Review: (Victoria / Opera) Das Rheingold

                                    (photo by David Cooper)
Girl Meets Wagner          
My Return to the Opera Oeuvre
by Morgan McPherson, Senior Contributor

I have an interesting relationship with opera. It used to be this strange, mystifying form of Art with a capital "a" to me. Serious stuff, foreign languages, fat ladies singing in horned helmets. I'm still a little intimidated when it comes time to go to an opera. I never feel well-enough dressed, am worried that the other patrons won't be friendly, or that I'll be out of place. Every time I go, however, I'm always reminded of what a gorgeous art form opera truly is. I've always been enchanted by the way it can feel classic and old, but also pleasantly young and fresh. I didn't know what to expect last night, but I was blown away.

Review: (Victoria / Theatre) Equivocation

(photo by Emily Cooper)

Theatre and the Truth
Equivocation Rounds Off Spectacular Shakespeare Season at the Belfry
by Morgan McPherson

Since I have started my very young career as a theatre reviewer, I have seen the process of going to a show in a whole new light.  As a Fringe Festival theatregoer since 2003, I usually thoroughly research a show beforehand and make a very conscious decision about what I see.  After my first review, I decided to surrender myself to the shows I would be attending as a representative of this publication with little foreknowledge of the details.

On every occasion, I have been incredibly pleased with the result.  The Belfry Theatre here in Victoria has put on a simply smashing season; so goes the theatre's current offering, Bill Cain's Equivocation.

The Question... Frank Cox-O'Connell and Evan Webber on Little Illiad (Spark Festival)

Skype it! - Space, Friendship, and the Trojan War
by Estelle Rosen

Frank Cox-O'Connell  is an actor and director in theatre, and a rock drummer in music. Evan Webber is a writer and performance maker. Together they have authored, co-­created or facilitated over a dozen performance works in Canada, the USA and Europe. “We task ourselves with performing what we think is real in order to see it change. We don’t always agree. Our plays are often about this disagreement. We’ve been doing this for almost ten years now in a lot of different contexts and with many different collaborators. We always make things a bit differently, but there is one thing that is consistent, which is that this theatre (EW&FCO) is about how the sometimes opposed interests and positions of different people can coexist in the same place and the same moment in time.”

CHARPO: Little Iliad audiences will experience this play in an unusual fashion; specifically why does the audience watch the show wearing headphones? And tell us about the Skype involvement.

WEBBER: Both of these decisions were made very early on. We first had the idea to make something that could function in the midst of the chaos of a festival, where there's lots of drunk people and music and other shows happening around it. We thought this kind of environment could serve to embody the spirit of togetherness that we think about in the play, the togetherness that inspires art, war and so on. For this to work, the outside needed to be bigger than the inside so the inside had to be made small. So, small audience.

Review: (Victoria) Proud

Rick Roberts (photo by David Cooper)

Introduction to Government 101
In Which the Writer Receives Her First Political Education

by Morgan McPherson

My name is Morgan, and I am a political neophyte. I’m rather sorry to admit that I’m one of those youths (although rapidly not becoming a youth anymore) that has only voted once, and seems to know very little about the candidates. Once I even got suckered into the “your vote doesn’t matter in this riding which is 95% X Party anyway” stream of thinking. For shame, right?  I’ll tell you a secret about why I’m uninterested in politics:  POLITICS ARE BORING.

Review: (Victoria) A Tender Thing

Belfry poster art

Life Long Loves
Changing Romeo and Juliet’s Stars
by Morgan McPherson

Young love. Burning, all-consuming, can’t-imagine-life-without-the-other passion that lights up the soul.  There’s no more classic example of this type of love than Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. We all know the tale.

But what if that kind of love endured over time?

Ben Power's A Tender Thing (directed by Peter Hinton), now playing at the Belfry Theatre, paints a stirring picture as to what this might look like.  Romeo (Peter Anderson) and Juliet (Clare Coulter) did not commit suicide in their early teenage years, as originally written, but they have lived their lives together and are every bit in love now as they were then. However, not everything in life can stay golden forever, and the play raises this question: what would you do for the love of your life? How far would you go?

Review: (Victoria) Fractured Fables

Preposterously Good Puppetry
The men of William Head captivate audience with highly original show.
by Morgan McPherson

Well, dear readers, I seem to be saying this with each review I write, but this show is probably one of (if not the best) performances I have seen on stage.  The main difference between this and any other production I have seen over the years? I saw this show on a prison stage.  On Friday night I attended the opening night of Fractured Fables: The Prison Puppet Project, staged by the men of William Head Institution and co-directed by Ingrid Hansen and Peter Balkwill. It was tremendous.