Vancouver, BC: Everything was Blasted ! The protagonists, the set... and I. Knowing what was about to explode on stage before my eyes, I fortified myself with a pre-show glass of wine but that in no way softened the impact of this play. The anger, fear, acts so violent that I closed my eyes, hit me like the ton of the rubble that fell from the ceiling.  Yet Kane's characters are so appallingly grotesque that mercifully I felt emotionally distanced from the pain I was observing.

Vancouver, BC: Not so very long ago, playing strategy games on my computer was my favoured form of procrastination, and SimTower kept me distracted for hours at a time. The game objective was to build a towering skyscraper, with hotel rooms, condominiums, offices and restaurants, increase the resident population and keep the Sim people happy. Still today I keep calm in interminable lineups by remembering the Sims turning pink with frustration and then red with rage, as they waited for elevators to carry them down to their offices or up to their homes. As the hours progressed through days and nights, lights in the building units would switch on and off when the Sims woke or went to bed.  I was reminded of this, watching Tim Matheson's video projection of lights flicking on and off in the high rise buildings behind the new PAL Theatre.

Vancouver, BC: In the course of a recent, somewhat spirited discussion of contemporary theatrical genres, it was suggested that I was rather strongly Aristotelian in my appreciation of drama. That is for me, Mythos (plot), Ethos (character) and Dianoia (thought or theme) always trump Opsis (spectacle). Arabian Nights is the second play this month (the other being The Andersen Project - see Rants, Raves and Reviews May 21st) which kept me musing about the dichotomy of plot versus spectacle.