Reviews

Summerworks Festival: Music Preview

Posted on August 4, 2010 by Ricky in Summerworks | 2 Comments

Toronto – August usually brings a few things to Toronto – heat, the Beer Festival, the Taste of Danforth, some sort of strike, really high utility bills and the Summerworks Festival. Now in it’s 20th year in existence, the Summerworks festival celebrates the best of Toronto’s thriving indie theatre and arts scene. Recently, they have also incorporated a music portion to this festival as well and this year the lineup features an impressive list of performers. Lets take a look at some of the acts.

The Hidden Cameras

August 5th and August 6th.

It only seemed yesterday when the Hidden Cameras released their single Ban Marriage and people were saying they were like a Canadian Belle and Sebastian, only gayer. Mississauga’s favorite band, the Hidden Cameras are arguably the biggest draw at Summerworks and will be playing two shows to kick off the festival. Seeing how this is a Toronto show, look for some “special” guest appearances.

The Hidden Cameras – Kingdom Come (Hidrogenesse Remix) by ArtsandCrafts

Diamond Rings, PS I Love You

August 11th

Anyone who has seen or heard Diamond Rings will know it’s just a matter of time before the glammed up John O’Regan becomes one of the bigger indie-electro music acts around. The songs are fantastic 80s influenced synth pop and the videos are visually arresting. He’ll be teaming up with his buddies in PS I Love You for a nice showcase on Wednesday night. PS I Love You failed to make an impression on me at NXNE, but they went after Japandroids, which is a tough act to follow.

Diamond Rings – Wait & See by Royalty Central

PS I Love You – Facelove by wavelengthtoronto

Wilderness of Manitoba, The Weather Station

Aug 12

The Wilderness of Manitoba are riding a nice wave of positive reviews from their latest release – When You Left the Fire. Expect some good vocal harmonies and a bowl. I have no real idea who The Weather Station are, but my friend Jen Polk said it was a band that’s her type of music, so it’s probably quiet folky music with some nicely layered acoustics. It’s during these shows I am most afraid my phone will go off and I accidentally forget to switch it to vibrate. It’s called showinterupptphobia, I think.

The Wilderness of Manitoba – “Evening” by wavelengthtoronto

The Weather Station – “March” by wavelengthtoronto

The following bands are pay what you can acts. Here’s a quicky preview. Maylee Todd is someone I’ve seen several times and have generally come away impressed. She has a nice voice and her soul-disco-bossa music is quite unique. Laura Barrett is Wade’s eternal crush so I figure I will check her out base on that alone. I also want to see her use the Kalimba. Ghost Bees were one of the weirdest acts I’ve seen, but I am interested to see them again because of that. Also, Mark almost singlehandedly sabotaged their NXNE showcase at C’est What with his loud talking so I feel like we might have to make up for that.

For a more in-depth look at Summerworks, check out Joe’s blog: Mechanical Forest Sounds. Joe actually knows the local music scene really well and digs deep into it.

Maylee Todd – Summer Sounds by Do Right

Laura Barrett – Bluebird by wavelengthtoronto

Brian will be checking in sometime this week with a theatre preview!

Concert Review: Fool’s Gold, July 21, El Mocambo

Posted on July 23, 2010 by Paul in Everything, Reviews | Leave a comment

Toronto – Fool’s gold is another term for the mineral pyrite, so named for it’s superficial resemblance to actual gold.  Fool’s Gold is also the name of a Los Angeles based band influenced by African music and Western pop.  Being a band that is heavily influenced by African rhythms and melodies, the Vampire Weekend comparisons are inevitable, so let’s just get the obligatory Vampire Weekend reference out of the way right now.  Truth be told, Fool’s Gold seem more strongly influenced by the music of Africa and have incorporated it much more into their sound than Vampire Weekend ever has.  With driving basslines, heavy percussion, and copious use of saxophone, the six members definitely got a good groove going.  Oh, and to throw another cultural influence into the mix, most of the songs were sung in Hebrew too.

We’ve mentioned in the past how bands can use ploys such as playing acoustically or at the front of the stage to draw the audience in closer.  Fool’s Gold did utilize the front of the stage trick later in the show (and eventually came right off the stage) , but early on in their set, singer Luke Top used another technique, which he referred to as “Jewish guilt.”  Simply put, he just asked the crowd nicely if they could please come closer since they “we didn’t come all the way from LA not to see your faces.”  And it worked like a charm.  I think this was a crowd that wanted to be charmed a bit anyways.  And to dance.  And really, it’s the kind of music that’s hard not to dance to. (Note: I did not dance .. but I was tapping my foot a bit) 

I imagine Fool’s Gold would go over quite well in a festival setting – those sunny guitar melodies would probably go over even better with actual sunshine in the mix.  In addition to being well suited for a festival, I also found myself thinking they would make a great wedding band.  That’s not a slight at all.  I was at an Ethiopian wedding last summer that had a live band at the reception.  It made for a great dance party … although somehow I don’t think these guys want to end up on the wedding circuit.  Still, by the end of their set, they had a large chunk of the crowd dancing and chanting along.  That’s better than a pan full of pyrite.

Fringe Reviews: The Last Buffalo, [sic], Leacock Live!, Teaching Shakespeare

Posted on July 9, 2010 by Brian in Everything, Fringe, Reviews, Theatre | Leave a comment

Fringe fatigue is setting in, and so I think this might be the last of my Fringing for the year. Here’s some brief reviews of the shows I saw on Wednesday. All these shows are on at Tarragon, and they all have one or two performances left.

Also, big congrats to Panic Manual friends PICK OF THE FRINGE! for being one of the Fringe patron’s picks.

The Last Buffalo

The brother and son of Jimmy Quinn (Don Berns) come together to mourn him after his death. This sort of “let’s reflect on the death of <blank>” plot is pretty familiar in dramatic theatre. The Last Buffalo tries for a father-to-son and brother-to-brother relationship/love angle as it’s emotional centre, but it never gets to the level of “tear-jerker,” try as it might. Berns is ok as the dead father/brother, who pops into memories the other two characters are having, and it’s funny to hear his voice on stage, as Berns is a pretty notable voice talent for commercials and TV shows (for fun, his demo reel from PNA Agency is in the mp3 attached to this post).

But the other two get most of the stage time, and what they say never really resonates. The brother (Greg Dunham) has a long monologue about a story where his uncle was mean to him that just doesn’t pop for me, while the son (Alex Fiddes) talks a lot about his up-and-down relationship with his dad but when the two are actually on stage together, it’s really not illustrated that well.

I felt bad that when I saw this play on Wednesday, it attrached only about ten people to the 200 seat Tarragon Mainspace, but I really can’t recommend it.

[sic]

Three struggling creatives who are neighbours and friends hang around their apartment building being strange and lusting after one another in [sic]. And that’s it, really.

The appeal comes from the oddness of the characters and the quirky dialogue. The plot, such as it is, is a bit nonsensical and not the easiest to follow; to whit, I think their landlady is killed during the show, possibly by one of the three, but no one seems especially concerned about it. Every so often everything on stage will stop and the characters all look up to listen closely to what I think is meant to be their upstairs neighbours bickering, though it’s pre-recorded and not always easy to hear.

Still, the plot’s pretty secondary. All the enjoyment from the play comes from the eccentric characters and their odd interactions, marked by the staccato, smart dialogue.

Leacock Live!

Leacock Live! company Act II Studio is a Ryerson drama school for people over 50, and they’ve mounted this sort of group reading, or “reader’s theatre” as I guess it’s called, of a couple of Stephen Leacock stories. The 15 or so people on stage in period garb, ranging in age from 50 to late 80’s, tell two tales from the fictional town of Mariposa, one about the local bar’s efforts to keep their liquor license, the other about a day trip on the town’s crappy old cruise ship.

I can’t deny it’s got a certain amount of charm, and it drew a sellout crowd the day I went. I guess lot of people really love Leacock or find the idea of a bunch of older actors onstage at once reading from black binders, occasionally messing up and stepping on each other’s lines, especially compelling. I’m not sure I get the appeal. It did get a patron’s pick from the Fringe, however, so it must be doing something right.

Teaching Shakespeare

A remount of a show that’s had great success in the past by experienced Canadian playwright/actor Keir Cutler, Teaching Shakespeare is a very funny one-man play that parodies a college class on Shakespeare. Cutler’s frantic college professor on the verge of a breakdown is a great parody and I imagine a lot of people will see an old teacher of theirs in his performance.

Shakespeare is totally infallible and unquestionable; if there’s anything we don’t like in his work, it’s because we don’t fully understand it, he insists. Rhyme schemes and monosyllabic word choices are examined in ridiculous detail. He brings out the class’s student evaluations, which are full of negative comments about how he goes off on odd tangents and can never finish the assigned scene for the day, and demands to know who’s written them. Of course, he doesn’t finish the assigned scene for this “class” either, mostly because he keeps going off on wild tangents.

The funniest bit occurs when he wants to demonstrate Shakespeare’s device of having the main character of his plays disappear from the action for a while. He does this by leaving the stage. When he comes back, he gets the class, i.e. the audience, to tell him what they were thinking when it happened, the correct answers being “where is he going?” and “is he coming back?”, and then acts as though something really profound has been discovered. Cutler’s expressiveness, particularly his slightly crazed, wide-eyed expression, adds a lot, and it’s for good reason that this show, which Cutler premiered in 1999, has been a hit wherever it’s gone.

TO Fringe Review: PUBLIC SPEAKING

Posted on July 6, 2010 by Brian in Everything, Fringe, Reviews, Theatre | 2 Comments

You know, I told you people to go see this show. I told you before the Fringe even started. Judging by the very nearly sold out Helen Gardiner Phelan Theatre on Tuesday evening, it might just sell out the rest of the run, so unless you’ve got an advanced ticket it might already be too late.

And it should be sold out the rest of the way too, because this show is amazing. Chris Craddock’s new one man play starts out with him playing three seemingly unrelated characters: a heroin addict with gigantism, a young woman with a sex addiction, and a self-help guru who’s mantra is “it’s not my fault, and I don’t care anyway.” As the stories coalesce into a tale of crime, kidnapping, and the self-help guru’s seminar, you can almost forget that there’s only one person on stage. Craddock’s capacity for voices is incredible, and the sound design from Dave Clarke is amazing, even if, as Chris pointed out in the comments section of our preview, the tech for it isn’t the way they want it yet.

I’m hesitant to reveal much of the plot here for fear of giving too much away; it’s pretty intricate, and once I start writing about it I’ll probably spoil it for someone. Suffice it to say, the sex addict is the daughter of the self-help guru, and she’s the one who’s kidnapped by the addict with gigantism. There’s some ancillary characters that Craddock plays too, like the giant’s fast-talking, three-fingered boss and a police officer who gets called in to work on the kidnapping. The giant is really the hero of the story, but I thought the self-help guy was the most enjoyable. His determination to always apply his “me first” philosophy, even in the face of his daughter’s kidnapping, is so over-the-top it’s funny, and his whole method – described by the cop character as “how to be an asshole” – is hilarious. It’s also kind of discomfiting in it’s plausibility; I could actually see a self-help guru telling people that “compassion is an outdated evolutionary mechanism that has to be overcome.”

I overheard one woman leaving the theatre say she felt like she’d just seen a movie with plot twists and diverse characters. The show was a huge crowd pleaser on Tuesday night; people applauded every scene of the dénouement that showed where each character ended up, the last few uses of the “it’s not my fault, and I don’t care anyway” tagline had the audience roaring, and the standing ovation was long and loud. I still have “Bananenhaus” stuck in my head after last night’s Die Roten Punkte show, so I couldn’t say yet which show I like more. However, that show and this one are definitely my picks of the Fringe right now.

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