Box to the Future
Old Stock: a Refugee Love Story
Remember Certs? Sporting dueling designations as a breath mint and a candy mint, their “two mints in one” slogan endured for decades. That old lin...
Author: Sean McQuaid
Astounding Feets
Island Fringe Festival 2021: Inner Urban Ecosystem/Kings and Queens
Dance shows are often part of the Island Fringe Festival slate, but this year they make up a whole third of the schedule: two of the six shows are dan...
Solo Flights
Island Fringe Festival 2021: Cowardice/Head War
The Island Fringe Festival typically includes solo productions, and this year it has two: one-woman show Head War (written and performed by poet Sadie...
Playing Dead
Island Fringe Festival 2021: Deenie’s Exit/Playground
Island Fringe Festival entries often go small, partly for reasons of logistics like financing and travel. This means many shows featuring one or two p...
Review: The Gin Game
“Oh boy, cards! The paper rectangles old people think are fun!” —Luz Noceda, The Owl House Often the odd man out in my extended family, I di...
Review: Off The Grid
As a COVID-haunted world emerges haltingly from hiding, mixed feelings loom: excitement over resumption of quasi-normal life, anxiety over the risks t...
Public domain
Stray Shorts Stories | by Sean McQuaid
Already a dwindling rarity by the time of your hoary historian’s youth, animated cartoon shorts were a fixture of movie theatres for decades, flouri...
Double Feature
The Brackley Drive-in
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” So says the oft-quoted line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities; and it feels pret...
Ladies Night
Fascinating Maritime Ladies
Fascinating female trios abound in pop culture, from classical icons like the mythological Fates and MacBeth’s witches to modern examples like Charl...
Review: Doubt
Second chances
The best and worst part of live theatre is how fleeting it all is. Every single performance is a one-time-only, one-of-a-kind entity all its own; and ...
Review: At the Dog Leg Turn of the Road
Out of the past
My late, great grandfather Charles MacDonald – family man, checkers champ, covert dog fancier – was a World War II combat veteran. I don’t remem...
Review: Punch Up
Underground Comedy
PEI’s fringe theatre imports often consist primarily of whatever lands in the Island Fringe Festival each summer; but new local company Desert Islan...
Review: The Shame of the Meek
The Shame of the Meek is a deceptively simple show, yet also oddly complex. It’s simple structurally and conceptually – it’s a show about unwed ...
Review: Salt-Water Moon
Moonstruck
One sees certain plays repeatedly in the reviewing racket, especially classics, and the best of these hold up well. It’s partly a matter of pure, en...
Review: Island Fringe Festival 2019
Magic vs. Science
Fringe 2019 features productions that are deep, dark, moving, profound, thought-provoking, stunningly original and/or just plain bizarre. My second-fa...
Review: Real Estate
Playing House
Your reckless reviewer often likes going into a show cold – knowing as little as possible about the play and the players beforehand, so as to make t...
Review: Murder Inn
Good Inn Tensions?
Georgetown, sweet Georgetown – the town so gorgeous they named it George-ish (almost certainly not their official motto, though we haven’t looked ...
Review: Meanwhile in Ward 16
Brilliant Mistakes
“I was a fine idea at the time,” Elvis Costello once sang. “Now I’m a brilliant mistake.” That lyric’s been on your susceptible scribbler...
Review: Culture Shock
3x2 = Funny
Lorne Elliott usually works alone. He’s not antisocial – the witty, wild-haired comedian/actor/writer/musician has dabbled in many collaborations ...
Review: Anne of Green Gables – The Musical™
Sweet 19
For your anglophile analyst, the Charlottetown Festival’s endless run of Anne of Green Gables – The Musical™ feels a bit like the British sci-fi...
Review: Into the Den
Personal Trainor
Accomplished PEI stage and screen veteran Dennis Trainor is a longtime ensemble contributor who is seldom billed as a solo star. A far fuller picture ...
Review: 12 Angry Women
Fiercer by the Dozen
Reginald Rose’s 12 Angry Men started life as a 1954 TV special. It’s been reworked in a host of stage and screen incarnations since then, but TV...
Review: 7 Stories
Magnificent Seven
Your old-timey observer’s been at this reviewing racket long enough that I inevitably cover certain plays more than once – and Morris Panych’s s...
Review: An Improvised Christmas Carol
Yule Be Amazed
Charles Dickens’ classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol has been reprinted, adapted, imitated and lampooned endlessly, so coming up with a new spin ...
Review: Four One-Act Comedies Did by Rob MacDonald
We Was Robbed
Ye olde reviewer last visited The Guild to watch a musical based on an Anne of Green Gables novel, so it neatly bookends the month to be back there a ...
The Wrestling Play
Grappling Schnook
Island audiences tend to give standing ovations to just about everything, regardless of the quality of the play or the performance. I’ve seen standi...