The Tribune

I have only experienced a few perception-altering performances in my life, and Friday night’s National Ballet performance of Marie Chouinard’s 24 Preludes by Chopin and Crystal Pite’s Emergence was one of them. Prior to the performance, I was certain I was not a person who could enjoy contemporary ballet. I[Read More…]

Opera de Montreal’s season-opening production of Rigoletto’s famous tunes, virile tenor solos, rousing choruses, lavish costumes, and talented cast are well worth the price of admission.   Spectators will be rewarded with a dark, compelling fable of comedy and fate. Rigoletto is the hunchbacked, misanthropic jester in the court of[Read More…]

Offering a refreshing but often all-too-realistic presentation of human nature, Fat Pig is a new play to come from Montreal’s Through Line Productions and Theatre Sainte Catherine. Written by film director, playwright, and screenwriter Neil LaBute-best known for In the Company Of Men, and Nurse Betty with Reneé Zellweger-the script is an unforgiving portrayal of society’s vain obsession with looks and body types.

How can a good person come to a good end in a world that is, in essence, not good? This is the central question of Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Person of Sichuan, staged by this year’s McGill Theatre Lab – a full-year production class in which students work on a collaborative project that eventually culminates in a spring performance.

The air was filled with a sense of unholy curiosity at Player’s Theatre on Friday night. The playbill of Around the World with les Dames en Disdress unabashedly labels the show burlesque, a term that for most conjures up risqué mental images of scantily clad females and provocative striptease acts.

In the beginning, there was lust, and in the end, there was still lust. Alexandre Marine’s latest stage production, L’evangile selon Salome, is a harrowing tale of a struggling youth, Salome, trying to resolve internal and external conflicts. The classic tale follows a series of modern theatrical twists, boasting musically inspired moments complemented by a world of incestuous perversion, deception and homoeroticism.

Presenting student productions for over 10 years, McGill Drama Festival continues the tradition with seven new plays this year. Set in Players’ Theatre, the Festival’s second week of plays runs from March 23 to the 27th. Each night offers a different collection of two to three short plays written, directed, and produced by McGill students – a perfect sample platter of McGill’s theatrical offerings.

Director Julien Naggar’s production of The Bald Soprano transports the audience into an absurd world that nonetheless seems strangely familiar. Playing this week at the TNC Theatre in Morrice Hall, The Bald Soprano brings TNC’s 2009-2010 season to a climactic finish with its parlour-room madness, reshaping expectations and challenging presumptions.

The Daily Miracle is the second play from former Montreal Gazette copy editor David Sherman. Sherman began writing in 2004, when he was a playwright-in-residence at the Centaur Theatre by day and a copy editor by night. The play departs from the traditional fictional focus on investigative reporters to take a look at life behind the editing desk.

Seeing The Vagina Monologues can be a bit intimidating – but it’s precisely that hesitation that the show is trying to counteract. The Monologues was created as an attempt to reclaim female sexuality by making “vagina” – both the word and the body part – less taboo.