HicksBiz Blog
Category: arts reviews
arts reviews
Peter and the Starcatcher
Citadel Theatre, Maclab Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
April 1 – 23, 2017
Tickets - $30 and up
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
Call it a qualified success.
The Citadel Theatre’s version of the 2012 Broadway hit Peter and the Starcatcher is full of fun, friendliness, theatrical invention, imagination, silly puns, song, dance, vaudeville, panto, slapstick and so on.
But the show – based on a book that is another author’s prequel to the classic Peter Pan – is just too frantic, trying just too darned hard to squeeze a monster into a mere two hours.
The 14 actors each have a main character, and they all perform multiple other characters. The show dashes from scene to scene – in the first half, on board the two sailing ships the H.M.S. Neverland and H.M.S. Wasp somewhere in the late 19th Century when Britannia ruled the waves, in the second half on the mythical island that will become Neverland.
The theatrical challenge is a ...
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Crazy For You
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
March 4-26, 2017
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
It was an audacious daring experiment, even as Momma Mia was being awkwardly built around a framework of ABBA songs.
In 1992, playwright Ken Ludwig (Lend Me A Tenor) took the classic hits of George and Ira Gershwin from the 1920s and 1930s, stitching them into a successful new Broadway “jukebox” comedy musical that utterly captured the spirit and humour of the songs and their era, and, at the same time, had a strong story line – not just a series of sketches hung between songs.
The Citadel’s version of Crazy For You, in partnership with Theatre Calgary, works like a damn.
It’s big, boisterous, full of fun, silliness, and word-play groaners. The plot is pure fluff, but it’s fun fluff – show girls, dreams, cow pokes, crazy impresarios, veering in locale from New York City to Deadrock, Nevada.
The dancing is vaudeville tap-dancing ...
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Kinky Boots
Broadway Across Canada touring show
Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium,
February 14 to 19, 2017
Tickets $30 to $180
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Watch out Edmonton!
If the whole city starts rockin’ and rollin’, dancin’ down the streets and prancing about in outrageous sequinned boots, it’s because the energy and spirit of Kinky Boots exploded out of the Jubilee Auditorium and is cascading across Edmonton.
Not since Hairspray has a touring Broadway show been this much fun, so high calibre and so socially relevant. Kinky Boots is a bodacious blend of sassiness, social message, social relevance, an intriguing story-line, great songs (thank you Cindy Lauper), astounding choreography and bigger-than-life talent.
How did this plot get dreamed up? Its bones are about a reluctant heir of a dying English shoe-making factory, who accidently discovers a niche market for drag-queen boots. But for the business to surviv ...
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Disgraced
Hope & Hell Theatre Company
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jan. 21, 2017 to Feb. 5, 201
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, HicksBiz.com
Tickets
Disgraced is a damned fine play, with its current production at the Citadel Theatre being good, but not great. It is part of the Citadel’s season, but is produced by the Toronto-based Hope and Hell Theatre Company. In other words, nobody from the Citadel Theatre had any input into what’s on stage.
If one of the Citadel’s past cadre of directors – artistic director emeritus Bob Baker, former associate directors James MacDonald and Tom Wood – had been at the artistic reins, this would likely have been a great show. All three directors are masters of this particular style of play. (I can’t yet include new Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran. His directorial debut won’t come until the 2017/18 season.)
Disgraced is one of those relentlessly contemporary dramas that ticks off all ...
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Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes
Cardiac Theatre at the ATB Arts Barns
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
A retrospective by GRAHAM HICKS, HicksBiz.com
If you missed Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes, performed at the ATB Arts Barns by the Cardiac Theatre company from Jan. 10 to 22, 2017, I’m sorry for you.
It was an intriguing one-man show. One live actor, Bradley Dore playing Peter Fechter, with three pre-recorded voices coming from strategically located loudspeakers in the PCL Studio Theatre. The voices were those of Peter’s mother, father and best friend, and almost as important to the show as Peter Fechter himself.
This intriguing theatrical experience was conjured up by leading young Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill. Fechter is a true historical figure, who at 18 was one of the first East Germans attempting to flee from East Berlin to West Berlin across the recently constructed Berlin Wall in 1945. Fatally wounded by East German guards in the no-man's land along the wall, he bled to death ...
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Annapurna
Shadow Theatre production, playing at the Varscona Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
January 18 to February 5, 2017
www.shadowtheatre.org
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.ca
This production of Annapurna, at the Varscona Theatre through Sunday February 5, is as satisfying an evening of theatre as is possible in Edmonton, or anywhere for that matter.
The script, beautifully written by American Sharr White in the Sam Shepard tradition, is deeply cynical as it explores loss and loneliness, self-destruction, terrible life choices and emotional pain.
And it has the most beautiful rays of redemptive sunshine, moments so tender as to make one weep in some strange mixture of joy and sadness.
And, in marvellous synchronicity with its many other themes, in a very intelligent way, Annapurna is extremely humourous.
The title, by the way, refers to one of the highest and most difficult-to-climb mountains in the world. P.S. it’s a metaphor.
So veteran Shadow Theat ...
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Fortune Falls
Book by Jonathan Christenson and Beth Graham
Music and Lyrics by Jonathan Christenson
A Catalyst Theatre Production, presented in association with the Citadel Theatre
At the Citadel Theatre’s Maclab Stage (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)
Ticket information
January 17, 2017 to February 5, 2017
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
What, I wondered as the house lights came back up, was that all about?
How could the taut, focused scripts of the Jonathan Christenson we know and love have dissolved into the muddle that had unfolded before our eyes?
Christenson is an extraordinary story teller. In his best work, style, music, movement, sets, costumes and attitude relentlessly focus on telling that story.
Christenson’s best shows start with alienation, usually taking famous outliers of literature - Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, the hunchback of Notre Dame, Vigilante’s Donnelly family - re-telling their stories through his creative process, turb ...
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A Christmas Carol
Adapted for the stage by Tom Wood
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Nov. 26, 2016 to Dec. 23, 2016
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Tickets at www.citadeltheatre.com, $25 to $110
Parking: Downtown Library Parkade, $10 evening
Nobody does old/miserable/crotchety/irritated in Canadian theatre better than Tom Wood.
So what a treat to have Wood back, after a seven-year absence, to play Scrooge in the 17th annual production of A Christmas Carol at the Citadel Theatre.
No slight on the other Scrooges in the intervening years, they’ve all brought much to the role.
But Wood is a living, breathing, real Scrooge. He is Scrooge incarnate, and his transformation through miserable, to regret, to despair and finally redemptive joy is an intense, rich, emotional experience.
It helps that Wood has a certain intimacy with the role. He wrote it! Wood created the Citadel’s stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol, originally w ...
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The Red King’s Dream
Shadow Theatre production on the Varscona Theatre stage
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Oct. 26 to Nov. 13, 2016
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicks biz.com
Prolific Edmonton playwright David Belke has written plays encompassing modern farce, introspection, historic figures mixed into the contemporary world, humour, confusion and much more.
He, with Shadow Theatre artistic director John Hudson, chose to re-mount one of Belke’s most introspective and serious plays, 1996’s The Red King’s Dream, for the opening play of Shadow Theatre’s 2016/17 season in the new Varscona Theatre.
The Red King’s Dream is a quiet play – a two-hour introspective meditation on the nature of romantic love and infatuation. An awkward, intellectual loner, buried in books, is kindled by passion as he falls in love with a woman with similar tastes who happens to live in the apartment building.
While The Red King’s Dream is an interesting tre ...
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Million Dollar Quartet
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Oct. 22 to Nov. 6, 2016
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
Tickets
Holy moly, Lord have mercy, great balls of fire, it’s a miracle!
Well, not quite. But damn near.
Somehow, the Citadel Theatre found the perfect four actors for its production of Million Dollar Quartet, running through November 13, 2016 on the Shoctor Stage.
Piano virtuoso, singer and madcap actor Christo Graham embodies the spirit, cheekiness and looks of Jerry Lee Lewis.
Guitarist, singer and actor Kale Penny plays every complex Carl Perkins’ guitar lick as if were his own.
Singer/actor Christopher Fordinal’s reincarnation of the young Elvis Presley will be a life-long meal ticket.
Singer/actor Greg Gale impersonates (in the best sense of the word) Johnny Cash’s mannerisms plus possesses a melodious baritone that is uncannily Cash-like.
The context of the ...
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