Fantastic Arts line-up this summer!

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON: Dan and Erin's Blog

What an incredible summer line-up of arts and entertainment in Vancouver! And these are just some of the major highlights:

Bard on the Beach:
King Lear is our must-see, set in the “near future”, directed by James Fagan Tate to the always haunting and sublime music of Joelysa Pankanea, and starring Bard Artistic Director Christopher Gaze. Other very exciting Bard shows include a 1920’s, vaudeville-esque staging of Twelfth Night, a contemporary Titus Andronicus, and a classic rendition of The Tempest, set to live string music.

Spamalot:
It’s on tour already! While our visiting production won’t include the likes of Hank Azaria or David Hyde Peirce, the show, which musicalizes Monty Python and the Search for the Holy Grail (and injects a bunch of other, classic Python humour), will be a must for those of us who tend to insert random phrases into conversation like, “I’m not dead yet,” “What is the airspeed velocity of a swallow?” or “In the frozen land of Nador, they were forced to eat Robin’s minstrel… and there was much rejoicing (yay…)”.

JC Superstar:
Theatre Under the Stars in Stanley Park takes on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s first, and artistically sharpest, work. Amazing soundtrack. Intensely deep and passionate exploration of Christ’s human side. It’ll be interesting to see if the mostly “emerging artist” cast pulls it off.

Cirque du Soleil - Corteo:
Could be the best Cirque show yet to come to Vancouver – with a stronger storyline and a design motif based more in ‘Old World’, carnival-esque characters and vignettes. This incarnation may have brought the whole phenomenon back, full-circle to what the archetypal circus was originally about. But still with all that breathtaking Cirque wonder.

Orphans:
If you read the entry a few weeks ago about auditioning for cool projects, then seeing others play the role… well, this’ll be that. But the play is fantastic – gritty, dark and bristling with raw humanity. Directed by wonderman Stephen Drover, too. I hope he cast the right guys ☺

Metamorphases:
This truly gorgeous play retells the stories of Ovid with simplicity and power. The production uses an actual pool as the central setpiece. Playing as a rental at Pacific Theatre. And, oh! Directed by Christine Willes, one of Vancouver’s finest artists, who blew us away in Prodigal Son a few years ago, and who you’ve probably seen in shows like Reaper, Dead Like Me and countless other locally shot projects.

And that’s just the theatre, folks! The surface is only scratched. Major concert stops by Oasis and Radiohead; the Pemberton Festival, with performances by Coldplay, Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend, Tom Petty, Wolfmother, Interpol, The Tragically Hip, The Flaming Lips, Sam Roberts… and more than a dozen other acts.
And let’s not forget movies! Get Smart, Batman: Dark Knight, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, Ironman, Wall-E, Tropic Thunder, Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones, the Hulk… some of these we’ve already seen, but….

And now the lament. There is no possible %&@*ing way we can see all these things. Actually, with our budget, we can only afford one or two. How cruel is that?

Okay, for kicks I just added up what it would cost to attend all this stuff. Seeing all of our movies at the Clova (our newly discovered cheapie cinema), and only seeing two Bard shows, and just one night at the Pemberton festival, it will cost Erin and I $1,078, before taxes… and gas. Sigh. I know money can’t buy happiness. But it sure can buy a lot of other cool crap.