Blackbird Theatre

Vancouver, BC: Blackbird Theatre company celebrates its 10th anniversary of producing classical theatre with a sparkling production of The Rivals. From their first production, Schiller's Mary Stuart starring Gabrielle Rose (tonight AKA Mrs. Malaprop), their shows have always maintained a high professional standard with excellent performances and strong technical values and this production continues in that tradition.

Vancouver, BC: I think our enduring fascination with Greek tragedies written around 2500 years ago lies in their fundamental questioning of human behaviour and morality through themes that still resonate with contemporary audiences.  The issues of justice, revenge and free will, of power, honour, guilt and innocence that permeate these plays cry out to us to examine our personal ethics and the moral choices we make in our own lives. Blackbird Theatre's production of Euripide's Hecuba, elegantly and sparely directed by John Wright, spotlights many of these ethical issues with pin point precision.

Vancouver, BC: The Triumph of Love by 18th century French Playwright, Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux, is Blackbird's fourth production and continues their growing tradition of excellent shows. It is well worth seeing. In a very accessible translation by Canadian director, teacher and founder of the Theatre francais de Toronto, John Van Burek, an ensemble of seven consummate professionals under Johnna Wright's deft direction, deliver a charming comedy. I enjoyed Wright's evocation of the 1930s through Alexander Ferguson's sound design, featuring music of Cole Porter, whose songs have for years been the mainstay of my morning shower performances. Luckily I was not in the front row or I might have joined the dancing on stage.

Henrik Ibsen's dramatic poem, "Peer Gynt", is one of those iconic works that almost everyone knows of, but very few have read. Sort of like Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past". In anticipation of Blackbird Theatre's production of Errol Durbach's "Peer Gynt" adaptation, and not having a copy of the adapted script, I took out several different translations of Ibsen's original play from UBC library to garner some insight into what it means to be Gyntish.

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Many years ago in Cape Town, as a profoundly overworked pediatric house officer and an equally exhausted new mother, I was too idealistic and naive to know that Superwoman and Perfection were mythological entities, rather than states to which one should aspire.

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Blackbird is a new Vancouver theatre company, formed under the artistic leadership of John Wright to perform classic works from the “great playwrights of the ancient and modern world”.