Theatre

Sweet things were definitely on the menu this last weekend.  While Annie played in the ‘burbs, a little closer to home Christmas on the Air opened at Pacific Theatre.  A definite throwback to another era, this Midnight Theatre Collective production offers up a charming story for those looking for something a little kinder and gentler this holiday season.

Thirty-three years ago Annie made its Broadway debut and twenty-six years ago it saw a more local debut as the first production at Richmond’s Gateway Theatre. While perhaps not quite as timeless as some of the other holiday favourites playing Vancouver stages right now, it still has a certain sweetness that will appeal to audiences looking for its optimistic message.

No, that is not the clatter of eight tiny reindeer on the lawn that you hear, it is more likely the sound of Burl Ives turning in his grave at the thought of 8 Reindeer Monologues being presented to Vancouver audiences this holiday season.

Seems there is a trend afoot at Vancouver’s two major theatre companies as another theatrical mash-up takes to the stage, this time at the Vancouver Playhouse, with a fascinating re-invention of the 1945 Noel Coward penned film, Brief Encounter.

The homeless living in Stanley Park will come as no surprise to Vancouverites.  But Bigfoot and aliens?  In the fertile mind of playwright Hiro Kanagawa, all three live happily amongst the trees in The Patron Saint of Stanley Park, a family-friendly tale based on the stories of Saint Nicholas of Myra, protector of children and the real-life model for our modern Santa Claus.

The delightfully campy Legally Blonde, The Musical comes to Vancouver in March of next year but here's your chance to get tickets before anyone else!

The funny people at Vancouver’s TheatreSports are at it again, this time with a brand new holiday show, Off-White Christmas.  And while the first half is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from this 20 year old Vancouver institution, it is the second half of the show that shines like the Star of Bethlehem, and the talent of the actors is put to the test.

Once upon a time, long before the sex and violence of television or the latest Hollywood blockbuster, children were told bedtime fairy tales complete with monsters, cannibalism, zombies and even incest.  Over time these fairy tales, unlike their modern entertainment counterparts, became watered down and some were all but lost.  In The Secret in the Wings, on stage at Langara’s Studio 58 until December 5, 2010, playwright Mary Zimmerman resurrects a septet of these little known gruesome tales, in a terrifically stylized production that is a delightful antithesis of shows traditionally seen this time of year.

I suppose one might be forgiven in thinking that Point B’s production of The Fastest Clock in the Universe has more to do with Stephen Hawking than an exploration of human cruelty amidst our obsession with age and beauty.  But with lines like "fuck the milk of human kindness and welcome to the abattoir”, it doesn’t take long before we realize that Philip Ridley’s play is about to take on a whole different meaning to a brief history of time.

There may be something rotten in Denmark, but certainly not at the Havana Theatre last night as The Honest Fishmongers Equity Co-op presented an engaging production of Hamlet that helped us forget we had just spent nearly three hours in the small confines of this indie theatre space, on chairs that have seen better days.