At Havana Theatre until May 30, 2015
The potential for incest hangs over In A Forest, Dark and Deep like a huge thunderhead just waiting for lightning to strike. If the production had a smell, it would be musky.
Sandra Medeiros as Betty in In A Foret, Dark and Deep. Credit: Angelo Renai
At The Cultch until May 24, 2015
Hell of A Girl, created by Jeff Gladstone, has one helluva girl in it and her name is Emma Slipp. She’s not a tiny slip of a thing; she’s bodacious, sexy and curvy – just the sort of woman a guy would go to hell and back for.
John Murphy as the King of Hades in Hell of A Girl. Credit: Sarah Race
At The Cultch May 23, 26, 28, 30 and 31
Writer/performer/filmmaker Jordan Lloyd Watkins is a redhead as a result of two recessive alleles doing the backstroke in his gene pool. While redheads are often the femmes fatales in film noir, in real life redheads get a bad time.
David Lloyd Watkins in Double Recessive. Credit: Jordan Lloyd Watkins
At The Stanley until June 7, 2015
For one fleeting moment I thought, “Oh, a new, locally-created musical about The Heights” – that lively stretch of East Hastings chockablock with delis, eateries, fresh produce stores, used books, a great hardware store and coffee bars galore. But no.
Kate Blackburn and Chris Sams in In the Heights. Credit: David Cooper
At Performance Works until May 17; Kay Meek Centre, May 21-29. In repertory with Miss Shakespeare.
Writer/composer/performer Tracey Power bemoans the fact that women are under-represented in the theatre. She figures it’s about 70/30 men to women. What to do?
Caroline Cave and Medina Hahn in J. Caesar. Credit: Bold Rezolution Studios
At Performance Works May 5-17 (in repertory with J. Caesar) and May 21-29 at the Kay Meek Centre
Don’t you always wonder, when you’re watching a Shakespeare play in which there are young women who dress like men in order to go adventuring, just what Elizabethan audiences must have thought?
Pippa Mackie, Tracey Power, Amanda Lisman, Medina Hahn and Erin Moon in Miss Shakespeare. Credit: Bold Rezolution Studio
At the Russian Hall May 7-10, 14-17 and 21-24, 2015
They say it takes a village to raise a child. The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret program for The Scarlet Queen of Mercy takes three pages – a small village – to list the cast, crew, production, marketing, creative, art department, music and musicians (eleven, under the direction of Jack Garton).
At the Jericho Arts Centre until May 16, 2015
Into the Woods is a very clever mash up of Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and The Beanstalk and Little Red Ridinghood.
Jennifer Suratos as the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods. Credit: Nicol Spinola
At Pacific Theatre until May 30, 2015
This Pacific Theatre production, under the direction of Morris Ertman, is intelligent, thought provoking and splendid in every respect – one of the best I’ve seen on this stage.
Ron Reed as Sigmund Freud and Evan Frayne as C.S. Lewis in Freud’s Last Session. Credit: Emily Cooper
Sweeney Todd at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre until May 3, 2015
There are small Sweeney Todds and there are big Sweeney Todds. This one’s big and rivals any production on a London or New York stage. It puts another well-deserved feather in the cap of the visionary director Kim Collier.
Greer Grimsley and Luretta Bybee as Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Credit: Tim Matheson