On visits to New York over the past few years I have been fortunate to have family living in Manhattan so its been a while since I tried out any mid-town hotels.  This time I decided to check out one of the Starwood Hotel Group's boutique hotels, prior to embarking on a cruise out of New York. For my 3 nights (actually more like 2.5 nights as I caught a red-eye into Newark) I chose the Element New York Times Square West. Interestingly, this was first suggested to me 2 years ago by one of my readers, in a comment on my New York in Winter 2012 story.

Vancouver, B.C. One of the things I love about my job as a theatre reviewer is the opportunity to see off-mainstream shows by small independent theatre companies. It is also often an opportunity to learn about small funky theatre spaces which these independent companies find to host their productions. And that's how on a rainy Vancouver night I found myself driving round the vicinity of Main and Québec Streets, trying to find a street parking space reasonably close to The Shop Theatre, which I discovered is in the old production space of the now sadly defunct Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company.

Vancouver, BC: It was a packed house last night for the closing performance of Nicolas Billon’s Iceland at Studio 16, and deservedly so. Iceland is a gem of a theatrical piece and it was sensitively directed and beautifully performed by Kathy Duborg and her cast of three. Iceland is one of three plays that make up the trilogy published as “Fault Lines” that won Billon the 2013 Governor  General’s Literary Award for Drama. The other two plays are Greenland and Faroe Islands.

Vancouver, BC:  A fourteen year old girl sent to juvenile detention for throwing an apple at a postman was incarcerated for five years until she ultimately asphyxiated herself in her cell while being watched by on-duty correctional officers. The correctional officers were "following orders not to intervene until she stopped breathing."

Vancouver, BC: I am an unabashed fan of Annie, the spunky, independent little optimist, and ANNIE has one of my favorite feel-good musical songs, Tomorrow. Valerie Easton and her large cast and crew have put on a polished and entertaining production and I enjoyed every minute of it.  This is the 25th Anniversary of the Royal City Musical Theatre, and this production is a worthy representative of the work.

Vancouver, BC: Wow! I really enjoyed this show. The multi-talented cast of Rachel Aberle, Lauren Bowler, Ben Elliott, Steve Charles, Marlene Ginader and Kayvon Kelly have strong  voices and great moves. I missed the premiere of Chelsea Hotel in 2012 so this was a completely fresh production for me and I was thoroughly captivated.

Vancouver, BC: Long time readers of ReviewFromTheHouse may remember my stories of having to overcome my sometimes incapacitating claustrophobia to undergo magnetic resonance imaging  (Claustrophia and your MRI) and to stay calm on being trapped in a New York elevator. What  I have never disclosed is that my first experience of severe claustrophobia occurred when crawling through a confined tunnel lke Floy Collins, but in the Cango Cave system near Oudtshoorn in the Western Cape of South Africa.

Vancouver, BC: Although I have laughed my way through my copy of Time Flies, a collection of very funny, very short plays by David Ives, I have neither read nor seen any productions of his longer works and the unexpected complexity of this play took me by surprise. Rapid changes of character and switching power dynamics kept me on the edge, alert to the varying nuance of posture and voice so as not to miss a beat of the performance. Sexy and provocative - who knew that the act of guiding a long leather boot onto a leg could be so erotic? Kinky comedy indeed, this is no average guy-meets-gal comedy.

Disembarking in New York after 12 weeks of travel in South America and South Africa, I had two days to catch some theatre before traveling home. Unlike my usual systematic approach approach, this time I had not booked any tickets. So on Saturday morning I ventured into the theater district with a list of possibilities and the objective of seeing one drama and one new musical. I was lucky enough to get good last minute seats for both Kinky Boots and The Assembled Parties.

New York, NY. My dilemma: a one day stopover in  New York en route to a dance cruise; only one time slot open to see theatre, and the usual cornucopia of tempting on-stage offerings. But when I saw that Manhattan Theatre Club was staging a version of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of The People”, this play became the instant pick for my one theatre spot.  Some years ago I had the privilege of studying Ibsen’s 12 realist prose play cycle with an Ibsen scholar. My favorite  was not any of his rather depressing  plays, where the protagonists shoot themselves or fall off a bridge or a tower (can you name the plays?) or even the ambiguously optimistic  "A Dolls House"  but it was in fact "An Enemy of The People." The thematic thread of holding steadfast to scientific fact and principle despite massive pressure to sugar-coat the truth appealed to me. 

I am not a rabble rouser. I don't sign petitions or march in parades to support  or protest against ideologies or political actions.  I don't subscribe to any particular socio-political ideals but make up my mind based on how I see the reality of a specific situation. So why did I, along with a whole lot of people, head off to hear a reading of Homegrown by Catherine Frid, on the same night  in eleven different locations across Canada?

Vancouver, BC:  Under the able direction of Amiel Gladstone, with a luminous Megan Follows leading an accomplished cast of actors, Melissa James Gibson's  This sparkles with humour while touching on the internal angsts and troubled relationships of this group of thirty-something friends.

Vancouver, BC: It's a tad ironic that the theme of the first play in this production, Mexico City, could be stated as "reality  does  not  always match up to expectations," because this precisely sums up my reaction to this show.

Vancouver, BC:  Yesterday I found myself on the opposite side of an interview - interviewee rather than interviewer. I was checking in for my last shift in the Main Press Centre and unbeknownst  to me, lurking around the check-in desk was one of the volunteers who write the daily Volunteer Newsletter. On hearing that this was the last of my 15 shifts he begged, pleaded and cajoled (alright I exaggerate) until I agreed to have a picture taken for the newsletter. 

Vancouver, BC: This production of The Vic is an ambitious undertaking by the young Terminal Theatre company which staged its first production in the summer of 2009. For this, their third production, they might have been better served had they chosen a less convoluted play.

Tucked away on the corner of Venables Street and Victorian Drive, a block east of  buzzing Commercial Drive, the creaky old Vancouver East Cultural Theatre had a quaint charm for theatre lovers despite its uncomfortable seats and awkwardly located washrooms.  Originally an old abandoned church that was developed into a theatre space some thirty-seven years ago, the facility suffered from structural and technical limitations and uncomfortable working conditions for casts and crews and has now been extensively renovated.

Vancouver, BC:  Three cheers for the new Wine Bar  at The Cultch. The Olympic road-closures are at the stage where part of Pacific Boulevard and both the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts are closed to traffic so to get from my place anywhere involves ferreting out new routes.  To make sure we were in time for our Micro-Theatre adventure, we set off early along the E. Hastings route to Commercial. Although until just beyond Main Street traffic moved at a snail's pace, after that the pace picked up and we were actually at The Cultch with a good half an hour to spare after collecting our tickets. So we settled down comfortably in the Wine Bar to enjoy a glass of wine while we waited to be called for our show.

Vancouver, BC:  When I initially read the description of The Passion Project as "video art installation- meets theatre" I wasn't sure what to think about it other than that it would be novel and different. After seeing it, I concluded that think is the wrong word. It is more a sensory experience than a cognitive experience.  And what on earth do I mean by that?  Let me try and articulate my experience.

Vancouver, BC: I really enjoyed United Player's production of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, although I did find myself wanting to hand Nickolay Ivanov a strong dose of some psychotropic  medication and a referral to a psychotherapist. But that's the infuriatingly hapless self-absorbed character that Chekhov created.

Vancouver, BC:  As a computer-nerd/technophile of long-standing I was intrigued by the concept of taking the multi-player video game concept into the theatre and eagerly anticipated the experience of my personal avatar interacting with some 200 other avatars to conjure up  a new society in BestLand.

Vancouver BC: My insanely busy life living and writing on theatre, food, travel, and of course dance - the doing of it , not the writing about it, leaves me little time to go to music events but when I read about Sõ Percussion in the PuSh brochure, I could not resist going to this performance.  Rhythm is what my life's about at the moment - I feel the beat - all the time. Maybe a different kind of beat. I'm talking samba, chachacha, waltz, tango but rhythm trumps melody when dance and dance music plays all the time when I am at thome. 

I was especially looking forward to going to see this show  because I anticipated that for several reasons it would be a bit of an adventure . Firstly this would be the first production I would see in the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre in the Simon Fraser University complex, newly built on the old Woodwards site. As it turned out it is still so new that I was directed by a security man to an entrance to the theatre complex through a gap in the construction fencing that still surrounds much of the area.

In a unique and rare conjunction, within a four day period, I saw two newly created theatrical works, dealing with similar themes but approached very differently - Beyond Eden and The Edward Curtis Project. After seeing The Edward Curtis Project, I stayed to hear the talk back session in which members of the cast succinctly summed up the common themes of these plays as "obsession and  appropriation".

Vancouver, BC:  Just imagine. You dream  an "impossible dream" for 25 years and finally one exhilarating night, your dream explodes into  reality in a visually and musically stunning production. Beyond Eden had  its world premiere last week on the Vancouver Playhouse stage as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and it is  a "tour de force".  Bruce Ruddell  and his creative collaborators, cast and crew can truly be proud of how his dream has been actualized.

Vancouver, BC: Acclaimed Canadian playwright, Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon and moved first to France and then to Montreal, arriving in Canada  at the age of fifteen.  From 1975 to 1990 Lebanon was ripped apart by a devastating civil war in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese died, and massive atrocities were committed by the Syrian-backed PLO Muslim militias and Lebanese Christian militias alike.  Beirut, a once beautiful city known as the Paris of the East, was in ruins. For a brief time in his childhood, Mouawad lived in a country at war, and both of his plays that I have seen, Scorched and Tideline, reflect his overwhelming concern with the lives of those who lived through the events of that time.

Vancouver, BC:   I loved this show. From the minute the "sunlight" of a new day began to brighten Pam Johnson's meticulously detailed set, the spacious kitchen and dining area of an obviously well-to-do family's home, I was drawn into the unfolding routine of daily life in the Dexter home. The design team, Johnson, Marsha Sibthorpe (lighting) and Philip Clarkson (Costumes) gave director Marti Maraden an attractively authentic environment which the characters created by Fiona Reid as Edith Dexter and Nicola Cavendish as Peggy Randall, the "daily", really seemed to inhabit.

Vancouver, BC:  Start with a script written by one of Canada's iconic playwright/actors and directed by the playwright himself. Feature two compelling powerful female actors with hugely synergistic on-stage chemistry in a small theatre setting where every nuance of  their performance can be seen. And focus on the ebb and flow of an intimate relationship between these two women, from casual meeting, to sexual encounter, touching on friendship, love, attraction, trust and mistrust. My expectations were high - I was expecting truly to be blown away by this play. But I confess I just did not get it.

Vancouver, BC: Led by two Studio 58 alumni, director Anita Rochon, and Mike Wasko as the insanely jealous  Sicilian king Leontes, the student cast succeed in presenting a interesting and entertaining production of  The Winter's Tale. I use the word succeed deliberately because as I look back on my  reviews of other  productions of this play (Winter's Tale, Summer's Storm), I note that this play in more ways than the conventional meaning for me is a problem play, and it is a real challenge to pull it off well.

Vancouver, BC: As those of you  who have followed my recent  theatre travels and cruise adventures dancing at sea to destinations from Bora Bora to Beijing to  Los Angeles to New York, know by now, I am delirious about dance, so how could I not love a show with a song titled "The Best Things Happen While You're Dancing"?  Add some rapid-fire tap dancing, great ensemble work and music and lyrics that are embedded  in my memory bank from years back, and White Christmas makes for a delightfully sentimental evening's entertainment.

Vancouver, BC. If you have not already got your tickets to see this show pick up the phone or hit the keyboard soon because this is going to be another sellout holiday hit for the Vancouver Playhouse.

I applaud United Players for bringing this intellectually engaging play to the Jericho Arts Centre.  The work of David Hare is always good for  lively discussion on the way home from the theatre.  But this production is like having three really nice, interesting people over for dinner; and you discuss politics, doctors, psychiatry, war, relationships, sex, marriage; and they stay way too late.  There is a lot of talk about  what is really going on during the evening with very little evidence of anything but talk. 

Vancouver, BC:  Don't miss this production of  Ibsen's The Master Builder. Re-shaped with a surgical precision by Errol Durbach's concise adaptation and Gerald Vanderwoude's taut direction, it is a sharply focused portrait of a man at the pinnacle of his profession, brought down by his desire for a nubile young thing. The play may have been written in 1892, but the story is played out frequently in the media today as politicians,  business executives, perfomers and preachers publically beat their chests crying "mea culpa" as their wives file for divorce and half their assets. I tried to count on one hand such situations in the recent past but soon ran out of fingers!

The set is crappy (and very cleverly designed), the costumes are deliberately tacky, there have not been worse wigs since Dynel was invented, the props fall apart, the acting is over the top, and my cheeks ached from grinning through the whole show.  This is cheesy as an art form.  The evening is a riot of bad puns, brilliantly bad acting, great singing and fun choreography. 

Vancouver, BC:   For 75 minutes you could have heard a pin drop in the small space of the PAL theatre.  As the actors exited and the lights went to black, the words "brave, terrifying, sad"  competed in my head with "so that's the real Allan Zinyk".  I think this is the first time I have seen him playing a normal person in a straight as opposed to a comedic role, and it brought to mind a handsome Allan Rickman - as Steven Spurrier (Bottle Shock) not the infamous Snape, of course.

"We live our lives forward, but only understand them backward", says Anna (Medina Hahn) who then takes us on what becomes a waking nightmare, increasingly haunted by seemingly benign, Patrick (Daniel Arnold).  These two intensely talented actors, who are always surprising, are also the playwrights of this roller coaster ride of a play that explores the observer and the observed, the victim and the perpetrator, the dream and reality.

You take a brilliantly written script that turns the Judas Iscariot story inside out, set it in a court room, lace it with profanity, people it with some of the best actors in town, and you have a riveting evening of theatre. 

This is dance theatre that you can take your husband to….and your teens…and anyone else you can think of.   The opening offering of the Cultch Family Series is a knock-out.  The re-furbished Cultch main stage was bathed in the light of a thousand candles being arranged and moved about by the seven members of the company, the men in jeans and the women in point shoes, as the audience entered the theatre. 

Toronto, ON:   The Guardsman is a quick witted comedy about life in the theatre and acts of imitation and deception. The famous Hungarian actor, Nandor, fears that the coming of spring will prompt his famous wife Ilona to roam. To circumvent an affair with another man, Nandor performs the role of a soldier and tries to woo his wife. When she falls for him, the question becomes, who is the better actor? Did she really know after two minutes of his portrayal that it was her husband all along? 

Vancouver, BC.  Bryony Lavery 's play has all the elements that should make for  compelling theatre. An tragic situation connecting three characters - a serial killer, the mother of the girl he abducted and the academic who is studying him and others like him;   and issues that one can argue endlessly : is he evil or is he sick? Can he be forgiven,  should he be forgiven and what does forgiveness really mean?

Vancouver. BC:   The evening opened with a welcome from Brenda Leadley, the Artistic Director of Presentation House with a message about why we should protest damaging government cuts to grants for the arts, and then The Veil, written and directed by Shahin Sayadi proved to the audience why we should be taking to the streets. 

Vancouver, BC:  The Arts Club opened its 46th season with a riotously funny evening of  two plays by writers who would not at first come to my mind as writers of comedy. Peter Shaffer after all, is probably best known for Equus - a  intensely disturbing  psychological drama.   And I have never really found the Chekhov plays that I have seen or read to be exactly a bundle of laughs.

New York, NY:  I had only the vaguest knowledge about the life of Emily Dickinson, who posthumously came to be  considered one of America's major  poets.  I knew that in her latter years she had become reclusive and eventually did not leave her house but I knew little else of her history. So I  eagerly anticipated my visit to Theatre Row to see this new play by emerging playwright, Chris Cragin.

New York, NY:  The World Premiere of  The Retributionists,  a new play by Daniel Goldfarb, is presently being staged at Playwrights Horizon, which like our own much smaller Vancouver Playwrights Theatre Centre, is dedicated to supporting and developing playwrights and their works.  The production offically opens Monday, September 14 when I will be back in Vancouver,  but I managed to catch it in preview. Goldfarb, who is originally from Toronto, obtained a BFA and MFA from NYU, and now lives in New York and teaches at NYU.

New York, NY:  As a reviewer, I think it important that my readers know the biases and foibles that influence my writing.  So before I write another word about the show itself,  I have two confessions to make.

New York, NY.  Two men seated on an otherwise empty stage - the playing space surrounded by black drapes, briefly opened to reveal tall buildings on either side of a dark alley, or briefly   lluminated to create the illusion of a forest. No props, no fancy set, nothing to draw our attention away from the two Chicago beat cops, relating the events of a summer when the rain poured incessantly and  the world as they knew it  came crashing down on them. 

New York, NY:  As I took my  premium seat, center  in the 4th row orchestra ( the only way I could get a last minute decent seat to this play), the contrast between the childlike cartoon figures of  a boy standing betweeen his mom and dad, depicted on the scrim, and the play title, God of Carnage, promised an interesting show. 

Vancouver, BC:  William Congreve certainly had a way with words and is justifiably referred to as  "the English Moliere".  The United Players has chosen to open it's 50th Anniversary Season with his most famous comedy.  It is an inspired choice. The Way of the World minced into the Jericho Arts Centre last night and gob-smacked the crowd with wit, repartee, epigrams, raillery, cant and delightful double-dealing.

One of the interesting things about on-line reviews is the capacity for rapid rebuttal of comments and discussion.  I encourage people to comment on any aspect of my posts that they like or dislike. Occasionally they do.

Vancouver, BC:  Almost exactly a year ago  I watched a staged reading of an early version of Via Beatrice at the Playwrights Theatre Centre. At the time I commented on my Works in Progress page commentary that  " It is always a privilege to get a peek into the creation of a new work, and then, hopefully, to see a full production of the finished version." And it really was exciting to see the polished production that this work has become in a year.