Category Archives: Previews

For the love of the screwball: Going, Going, Gone! by comedy star Jana O’Connor at Teatro La Quindicina

Posted on June 18, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls@12thnight.ca The hero of Going, Going, Gone! Jana O’Connor’s new 30s-style screwball comedy, is an antiques dealer: “shy, uptight, uncommitted, afraid to make a wrong move in life” as the amused playwright describes him. Everything, in short, that … Continue reading →

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Prying opera out of its standard choices: Opera Nuova’s 2017 festival

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca The performance venue is unusual. The stagecraft is unusual. And there’s this: I think we can safely call the Opera Nuova production of Eugene Onegin (opening Thursday at the west end Oasis Centre) a moving experience. … Continue reading →

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June is bustin’ out all over (two Carousels spin onto the stage this month)

Posted on June 14, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It was never an easy musical — to cast, to act, to sing, to dance, to stage. And its dauntingly dark source, a 1909 play by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnár (Liliom), wasn’t exactly a natural for … Continue reading →

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Márquez meets Buster Keaton in Speechless, at Improvaganza

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Even by the globe-trotting, frontier-busting standards of the  international improv comedy world, Speechless is an unlikely creation. Two acrobatic circus-trained improvisers from Bogotá, Colombia and a female DJ from Winnipeg? Come on, the odds-against factor doesn’t … Continue reading →

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The fine art of the spontaneous: Improvaganza invites the world

Posted on June 10, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

    By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca True fact about the big wide world of improv comedy: it’s smaller than you think. It’s the eve of an international comedy festival that will demonstrate this, in ways you didn’t see coming. Rapid … Continue reading →

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“A very Nextfest sort of play”: Meet two creators

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “What would be the craziest thing that could happen next?” That’s the question — a very Nextfest sort of question — that playwright Ashleigh Hicks asked herself, moment by moment, as she was writing Garnish, premiering … Continue reading →

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Get splashed by the new wave of artists: Nextfest is back Thursday

Posted on May 31, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “OMG, it’s the best part of the year!” — Stuart McDougall of In Arms Collective, creators of Nest Hold that thought. It’s the eve of the innovative arts festival that tosses the leading question “so, what’s … Continue reading →

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Psst, are you going to Brad’s party? Everyone We Know Will Be There

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Hey everybody, we’re invited to a party at Bradley Freeman’s house. He’s turning 17 and, yay, his parents are away somewhere, on a yacht. So he’s having people over. In Everyone We Know Will Be There: … Continue reading →

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O, to be a kid again: yes you can! The Kids’ Fest is back

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Imagine a world where a real live man unzips a suitcase — from the inside — and climbs out. Where a big-mouth wiseacre Dog breathes life into a gentle story about tree planting, one acorn at a … Continue reading →

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Consulting the fortune teller at Teatro: let’s ask Mark Meer

Posted on May 24, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It was a pungent, not to say eye-watering, debut. Fifteen years ago, an actor/improviser of expandable comic talents got enlisted by Teatro La Quindicina for a new screwball comedy. The play? Vidalia, named for the sweet, … Continue reading →

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