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“Weirdo is magic for the twenty-first century”– PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

Review of “Weirdo”
Review by Liam Siemens
Photo by Robbie T

How do you make a magic show for the twenty-first century? In the tenth century, it was about grifting small coin from a few unsuspecting traders. In the nineteenth century, Robert-Houdin formalized it, founding a magic theatre, and performing tricks that Louie Bonaparte would later contract for political ends. In the twentieth century, magic gained visibility and grew weirder: Harry Houdini would survive public burial, magicians would establish their own club (called The Magic Circle), Criss Angel would gothify it and take it to television. So what about now? Continue reading “Weirdo is magic for the twenty-first century”– PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

“Fringe is the truest, rawest and most intimate form of theatre” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

Review of “Banned in the USA” and “Unscriptured”

Review by Laura Anne Harris

Photos by Vancouver Fringe

As soon as I entered the space of Gerard Harris’ “Banned in the USA”,  I was immediately disarmed by the charm of the performer improvising a tune on the piano. The show didn’t start traditionally with lights down or music swelling, rather, Harris (no relation!) began with some light chit chat as we waited for the show to officially start. Continue reading “Fringe is the truest, rawest and most intimate form of theatre” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

“Dear Elizabeth starts deliberately slow, gathering momentum for a powerful finish” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

Review of “Dear Elizabeth”
Review by Issie Patterson
Photo by Wunderdog Theatre

Sarah Ruhl’s carefully-crafted and poignant “Dear Elizabeth” is an intimate piece for any audience with even a passing appreciation for poetry. Directed by Shelby Bushell, the show is constructed around a back-and-forth of real letters read aloud by Alexis Kellum-Creer as the witty, self-deprecating Elizabeth Bishop and Anthony Santiago as the sometimes arrogant, often intoxicatingly enthusiastic Robert Lowell.
Continue reading “Dear Elizabeth starts deliberately slow, gathering momentum for a powerful finish” – PRISM reviews the 2018 Vancouver Fringe Festival

Love and All Its Vulnerabilities: A Review of Jasmina Odor’s You Can’t Stay Here

 

You Can’t Stay Here
Jasmina Odor
Thistledown Press

Review by Sarah Richards

Jasmina Odor’s short story collection You Can’t Stay Here is about relationships. Shaky ones. They flicker between lovers and friends, but also between old homes and new ones — most of Odor’s protagonists emigrated to Canada from Croatia during the Bosnian war. Even temporal relationships are disrupted. The war, whether lodged in one’s lived or living memory, is a wedge, “a chasm between past and future.” (119)
Continue reading Love and All Its Vulnerabilities: A Review of Jasmina Odor’s You Can’t Stay Here

Cutting to the Core of Humanity: Steven Peters’ 59 Glass Bridges

59 Glass Bridges

Steven Peters

NeWest Press, 2017

Review by Deborah Vail

Steven Peters makes an impressive entrance into the world of speculative fiction with his debut novel, 59 Glass Bridges, which began as his thesis project while studying English at the University of Calgary. Inspired in part by Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, the fifty-nine bridges in Peters’ hometown of Calgary, and his memories, this story is dark, evocative, and compelling.

Continue reading Cutting to the Core of Humanity: Steven Peters’ 59 Glass Bridges

Giving Birth to Poems: A Review of Rob Taylor’s The News

The News
Rob Taylor
Gaspereau Press,  2016

Review by Steven Brown

It’s a brave thing to do, forging a plan to write a poem a week during your wife’s pregnancy when the subject of these poems will be your wife’s pregnancy.  The poet can’t guarantee what’s going to happen because anything might happen.  Life is fragile. And a bit of a gamble.

Continue reading Giving Birth to Poems: A Review of Rob Taylor’s The News