us don’t understand, actors are wearing over-the-top costumes, and melodramatic stories are being unfurled before us. But if you suspend your cynicism,[Read More…]

The show about writing a show

Something about musical theatre is inherently ridiculous. It has to do with the fact that, whenever you see people singing onstage, you can’t help but notice that you’re watching a performance. As Julien Silverman and Dane Stewart point out in their director’s note, there is a long-standing tradition of “self-reference[Read More…]

Beauty and its discontents

Adam Scotti “I like what I got, and I’m gonna protect that. Wouldn’t you?” After Steph finds out that her boyfriend Greg has just called her face “regular,” she delivers the play’s first monologue, in which she explains why, though still clearly in love with Greg, she had to go[Read More…]

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