Alegria Contemporary Ballet Company expresses the emotional side of dance in a way that is personal for both the dancers and the audience as the pieces capture the transformative power of dance. It is McGill’s first and only contemporary ballet company, founded in 2014 by Karen Chen and Zoë Goldstein.[Read More…]
Theatre
Heartfelt, Funny, and Politically Incorrect: James Davis is everything stand-up should be
Nestled atop a bar on Rue Bishop, Comedy Works is a small and intimate venue reminiscent of old-timey comedy clubs, complete with dim lighting and an exposed brick wall. On Saturday night, the usually low-key club was abuzz, as stand-up veteran and cast member of Kevin Hart’s TV Show Real[Read More…]
McGill English department’s “In the Next Room” flicks back to a complicated era
The McGill Department of English’s production of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) is all about electricity. The play takes the audience to early 20th century Saratoga Springs, New York, a time when on-off switches were a technological marvel, a Victorian-level of propriety was imposed on every[Read More…]
Horror and hilarity converge on TNC stage in Blue Heart
Strange and elusive energies crackle with abandon on the Tuesday Night Café (TNC) stage in Caryl Churchill’s unnerving Blue Heart, a production of two one-act plays performed as a set. Teasing apart cruel dimensions of language and longing in a theatrical experiment in form, the self-sabotaging construction of the play suggests[Read More…]
Shaking up Shakespeare: Players’ Theatre gives new spin on timeless classic in Fortinbras
Centuries after its composition, William Shakespeare’s Hamlet remains a powerful cultural force in the world. Its oft-quoted words, “to be or not to be” are particularly salient with the approach of final exams. The breadth of its impact on popular culture, ranging from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Paul Cernea’s Hamlet[Read More…]
Laughs in the loft at the Danger Dulgar Comedy Show
The Danger Dulgar Comedy Show gathers a wide variety of Montreal comics together for one Sunday every month to showcase their material to whoever will listen, and throw a few dollars into an empty pitcher. It offers comedy at its rawest, with no lights nor even a stage—just a comedian,[Read More…]
Play Review: Butcher question ideas of justice, revenge, and love
Playwright Nicolas Billon premiered Butcher last year in Calgary, having previously won the 2013 Governor-General’s Award for Fault Lines, a work of three plays including Greenland, Iceland, and Faroe Islands. While Billon’s previous plays have had darker themes, they look like comedy sketches in comparison to his latest work. Butcher[Read More…]
Little Women grow up from the page to the stage
Little Women, Opera McGill’s first production of the season, is based on the beloved novel by Louisa May Alcott, as well as the opera written and composed by Mark Adamo in 1998. Set in Massachusetts in the 1860s, Little Women is brought to the stage in a way that celebrates[Read More…]
TAME: In a world of their own
TAME, a new exhibition showcasing dance by choreographer Lara Kramer immerses its audience in a world of dreamy experimentation through unconventional movement. The set of TAME was reminiscent of a first apartment, stuffed with the gleeful accumulation of garish, yet cohesive ‘70s and ‘80s ephemera. Crowded with clothing and magazines, the[Read More…]
The Viewpoint: SIN – halloween haunted house
SIN: Halloween Haunted House at the Theatre Sainte-Catherine was an intense and disturbing experience, unlike any other haunted house. The theatre’s small space was transformed into a formless nightmare that played with the audience’s vulnerability. The experience began with the participants being attached to a rope by the wrist, while[Read More…]
