en-us http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/27056 2008/05/08 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/27056 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/27066 2008/05/08 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/27066 Paul Morrissey lately, thanks mainly to his repeat appearances on The Late Late Show. The low-key baby-faced comic got his first TV spot on the CBS late nighter just a little over a year ago and has been asked back three times since, which is apparently some sort of record.  ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/26794 2008/05/07 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/26794 Pelléas et Mélisande, but in the Canadian Opera Company’s current production, a first-rate cast, intriguing design and insightful direction bring out the work’s strange beauty and make it dramatically compelling. This is the first time this critic has been so drawn into this opera’s world of mystery and half-light.  ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/26811 2008/05/07 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/26811 Pauly Shore has always been that someone who grew up in the comedy clubs of L.A. came away from it seeming to have learned so little. Which was easier to overlook back in his heyday as MTV’s braying, sun-baked party boy — so often playing to crowds of heavily Kahlua-ed Spring Breakers — or even as the star of Bio-Dome. No, he wasn’t especially funny, but he had a shtick and, to give the guy his due, he went quite a distance with nothing in his tank except “bu’uddy” and some entry-level buffoonery. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/26430 2008/05/02 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/26430 Dead Ahead, the latest play by Ed Roy, falls into the latter category. Thematic elements are not connected and the ending is left open. This may be ideal for a discussion but does make fully satisfying theatrical experience. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/26433 2008/05/02 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/26433 Marcel St. Pierre, raising a glass of scotch in the air. “I almost missed it.” The toast is aimed at the upcoming birthday of Bad Dog Theater and the confession — that its artistic director didn’t notice that its fifth was coming up until a few weeks ago — is understandable. The Bad Dog name only goes back to 2003, true, but its lineage reaches back to the Trudeau years, and much of the time in between was spent trying to keep the name-changing improv house in business.

]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/26429 2008/05/02 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/26429 Alias Godot is the kind of show that could be lots of fun if it were an improv sketch. “Show why Godot never arrives in Waiting for Godot,” someone might call out, and the troupe proceeds to show us the bowler-hatted Godot being detained and questioned by two corrupt cops, incongruously enough, in modern-day New York. It would be funny in a stupid kind of way, but then we’d move on to the next sketch. Unfortunately, Gall’s play is two hours long — about four times the length a two-joke comedy should be. Gall shows no new insight on Beckett’s play, so one wonders what the point is of watching a great play diluted via television cop shows instead of watching the real thing. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/26247 2008/05/01 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/26247 Idomeneo (1781), in which Canadian soprano Measha Brueggergosman makes not only her OA debut but also her first performance in a Mozart opera. The production is so well sung, directed and conducted it holds you in its grip from the first note to the last. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25741 2008/04/28 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25741 Macbeth. With outsized performances and costumes, it cleverly illuminates some scenes and makes a ribald farce of others. Though entertaining, the approach tends to defuse the tragedy. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25696 2008/04/25 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25696 Cranked at the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People. Aimed at an audience aged 13 and up, the 45-minute play by Michael P. Northey with music by Vancouver MC Kyprios and beats by producer Geoff “Stylust” Reich tells the tale of the rise, fall and rise of Stan, a fictional freestyle rapper known as “definition.” The cause of his fall is his addiction to a form of crystal meth called “crank.” ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25653 2008/04/24 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25653 The Mikado. Gilbert and Sullivan’s operettas have always been prized for their cleverness and wit, but what’s most striking about this production is the sheer beauty of the music making. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25655 2008/04/24 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/25655 http://eyeweekly.com/city/scrollingeye/article/25332 2008/04/23 http://eyeweekly.com/city/scrollingeye/article/25332 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/books/article/25099 2008/04/22 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/books/article/25099 Bodhrán-heavy soundtrack and ruddy-haired protagonist, Daughter of the House is not exactly subtle about its Hibernian origins. But, rather than rehashing folk memories of the flight from famine, playwright Lucy Brennan, an Irish emigrant herself, addresses a rather more modern post-war diaspora. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/24932 2008/04/21 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/arts/article/24932 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/24936 2008/04/21 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/24936 Bitter: A Rant-cum-Melodrama about Gay Marriage would be more accurate.   ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24923 2008/04/20 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24923 Terrorism, written by the Presnyakov Brothers before 9/11, premiered in Moscow in 2002 and after its successful run in London in 2003, has become the prescient duo’s most performed play. In its six tangentially related scenes the Presnyakovs’ suggest that terrorism, far from being an extraordinary circumstance pitting Us against a mysterious Other, is actually a fact of everyday human interaction if only we would recognize it as such.   ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24925 2008/04/19 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24925 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24921 2008/04/18 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24921 The Barber of Seville (1816) is a pleasant enough evening though one rather low in dramatic and musical excitement. ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24457 2008/04/17 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/24457 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/24170 2008/04/15 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/24170 Rough House is a show to lighten your mood and brighten your day. It is a wordless 50-minute exercise in game playing between mime Andy Massingham, who won a Dora for his performance in 2005, and lighting designers Rebecca Picherack and Michelle Ramsay. The show is in Toronto on a cross-Canada tour. If you’ve missed it before, see it now.   ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/23939 2008/04/11 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/23939 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/23948 2008/04/11 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/theatre/article/23948 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/23603 2008/04/09 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/23603 I'm The One That I Want and follow-up Notorious C.H.O. had — by the time of Revolution and in particular 2005's Assassin — given way to a good deal of pandering non-comedy and speechifying that didn't so much tell jokes as it told her adoring fans what they wanted to hear.  ]]> http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/23320 2008/04/07 http://eyeweekly.com/arts/comedy/article/23320