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Alidor Aucoin

Sleek Cat without claws

By Alidor Aucoin on November 13, 2008

Barry Flatman  as Big Daddy, the dying patriarch of a decaying Southern family is alone worth the price of admission to the uneven production of the Tennessee Williams Classic, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts at the Saidye...

Bill Brownstein's 24 Hours

By Alidor Aucoin on October 30, 2008

Bill Brownstein never walked into a saloon he didn’t like. The Gazette’s man about town has compiled a loving tribute to  Montreal’s night spots in 24: Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a City. His interlocking chapters convey the mood of the city through the owners, employees, trend setters, and bar flys that  he¹s interviewed in 24 different locations around town...

MCA's Sympathy for the Devil

By Alidor Aucoin on October 30, 2008

On the heels of the  show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts which examines music and dance in Andy Warhol’s work, the Museum of Contemporary Art has opened a similar exhibition of its own:  Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll since 1967...

Plummer shines "In spite of himself"

By Alidor Aucoin on October 30, 2008

Christopher Plummer is Montreal’s greatest gift to the theatre, Canada’s own swashbuckling John Barrymore...

Scorching hot

By Alidor Aucoin on October 16, 2008

The hottest theatre ticket  in town these days is Scorched. Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre Company brought its stark, fluent staging of Wajdi Mouawad’s chilling  family drama,  to the Centaur Friday. As translated from its original French-version, Incendies, into English by Linda Gaboriou, directed by Richard Rose and designed by  Graham S. Thompson, Scorched is  pure, unadulterated theatre...

Warhol draws music

By Alidor Aucoin on October 2, 2008

Andy Warhol’s genius was that not only did he connect graphic design, cinema, sex, politics and pop  culture, but as a new exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts demonstrates, Warhol was also the world’s most successful groupie...

“Dangerous Liasions” is eye-filling

By Alidor Aucoin on September 18, 2008

As Le Vicomte de Valmont in the Segal Centre’s eye-filling production of Dangerous Liasons, Brett Christopher is a satin-lapelled lounge lizard with all the right moves..

Forgotten master

By Alidor Aucoin on September 4, 2008

Roman Catholic who was incarcerated in a series of Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War, Christo Stefanoff’s signature works have enduring political value because not only do they depict the Jewish Holocaust, but Christian suffering as well...

Une élégie empreinte d’ironie

By Alidor Aucoin on September 4, 2008

Dans la plus récente pièce de Michel Tremblay, Le Paradis à la fin de vos jours, présentée au Théâtre du Rideau Vert jusqu’au 6 septembre, le paradis est loin d’être ce à quoi on pourrait s’attendre. Comme le dit l’auteur, on n’y voit pas grand-chose (en fait, on voit rien pantoute, dit-il), le bon Dieu est toujours aussi occupé et inaccessible ici qu’il ne l’est pour ceux qui le prient sur Terre, et le fait de retrouver ceux que l’on aime n’est pas aussi rassurant qu’on voudrait bien le croire...

The other side of Beijing

By Alidor Aucoin on August 21, 2008

So you thought the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games were as thrilling as they were chilling?..

La tempête a rainswept “Tempest”

By Alidor Aucoin on August 7, 2008

Mother nature provided a thrilling opening at the end of July to the Repercussion Theatre Company’s English language production of The Tempest on Bonsecours Island in the Old Port...

Two by Blue

By Alidor Aucoin on August 7, 2008

“Being Frank”, Ricky Blue’s 70 minute musical cabaret about  a Frank Sinatra wannabe running at Théâtre Lac Brome until July 27, is a breezy, beguiling salute to ol’ blue eyes...

Hot Blues

By Alidor Aucoin on July 10, 2008

With two of his stage plays opening on the straw hat circuit one week apart this month, Ricky Blue  is suddenly Quebec’s hottest playwright in either language...

Couture as art

By Alidor Aucoin on July 10, 2008

Death can sometimes be a good career move for an artist. Yves Saint Laurent is a case in point. Before he died on June 1, Saint Laurent was considered a brilliant, influential designer whose career in recent years stood still as he wasted his enormous talent on cocaine and alcohol...

Hanganu is RAIC's gold medal laureate

By Alidor Aucoin on June 12, 2008

Dan Hanganu, the Romanian-born architect widely acclaimed for this design of Montreal's  Musée d'archéologie et d'histoire de Pointe-à-Callière, believes that much of today's architecture is the work of what he calls "acrobats, who make noise for a period of time, then eventually lose their spark." Many computer designed buildings are, he believes, a "vulgar expression of advanced mediocrity," and lack depth of the art of architecture...

Triennial at the MAC a coherent triumph

By Alidor Aucoin on June 12, 2008

ot so long ago you had to hang out in New York, Los Angeles or Vancouver to see contemporary North American art of any significance.  But if you want evidence that art as good and as interesting is being made by Quebec artists,  you need look no further than the Triennial at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal...

Sex at the Segal

By Alidor Aucoin on May 29, 2008

ryna Wasserman, now in her 10th year as artistic director at The Segal Centre at the Saidye, has one objective for the upcoming season. She’s put together a sensual bill of theatrical fare designed to “sizzle and titillate.” And she’s assembled a team of top-notch directors to oversee the daunting season...

"Equus" is best show in town

By Alidor Aucoin on May 15, 2008

Ignore the script's dubious psycho babble. Equus, playing in French at Théatre Jean Duceppe in Place des Arts until May 31 is electrifying drama, thrilling theatre, and at the moment best show in town...

“Odd Couple” excellent

By Alidor Aucoin on May 15, 2008

The Odd Couple is a time tested, proven draw.  The one-liners that  fly around the Segal Centre's production of the two mismatched colocataires, finicky Felix (Rod Beattie) and "divorced, broke and sloppy" Oscar, (John Evans) can still pull laughs 40 years after Neil Simon's comedy made its Broadway debut. Everyone who has ever been stuck with an offensive roommate can relate...

“Forever Yours Marie-Lou” an aria

By Alidor Aucoin on May 1, 2008

Forever Yours Marie-Lou is one of Michel Tremblay’s early works— he was 27 when he wrote it in 1970, and the script is full of youthful rage and indignation...

Surette premieres with a splash

By Alidor Aucoin on May 1, 2008

Roy Surette, who slipped into town unheralded from the Belfrey Theatre in Victoria six months ago to take over as the Centaur Theatre’s artistic director made his directorial debut at the end of March with The Mystery of Maddy Heisler.