NS reviews

Reviews of theatre and art in Nova Scotia and beyond

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Wildlife Recovery Concert this Friday at Scotiabank Centre: tickets $20 to $200

The Nova Scotia music industry is coming together to present the Wildlife Recovery Concert at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax this Friday, June 9, at 7pm. All proceeds will be donated to the United Way. Performing artists are: Adam Baldwin & The Jenny Wren, Classified, Dave Sampson, Deedee Austin, Jah’Mila,Jenn Grant, Joe H. Henry, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Kim Harris, Matt Mays, Neon Dreams and Rankin MacInnis. Tickets go on sale […]

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Pottery and Portraits on the South Shore

Before the tragic fires of this past week, I got a chance to go down to the South Shore twice to see two art shows by highly talented, Nova Scotian women and, coincidentally, have two different servings of fish cakes. CHESTER: Marla Benton, whose exhibit From Table to Wall is at the Chester Arts Centre just through today, let her imagination loose on her functional pottery for a large and […]

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Billy Elliot More Than Worth The Wait; tickets still available

Delayed by the pandemic for three years, Billy Elliot storms onto the Neptune Theatre stage in an exciting whirlwind of steeped emotion, powerful dance and heart-throbbing music. This excellent, high-octane production of the Tony Award-winning musical has an unusually high number of actors for Neptune – 32 – and is helmed by the same team behind Neptune’s 2018 hit Mamma Mia! – director Jeremy Webb, choreographer and co-director Ray Hogg […]

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Revel in landscape, see art in Point Pleasant Park, go to Thursday’s Starry Night Gallery Hop

Halifax artist Hallie Watson immerses you like a bee in a giant, dazzling, flower garden in her solo exhibit Northerly, at the Chase Gallery, Nova Scotia Archives, to April 28. This uplifting show of stunning, large-scale paintings and oil pastels bursts with colour, energy and beauty as one feels the artist herself reveling in the landscape of her family farm called Northerly in Mono, Ontario, near Orangeville. It’s a landscape […]

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Ballad of the Motherland powerful, insightful, chilling

Writer-director Annie Valentina’s 70-minute drama, Ballad of the Motherland, is a chilling, darkly funny and very powerful play about a Canadian blogger kidnapped by a Russian separatist in the Ukraine in 2014. Based on a true story, Valentina, who is Bulgarian/Canadian, explores little-known international politics, what it takes to survive under extreme circumstances and the pursuit of identity for Canadians whose parents are from different cultures but have told their […]

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Falling Head Over Heels for Fall On Your Knees

Fall on Your Knees is gripping, haunting, dazzling theatre. Sixteen actors, seated at the back of the stage with four musicians, step out of the murk of the past to blaze as the tormented Piper family – a family of music, madness and malignance – in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s bestseller set in 1890s Cape Breton and jazz-age New York. Beautifully and clearly adapted by award-winning, Halifax-based playwright Hannah Moscovitch and directed […]

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Mark Delaney makes Every Brilliant Thing “somethin’ else eh?”

Mark Delaney has nerves of steel. The Sydney actor, all alone, surrounded by strangers in a brightly lit church basement with tape on the carpet and salt stains on the floor, conjures up a story of sadness and survival and it’s hilariously funny. “Something else eh?” a woman says to me, a complete stranger, at show’s end. The magic trick in British playwright Duncan Macmillan’s much-produced, 75-minute Every Brilliant Thing, […]

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In Lieu of Flowers: a powerful, poignant, poetic new play about grief — with lots of comedy!

Faly Mevamanana as Eddie and Allister MacDonald as Erin in Alison Crosby’s In Lieu of Flowers. (Stoo Metz) For a play about grief, In Lieu of Flowers is remarkably funny as well as spiritually deep. Cape Breton writer Alison Crosby’s 90-minute play is a striking and powerful journey into grief – something everybody experiences but no one wants to talk about. This world premiere, running through Sunday as a Neptune/Highland […]

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These kitties are not making nice: Mathew Reichertz delivers an amazing, immersive, comic book, art experience

Dated February 2, 2023 Mathew Reichertz puts viewers inside a graphic novel in giant murals of fighting cats, tumbling kids and a mysterious motorcyclist at Hermes Gallery. This enchanting exhibit, wrapping up Sunday with an artist talk at 3 p.m., is playful, beautifully painted and a great fusion of narrative and contemporary art with a dark, urban edge. The gallery, 5682 North St., just below Agricola, is open today, Saturday […]

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Punch Up: an hilarious tragicomedy about comedy itself

Kat Sandler’s Punch Up, co-produced by Matchstick Theatre and Hello City! at the Bus Stop Theatre, is a madcap but meaningful comedy and a laugh riot in spite of its voyage into despair. If you’re looking to get out of your own head and laugh and laugh, this 2014 Canadian hit is an indie must with six pay-what-you-can shows tonight through Sunday (https://www.tickethalifax.com/events/130423137/punch-up-by-kat-sandler). Sandler creates an explosive situation when a […]

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