At PAL Studio until March 23, 2013
If I were an entertainment editor I wouldn’t send me to review this show. I’m just all wrong for it. Heterosexual grandmother – what could be a worse perspective from which to view a play about a gay couple – older guy/younger guy – hitting the doldrums in their ten-year relationship?
Credit: Itai Erdal
At The Cultch until March 24, 2013
Don’t see this show unless you want to laugh your face off. It’s rude, rude, rude and funny, funny, funny. If you can’t bear to hear the following blanks filled in, Broken Sex Doll is definitely not for you:
“c—k s—–g, mother-f—–g, son-of-a-bitch”. Otherwise, get ready to roll in the aisles.
Gili Roskies and Benjamin Elliott in Broken Sex Doll. Credit: Bettina Strauss
At Pacific Theatre until March 23, 2013
Even when we’re doing good works, human frailty can undermine our best intentions. In Helen Edmundson’s Mother Teresa is Dead, each character – in his or her way – is trying to do the right thing but each is fraught with weakness and/or contradiction.
Kayvon Kelly and Julie McIsaac in Mother Teresa is Dead. Credit: Ron Reed
At The Cultch. No more performances
Not often is the whole less than the sum of its parts. So while Extraction didn’t hang together perfectly, its parts were startlingly and often disturbingly informative.
Jimmy Mitchell, Sunny Sun and Jason Wilson in Extraction. Credit: Tim Matheson
At the Arts Club Revue Stage until March 23, 2013
How Has My Love Affected You? might give your tear ducts a major workout. My guest, a cool but sensitive guy, sobbed openly for the last ten minutes. I didn’t know that his mother’s dementia had progressed so far that he can’t bear to visit her in the care facility where she now lingers.
Zak Youssef and Marcus Youssef in How Has My Love Affected You? Credit: Simon Hayter
At Performance Works until March 17, 2013
Wear your flak jacket to this one and be prepared to be strafed, assaulted, flayed and blasted by words, words, words in Irish writer Mark O’Rowe’s searing, fantastical tale of three separate souls on a night-out in down-and-dirty Dublin.
Pippa Mackie in Terminus. Credit: Ian Snow
At The Anderson Street Space (TASS) until March 2, 2013
Sparkling jewel. Tiny gem. Small treasure. These all – inadequately – describe this utterly charming little piece presented by Boca del Lupo as part of their Micro Performance Series.
At Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre until March 3, 2013
I don’t believe in ghosts but if someone else wants to, go ahead. So when young artist Sarah, whose abortionist father died of a heart attack a year ago, says she is being “visited” by him, what’s the problem?
Carmel Amit and Kayla Deorksen in Haunted. Credit: Tim Matheson
At Studio 1398 until March 2, 2013
If you were watching TV in the 60s, The Girl in the Frame (book, music and lyrics by Jeremy Desmon) will remind you of I Dream of Jeannie. That half-hour show was light and romantic and silly and this is light, romantic and silly, too.
Synthia Yusuf in The Girl in the Frame
At the Firehall Arts Centre until March 2, 2013
There’s nothing funny about a 14-year-old boy shooting a 15-year-old classmate twice in the back of the head with a .22 caliber revolver. But Vancouver playwright Dave Deveau finds humorous little personality quirks in his half dozen or so characters that keep this dark story from sinking under the weight of its own tragedy.
Anton Lipovetsky in My Funny Valentine. Credit: Brandon Gaukel