Theatre

Theatre UBC promises a "brave and twisted approach" to Shakespeare's iconic love story Romeo and Juliet, set to play the Chan Centre Studio Theatre beginning January 20th through January 30th, 2010.

When one tinkers with Shakespeare it comes with great risk and great responsibility: the risk in alienating an audience and the responsibility in keeping true to the work.  Fortunately, for the most part, the Theatre at UBC production of Romeo and Juliet manages both, with a spirited production that lives up to its promises to tickle, thrill, tantalize & titillate.

By our calculations, my partner (and the occasional stand-in) attended some 50 theatre productions in 2009 - almost one per week - and since we only managed to scratch the surface it only goes to prove that Vancouver's theatre scene is thriving. As we look back on the year we wanted to acknowledge the best that 2009 had to offer.

Perhaps it is because I have been lucky enough to have visited the magical Haida Gwaii on a number of occasions, or maybe it was my years living on British Columbia’s north coast or maybe it is my own familial connection to a First Nations Princess and her family. But whatever the underlying reason, I was touched to my very core yesterday as I watched the Vancouver Playhouse production of Beyond Eden.

Having interviewed Jerk Director Gisèle Vienne last month I knew we were in for something different.  But what I didn’t expect was to be manipulated.

I definitely felt the irony while watching a musical about money and debt from the relative comfort of the Firehall Arts Centre with its $28 ticket price and having the Downtown East Side, and its very real poverty issues, looming outside the theatre doors. And if that weren’t enough of a downer, we are then presented with 90 repetitious minutes featuring a variety of characters we are never able to feel any sympathy towards, from a group of talented actors who are simply not given enough to work with to show their ample skills .

A hugely stylized world that encompasses both the reality of Edgar Allan Poe’s miserable existence and the imagination of his macabre mind, the Arts Club / Catalyst Theatre presentation of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe is big on visuals as it tells Poe’s own personal short story - from birth to untimely death.

Part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad and 2010 PuSh Festival, the Arts Club will present Nevermore – The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe at the Granville Island Stage from January 21 to February 6, 2010.

I must admit that for one brief moment at the end of Mrs Dexter & Her Daily, currently playing at the Arts Club Stanley Theatre, I felt a tiny bit cheated.  After all, how could a piece of theatre with the talents of Nicola Cavendish and Fiona Reid not actually have these two women on the stage at the same time?  The feeling was fleeting though as I basked in the afterglow of the two incredible, if separated, performances in playwright Joanna McClelland Glass’ rich character study about class.

Being gay in Hollywood has always been seen as an easy way to ruin a career and as a result, rumours abound as to the real sexuality of some of it's biggest stars.  This January, Stage One Theatre explores this theme in the Vancouver premiere of the Tony Award winning comedy The Little Dog Laughed.