List rites
Every Brilliant Thing Beaconsfield Carriage House, Charlottetown January 19, 2023 PEI theatre often hibernates in January, even a January as unna...
Tag: Sean McQuaid
Holiday viewing
12 days of Christmas movies
[et_pb_section admin_label="section"] [et_pb_row admin_label="row"] [et_pb_column type="4_4"] [et_pb_text admin_label="Text"] After last...
Man of the deeps
Beneath Springhill: The Maurice Ruddick Story
Watermark Theatre - November 30, 2022 Dark events can cast surprisingly bright shadows. That’s true of the 1958 Springhill mine disaster, which br...
Horsing around
The Two Horsewomen
The Guild, Charlottetown - August 19, 2022 Theatrical world premieres in PEI tend to be either plays written by local artists or shows staged at o...
Dancing while it burns
The Fourth R: reduce, reuse, recycle, Revolutionize
Island Fringe Festival ‘22, Havenwood Dance Studio, Charlottetown - July 29, 2022 Way back in the golden pre-COVID summer of 2019, Toronto, Onta...
Drawing power
The Drawer Boy
Watermark Theatre, North Rustico - August 12, 2022 Watermark Theatre artistic director Robert Tsonos is clearly having fun. Doing the pre-show intr...
Triple plays
Island Fringe Festival 2022 (ensembles)
Various venues, Charlottetown, PEI - July 28-30, 2022 While five of this year’s Island Fringe Festival (IFF) productions were solo acts, the res...
Five times one
Island Fringe Festival 2022 (solo shows)
Various venues, Charlottetown, PEI - July 28-30, 2022 With a random drawing determining which applicants enter the Island Fringe Festival (IFF), t...
A Voice from the past
Hey Viola!
The Mack - August 8, 2022 The Charlottetown Festival has a long history with jukebox musicals, plays that bundle preexisting popular songs together...
Tragedy made fun
Educating Rita
Watermark Theatre - July 15, 2022 Best PEI theatre summer ever? As of mid-July, I’ve seen three deeply disparate shows at three different venues...
A great night out
Tell Tale Harbour
Charlottetown Festival, Confederation Centre - June 29, 2022 Hopes aplenty are pinned on Tell Tale Harbour, both the fictional East Coast town and ...
Ship-wracked
Beyond the Sea
Victoria Playhouse - July 2, 2022 Fusty old fuddy-duddy that I am, I’m seldom the hippest hepcat regarding the quirks of modern slang; but I have...
Lung story short
LUNGS
Watermark Theatre - April 21, 2022 English playwright Duncan Macmillan’s 2011 two-hander Lungs flies by in a fleeting 80 minutes, yet it spans a ...
A Christmas Carol
Review | By Sean McQuaid
Charles Dickens’ classic 1843 novella A Christmas Carol has many virtues, among them its near-infinite adaptability. Everyone from the Muppets to th...
12 Days of Christmas TV
Holiday Viewing | BY Sean McQuaid
Christmas TV often focuses on beloved classics that people watch every year, like Charlie Brown and the Grinch; but there’s plenty of less famous TV...
A small, dark gem
Tuesdays & Sundays
Tuesdays & Sundays is a theatrical sucker punch to the gut; a swift, sharp jab that knocks the wind out of you. A dense one-act play running just ...
History swings
Greetings: An Army Musician’s Message Home
Kings Playhouse, Georgetown It’s a long way to Tipperary (or so the old song goes), and lately it’s felt like an even longer way to Georgetown....
Rice-capades
Cottagers & Indians
Watermark Theatre, North Rustico A long time ago in a province far, far away, I spent nearly a year living and working on a remote northern First N...
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...
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
Fringe Oddities
Despite his oft-muted mug, your somber scribbler likes a fun time. The Island Fringe Festival’s literally random selection of plays tends to be hit-...
Review: Island Fringe Festival 2019
Fringe Femmes
The Island Fringe Festival’s selection of shows via random drawing tends to produce an eclectic mix, but this year’s slate yielded an interesting ...
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...