NS reviews

Reviews of theatre and art in Nova Scotia and beyond

Leave a comment

Frequencies: looking out to the universe and into the human heart

In this odd time of no live theatre, the depths of winter and a spiritual hunger, Aaron Collier mines the cosmos to find meaning in life, love and loss. His 75-minute, multimedia performance Frequencies, streaming online through Sunday, is celestial and individual, philosophically expansive in ideas about time, love and grief but also a simply-told personal story. How this fusion of theatre, techno concert and digital scenography is told is […]

Continue Reading →

2 Comments

At FAST the Show Must go on – Outdoors!

Festival Antigonish Summer Theatre is moving outdoors with Robin Hood: The Great Escape in August at Keppoch Mountain. After cancelling all live productions in 2020 due to COVID-19, the 34-year-old repertory company, based in the Bauer Theatre, decided outdoor theatre was the only way to ensure live performance. “This summer, I want to make sure that we have the greatest chance possible of bringing live theatre back to our community,” […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Billy Bishop Goes to War a kaleidoscope of colour and emotion

Highland Arts Theatre turns the 40-year-old classic Billy Bishop Goes to War into a kaleidoscope of colour, passion and story in its 70-minute production, extended through Friday, 8 p.m., due to popular demand. Over the years Truro-born playwright John Gray and actor Eric Peterson have revisited their musical about the Owen Sound flying ace to combine boyish excitement and high spirits with an awareness of the horror and loss of […]

Continue Reading →

4 Comments

Tooke celebrates land, life and love in West of Paradise

Susan Tooke celebrates nature and the rural life she shared with her late husband in the exhibit, West of Paradise, at Secord Gallery, 6301 Quinpool Rd., Halifax, to Nov. 27. “This work is really the whole idea of paradise, that we had come to this amazing place, this amazing property and it was everything we could ever dream of – everything was so beautiful and so inspirational,” says Tooke. In […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

See hot, new movies and Atlantic shorts at HIFF

The 14th annual Halifax Independent Filmmakers Festival (HIFF) is free and online starting today and running to Nov. 15. Produced by the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, it includes a 14-hour film shown in three parts, Atlantic Canadian shorts, a Centre for Art Tapes digital art tour and 10 Canadian and international feature films. (To view the full program and select tickets go to: https://watch.eventive.org.) United Kingdom director Mark Jenkin’s BAFTA-nominated film […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Whitney Pier House Perfect Set for Suspenseful Drama

Highland Arts Theatre invites people into a haunted house for Hannah Moscovitch’s psychological thriller Little One, just extended to Nov. 15 because it’s been selling out. A masked audience of 15 is guided through a Whitney Pier home under renovation to watch this intense and chilling 75-minute drama with striking performances by Tayves Fiddis (Mary’s Wedding) and Bhreagh MacNeil (Werewolf). Director Alison Crosby moves her actors through dingy rooms of […]

Continue Reading →

Leave a comment

Festival Antigonish pivots to lively, radio comedy

Festival Antigonish Summer Theatre has blasted through the restrictions of COVID-19 to make a locally-inspired radio drama that is tons of fun. Hector the Spectre Steals the Show is a six-part weekly series on radio and online about the Bauer Theatre’s legendary ghost Hector. The story, written by FAST artistic director Andrea Boyd and Antigonish artist/playwright Laura Teasdale, is theatre-about-theatre with lots of funny references to Festival Antigonish, Nova Scotia […]

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Psychic astrologer’s first novel is a tale for our times

Nova Scotia astrologer and spiritual counselor Deborah Young launches her first novel, Gabriel’s Great Perhaps, Tuesday, Oct. 6, 7 to 8 p.m., with a Facebook Live event. Nova Scotia-based astrologer, writer and spiritual counselor Deborah Young found writing a novel to be the bravest thing she’s ever done. This after travelling much of the world, experiencing the death of close family members as a child and working for over 29 […]

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Bone Cage big winner at FIN Atlantic film festival

It was Taylor Olson’s year at the FIN Atlantic International Film Festival as the film he directed, wrote and starred in swept up most of the major awards. This year the FIN Stream Audience Choice awards were voted on by viewers. Bone Cage, a rural Nova Scotia drama adapted by Olson from the play by Catherine Banks and produced by Melani Wood, won the Gordon Parsons Award for Best Atlantic […]

Continue Reading →

1 Comment

Bone Cage: powerful, dark tale of rural N.S. at FIN

Bone Cage is a chilling, 89-minute film about a blighted, rural anti-hero in a small Nova Scotia town. As Taylor Olson’s first feature, it is a landmark film, screening online now to Sept. 27 through FIN Stream (Atlantic International Film Festival). Like David Adams Richards’ novels, Bone Cage exists in an Atlantic Canadian ethos of poetry and poverty, crushed dreams and doomed lives. The film stars its Halifax director and […]

Continue Reading →