NS reviews

Reviews of theatre and art in Nova Scotia and beyond

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Finding the sacred in the everyday: Ian McKinnon’s Harvesting/Time

Ian McKinnon combines the precious and the everyday in shimmering, delicate artworks in Prismacolor pencil on gold gesso on wood. The Halifax artist, who exhibited this month in Harvesting/Time at the Artists’ House Gallery, Lucky Rabbit & Co., Annapolis Royal, celebrates ordinary objects, people, the land and the sky referencing iconography in his use of gold. For McKinnon the act of art-making is sacred and these pieces are both sacred […]

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Walter Borden is Out of This World

Walter Borden’s The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time is out of this world and I urge anyone who is passionate about language and the big questions in life to see it during its mainstage Neptune run to September 25. The 90-minute show – apart from Borden’s thrilling performance – is like a crack of lightning illuminating a violent, directionless world. Borden and his characters struggle with racism, discrimination, poverty and […]

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Chills and thrills in The Stranger at Ross Creek

Ken Schwartz’s brilliant twist on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in The Stranger By Fire is a spooky and powerful tale of trauma at the individual and community level. Told around a blazing camp fire in the woods and peppered with humour, the hour and 20 minute show is riveting in plot and performance, in particular Burgandy Code’s amazing transformation from the sophisticated, convivial Dr. Bishop to the misshapen and […]

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COVID-19 postpones two plays at Ross Creek

Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company has cancelled eight performances of its 2022 summer season due to a positive case of COVID-19 in the company. Ticket holders have the option to re-book tickets for later in the season from August 23 to September 3. “For live performance companies, COVID-19 is still a very significant obstacle that we are always navigating,” said artistic director Ken Schwartz in a press release. […]

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Unity (1918): stimulating, spooky outdoor theatre about a plague much like our own

With thunder in the forecast, Two Planks and a Passion Theatre took Kevin Kerr’s Governor-General’s award-winning Unity (1918) indoors for a staged reading, its first “rain:” show of the season. Usually the 6 p.m. Unity and 9.30 p.m. The Stranger By Fire would be performed outdoors at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts near Canning, where the shows run to Sept. 4. (Two Planks Theatre | Ross Creek Centre […]

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The Tattoo: all the usual fun of circus acts and marching bands with an extra emotional kick

The Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo is surprisingly moving this year. Firstly, it’s been two years since the cast of thousands has flooded the Scotiabank Centre with its excellent, all-ages, entertainment package of heart-stopping circus acts – particularly good this year – and heart-stirring massed pipes and drums. But there’s more to it. This year the Tattoo honours the No. 2 Construction Battalion ahead of the national apology by the […]

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All in the Family: Janice Leonard, Wes Fraser, Ineke Graham exhibit opens July 6 at NS Archives

Nova Scotia artists Wes Fraser, Ineke Graham and Janice Leonard are exhibiting together in a show all about family – in dramatically different ways – at the Chase Gallery, Nova Scotia Archives, 6016 University Ave., Halifax, July 6 to 28. Bloodline, Mythica and Pieces of the Past open with a reception July 6, 5 to 7 p.m. Gallery hours are: Monday, Tuesday, 8:30 to 4:30; Wednesday, 8:30 to 8; Thursday, […]

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Digital tech in a teen thriller and a Covid parody at the Stages Festival this weekend

I sat with high school students for a matinee performance of Josh MacDonald’s hour-long, digital thriller #IAmTheCheese, a co-production by Eastern Front Theatre (EFT) and Halifax Theatre for Young People (HTYP), playing at the Stages Theatre Festival in Alderney Landing today, 2 p.m. (Alderney Landing / Buy Tickets (ticketpro.ca) This teen audience, which could have been rowdy and distracted, was completely silent –no whispering, no fidgeting, just a few gasps […]

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‘Til Death Do Us Part: Pure Comedy

‘Til Death Do Us Part, a skillful, new comedy by Halifax writer Katerina Bakolias, is serious fun and selling out fast at the Neptune studio theatre. The 90-minute play, produced by Kick at the Dark Theatre for a short run through Neptune’s and Theatre Nova Scotia’s Open Spaces program, recalls Norm Foster in its situational comedy and Noises Off! in its rapid, door-opening, door-closing pace. If you want guaranteed laughs […]

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The Aliens Rocks In A Perfect Outdoor Location

Theatre in Space is staging Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Baker’s The Aliens through May 29 in a lot behind Propeller Brewery on Gottingen Street which perfectly suits a 2010 play about a trio of disaffected, artsy youth. This is indie theatre at its best: an imaginative, experiential location, experienced and passionate local actors and a contemporary play about love and death and what it means to be a dreamer drop-out in […]

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