Current Shows on Tour

Grant Canyon gets rave reviews in Winnipeg

No Tweed Too Tight: Another Grant Canyon Mystery has been selling out in Winnipeg as well. This is the third time this show has toured since being co-written by Bruce Horak and Ryan Gladstone back in 2012, based on a detective serial by the same two authors from 2003.

Next stop is the Edmonton Fringe, if you know anyone who likes to laugh, tell them to snap up their tickets fast!

★★★★★

-Winnipeg Free Press

Grant Canyon — Canyon! — is a high-profile insurance investigator from Iowa whose fact-finding mission on a whiplash case turns dark, as in noir dark, with dialogue straight out of the pulps.

Vancouver’s Ryan Gladstone plays numerous characters in this manic production and is a one-man wrecking machine who delivers a master class in physical comedy a la Bruce Campbell as he gets beat up, tortured, buried alive and drinks his way through a 60-minute mystery comedy involving drugs, diamonds, foreign agents, the mafia and his boss.

Gladstone plays off some brilliant sound and lighting engineering by Jon Paterson, who never missed a punch, gunshot, electrocution or freeze frame.

Canyon’s memory problems allow the writers some freedom with holes in the plot and wild scene changes, but it doesn’t matter. This show is insanely fun.  

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Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is selling out it’s first ever run!

The world premiere of Juliet: A Revenge Comedy has gone better than we ever could have hoped. It’s like we will completely sell out the entire run at the historic Kings Head Pub, the heart of the Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

Our next stop is the Edmonton Fringe, so if you know anyone in Edmonton, tell them to get their tickets, and fast! Here are some of the reviews we’ve gotten.

★★★★★ STARS -CBC

Ryan Gladstone’s Monster Theatre is money in the bank.

In this brand new show, written by Gladstone and Pippa Mackie, Juliet joins a bevy Shakespeare’s Suicide Girls as they try to gain agency over their lives outside of the Bard’s sharp and sexist quill.

Mackie, alongside Carly Pokoradi, channel the child Juliet and a fearsome Lady Macbeth along with Ophelia, Cleopatra and more. Gladstone plays a suitably foppish William of Stratford to a merry band of feminists in this time-shifting, mind-bending comedic confection.

It’s cerebral without ever being inaccessible. It’s comfortably cool in the handy, food-purveying King’s Head Pub venue, so you’d be daft, or slow to buy, to miss out on this sure-to-sell-out gem.

★★★★1/2

-Winnipeg Free Press

A raucous pub environment is the perfect venue for the latest hilarious offering from Vancouver’s Monster Theatre after many fringe hits in previous years.

The arc of Shakespeare’s titular character from Romeo and Juliet, played by co-writer Pippa Mackie, is followed through to the end of her play, before a quick rewind prevents her from killing herself. Instead, she meanders through some of the Bard’s other plays in an attempt to liberate these women.

Juliet finds herself befriending characters such as Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Cleopatra and Miranda, all played brilliantly by Carly Pokoradi. Together they end up confronting Shakespeare, played by co-writer Ryan Gladstone, before Juliet rewrites the Bard’s endings so the women live (mostly) happily ever after.

The interactions between Pokoradi and Mackie veer between classic Shakespeare and saucy modern-day dialogue, keeping audiences in stitches from beginning to end of the 60-minute production. The taut writing, sparse props and sound effects are bolstered by fantastic performances, which serve to ratchet up the laughs from start to finish. 

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THEATRE UNDER THE GUN is returning to Vancouver!

It’s deadline driven, insomnia fuelled creation at its best.

Theatre Under the Gun is a 48 Hour Play Creation Competition. 6 Vancouver Theatre Companies receive an inspiration package, and have only 48 hours to race against the clock and create an original piece of theatre! Hosted by Monster Theatre and co-presented by The Vancouver Fringe, Theatre Under the Gun is one of the most epic, exciting, surprising and electric theatre events of the season.

The energy is electric, the creativity spawned from the pressure of the time limit is dizzying, the evening is unforgettable. After 7 years of hibernation, it’s back in Vancouver, with a brand new batch of young, talented, ground-breaking artists.

THEATRE UNDER THE GUN

@ Performance Works Theatre

Saturday, Feb 9 @ 8pm

www.monstertheatre.com

Tickets $25 available through Theatre Wire

TICKETS!

Stay Tuned for Application Deadlines and forms!

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Who Killed Gertrude Crump? at the Vancouver International Puppet Festival

Agatha Christie Returns from the Dead to perform a Puppet Show.

Feb 13-18 @ Performance Works

Tickets here!

It’s New Year’s Eve 1899. One by one, an enigmatic cast of characters arrive by boat to the haunting and isolated Monkswell Manor. That night, famous murder mystery author Gertrude Crump is murdered… mysteriously! No one can leave until the truth is uncovered.

As the characters investigate, accuse, suspect, confess, plot, flash-back and engage in general hubbub, the audience is charged with the task of answering one simple question: Who Killed Gertrude Crump?

“…the most impressive acting feat in the festival!” ★★★★★-Kevin Prokosh, Winnipeg Free Press

“A standing ovation followed Travis’ tour-de-force performance.”- ★★★★★ London Free Press

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