Tag: Musical

[Victoria Fringe Festival ’15] The 11 o’clock Number Rocks, A Review

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

the-11-oclock-number-1

VENUE: Metro Studio Theatre
1411 Quadra St. Victoria, BC

PERFORMANCE DATES:
August 27th | 9:45 pm
August 29th | 10:00 pm
August 31th | 8:00 pm
September 2nd | 9:45 pm
September 5th | 5:45 pm
September 6th | 8:30 pm

LENGTH: 60 minutes

To perform improv on stage must require the talents to think fast and furious. To see that person compose a song on the fly and be funny at the same time has to be commended. In what Grindstone Theatre has provided in their show 11 o’clock Number at the Victoria Fringe Festival 2015, which included input from me (who asked for zombies), I’m very impressed at blending the ideas of a neurosurgeon discovering a miracle in what some brain cells of her boss’ daughter can do and finding a cure to an emerging Zombie apocalypse in Victoria that would even impress Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti from CW’s iZombie. Every night promises to be different, and in what I enjoyed opening night is the comedy from Jordan Ward and Dan Moser when one of them played a gender-swapped role and the two were playing off each other with ease. They even kept the act clean. And to see them ham it up behind the singer made for a hilarious contrast.

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[Victoria, BC] How to do the Nerdy Fringe 2015 Edition

Fringefeaturedimage1

Various Venues
August 27 to Sept 6
Victoria, BC

Requires Fringe Button ($6)
Tickets range from $9 to 11
Available through Ticket Rocket or at the door

I’m fairly certain that there’s more than a few staff members at the Victoria Fringe Festival who are nerds too. I’ve met one person who worked there who is an avid LEGO enthusiast and I’m sure that buried in the closet are a few NERF guns. When nobody is looking, it’ll be time to bust a move.

People not acquainted with what the Fringe is about will quickly discover that the shows are experimental in nature, and the stages used are small to accommodate an intimate performance. Anything can happen, and the idea of a festival is to give new up-and-coming talent a chance to earn their cred. There’s a few groups that have moved on to bigger shows. The Reduced Shakespeare Company got their start at Fringe and Tom Stoppard‘s play, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was performed first at the Edinburgh Fringe. In a tiny way, Evil Dead: The Musical owes its debt somewhat to this method of putting on shows. It opened in a club before making it big. Musicals are just one part of what can be experienced at Fringe Festivals, and that’s what I tend to gravitate to when the Victoria Fringe Festival caps off the Summer.

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Are Destinys Decided After Going Into the Woods to Sing and Dance?

Unless Disney fans love musicals, their adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods is not worth rushing out to see.

(or just how many D words can I use
to describe this Disney Film)

Into the Woods

Unless Disney fans love musicals, their adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods is not worth rushing out to see. Even weeks since its premiere, it’s showing signs of not necessarily being a timeless masterpiece since its Broadway debut in 1987. Although the movie version is certainly faithful to themes the creators wanted to explore, the alterations made to make it more widely accessible as a film is only one part of the problem. Although they were consulted for approving the changes, some bits were for the best and others for the worst.

In what gets explored in the film are that of each character’s darkest desires getting revealed when they enter the woods. The further they go, the more trouble they get into. And the lengthy discourse in setting up each of them (when there are six) can be detrimental to the length of the product. As a two-hour film, the struggle is with keeping audiences entertained in its prolonged pace.

The music heavy intro does not work in its set up about a poor baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) wanting a child, a needy girl (Lilla Crawford) possibly named Red demanding attention, an adventurous boy named Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) daring enough to tempt fate after selling off his favourite cow, a tawdry lady known as Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) yearning to go to a three-day ball and a wicked witch (Meryl Streep) showing that there is more to her than meets the eye. These character’s misdeeds can lead to the death of them all.

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13 Fun Horror Musicals to Mortify With During Any Halloween!

Although the number of products can fit into the palm of Frankenstein’s hand, this list of horror musicals is being expanded out to include television products that are worth rocking out to.

Horror Musicals - Frankenstein

Every Halloween, only one seminal rock n’ roll musical comes to mind to celebrate the occasion by doing the time warp with. Yes, people can head to Rocky Horror, but there’s a reasonable gambit of other horror musicals to discover. They range from screen to stage. Some are worth making the effort to seek out, and others are best regulated to the graveyard.

Although the number of products can fit into the palm of Frankenstein’s hand, this list of horror musicals is being expanded out to include television products that are worth rocking out to. The importance here is to reveal what’s fun! Rocky Horror does belong in this list, and a few items are grouped into one entry, but the goal here is to look at what else is available.

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[Victoria, BC] Rocky Horror Show Graduates to New Heights!

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

rocky-bigger-jpg

Showtimes:
Oct 24, 25, 29, 30,
and Nov 1 at 8pm
Oct 31 at 7 & 10pm

Metro Studio
1411 Quadra St.
Tickets: $30; $35 with prop kit

Reservations:
250-590-6291
ticketrocket.org

Griffen Lea, Sarah Anne Murphy, Candace Woodland, Kelly Hudson are back in the Rocky Horror Show and they are bad in Rebel Knock Out (RKO) Productions’ take of this seminal Richard O’Brien stage classic. They have taken the energy from how they played Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Janet, Columbia, and Riff-Raff from last year’s Kaleidoscope version and amped it up. The crowd (whether they’ve seen that performance or not) roared and the shadow dancers cooed at their antics. Perhaps what’s noticeable is the added energy from Woodland strutting her stuff in the tap dancing routine from “Time Warp” and R.J. Peters (Brad) really channeling his inner nerd. When it comes to special solos in a musically raunchy show, Peters certainly created some nostalgic and sombre tones in “Once in a While” to make his moment memorable.

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[Vancouver, B.C.] Young Frankenstein: Poster Boy for Transylvania Tourism

YoungFrankensteinOctober 4-6, 10-13, 2013
Waterfront Theatre

Ed Sum: Who doesn’t love the oh so misunderstood monster? Young Frankenstein, directed by Chance Newman (Evil Dead: The Musical – Northwest edition), is a classic film by Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder; they playfully gave the original Mary Shelly tale a comedic spin that many audiences adored. And Brooks gave the story a great re-imagining that even works on the Broadway stage on a burlesque style level. Although the show began its run in 2007 and it received mixed reviews by bigger name critics, that did not deter James and I from traveling to Vancouver to see a version done by the performers of Last Chance Productions.

In what we saw was a toe tapping romance and I thought this musical was a tribute to the era when Gershwin was hugely popular. To see it played in a smaller venue, I thought people sitting in “Laboratory Row” (the first seven rows) can get intimate with the performers.

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