The Rover

5 Songs: Tom Waits

Tom Waits is Everyman

by Shawn Stenhouse
18.06.2013

I’m a bit of a Tom Waits freak. And by a bit, I mean a lot (a lot of a Tom Waits freak…that doesn’t make much sense). I’ve found an excuse to mention him in at least two other Rover articles that didn’t really have anything to do with him. There may be more sprinkled throughout, I can’t remember. The truth is, his music is very dear to me. Aside from maybe Bob Dylan (maybe) I can’t think of an artist that’s had a bigger impact on how I listen to music than Mr. Waits. [...]

THEATRE

Bob and his Amazing Technicolour Cast

Lyric Theatre Singers celebrated Hallelujah Broadway

by Byron Toben
18.06.2013

The Lyric Theatre Singers scored another annual hit with Hallelujah Broadway on the mid June weekend at the Oscar Peterson Hall. This superior longstanding dedicated group of amateurs under the direction of founder Bob Bachelor assembled a mosaic of fine Broadway songs. As usual, they compensated for lack of expensive sets with clever choral choreography (Mary Sarli) and costume design (Karen Pearce).

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FESTIVAL CITY

MURAL festival brings new life to Montréal

Canada's first ever festival of street art deemed a wild success

by William Funk
17.06.2013

St-Laurent Boulevard was transformed this past week as artists from around the world flocked to one of Montreal’s busiest districts, and brought works of beauty to more than twenty building facades that were once littered with graffiti tags or fading murals from before. Artists from more than seven countries were in attendance at the first [...]

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FESTIVAL CITY

Theatre of Intimacy

Trans for Matron, St Ambroise Fringe, to June 23

by Anna Fuerstenberg
17.06.2013

Written and performed by Lib Spry this is a new genre of theatre, one that I have not in all my many years of theatre experienced before. I will call it the Theatre of Intimacy. The Freestanding Room is a very small venue and Lib Spry makes use of every inch of it in her one woman show about being female and poor in this century.

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FESTIVAL CITY

And Hope To Die

Cross My Heart, St Ambroise Fringe, Mainline Theatre, to July 22

by Anna Fuerstenberg
16.06.2013

Hart-Felt Productions Cross my Heart by Alexandra Haber and Ned Cox is just the kind of light romantic comedy for which the Fringe is best suited. It has a simple plot some really good dream sequences, and terrific finish. In classic rom com style the main characters begin as mortal enemies working for a drug company which has produced a love pill.

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BOOKS

Emigration Blues

Honor, by Elif Shafak, Viking

by Elise Moser
16.06.2013

Honor is a thoroughly global novel, spanning not only decades but cultures, continents and ways of life. It also attempts to bridge the gap – sometimes wider or narrower, sometimes a bottomless abyss – between the experiences of the two sexes in a world where men control women’s lives to everyone’s detriment.

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MUSIC

Judy Blue Eyes

Judy Collins, Rialto Theatre

by Byron Toben
15.06.2013

The 60s icon Judy Collins’s famous mane has turned white to match the silver and grey toppings of a full house of fans who packed the Rialto on June 9 to remember the heady days of that decade. And the lady, at 75, is still going strong, having added an eclectic array of styles to her folk roots. With long sustained high notes, lemme tell ya, this gal’s still got pipes.

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FESTIVAL CITY

Love and Smut on an open mic

Fringe: 7th Smut Slam provides safe and sexy space for airing of your most titillating tales

by Antonio Bavaro
15.06.2013

After three years of being asked to be a (barely) celebrity judge at Montréal’s Smut Slam, I was finally able to attend this evening of publicly sharing stories about the realities of lust, life, and of course: sex. This was the seventh edition of slamming smut, and was part of the opening-week programming for the [...]

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FESTIVAL CITY

Tremblay qui chante…sans magie

Francofolies: Le Chant de Sainte-Carmen de la Main présenté au Théâtre du Nouveau Monde jusqu'au 22 juin

by Isaline Cartier
14.06.2013

Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde récidive avec un deuxième musical d’après l’œuvre de Michel Tremblay, par René-Richard Cyr et Daniel Bélanger. Présenté comme « ayant tous les ingrédients d’un chef-d’œuvre », ce spectacle ne lève pourtant pas.

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FESTIVAL CITY

Empire of Song

The National took us there and back and there again

by Sarah Fletcher
14.06.2013

The crowd buzzes on the Lachine Canal as The National starts their set. Matt Berninger cradles the mike, one careless hand raised to the sky, and begins to sing. His words are made of alternately colorful and haunting images: lemonades, demons, spiders, oceans and long socks rain down on the audience. The music stumbles out into the open air in search of… what?

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NEIGHBOURHOOD

Everything’s Funnier in St Henri

C'est Emanifique at Bar de Courcelle, St Henri

by Eman El Husseini
14.06.2013

You’ve heard what’s been booming in lower Westmount? In fact Westmount is now referred to as Upper St-Henri ( I totally made that up). Its the hood to be in right now. I am a proud resident of this ever growing quartier, but that wasn’t the case from the get go. The week I moved here a stabbing took place at the local strip club, then a year or two later someone was murdered at my cross street, and don’t even get me started on the prostitutes running the corners. The fact that not a single car ever slowed down for me is despicable.

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FESTIVAL CITY

Les Francofolies pour les nuls

Le plus grand festival de musique francophone au monde fête ses 25 ans

by Isaline Cartier
14.06.2013

À l’inverse du Festival de Jazz, qui présente autre chose que du jazz, les Francofolies de Montréal sont plutôt… francophones. Içi le Rover vous offre une liste non-exhaustive de concerts qui peuvent être très franco-fun. Si les nuits montréalaises, les festivals et la musique vous inspirent de faire la fête, tous les soirs à minuit [...]

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FESTIVAL CITY

The many meanings of Fringe, or what’s in a word?

Would a Fringe, by any other name, not smell as...er, fringy?

by Armani Martel
13.06.2013

Until recently, Fringe theatre, for me, evoked images of a tall, intimidating woman in a druid’s black robe screaming in Yiddish while some local Goth industrial tune decimated everyone’s eardrums. Or better yet, Feather Hat Guy performing a one man show where in ninety minutes he asked every person in the audience for change while [...]

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FESTIVAL CITY

Art occupies the streets

The maiden Mural street art festival takes hold of Montreal's Main June 13-16

by Meaghan Thurston
13.06.2013

Montreal is finally adding a street art festival, Mural, to its dizzying summer roster. From June 13-16, 35 local and international artists will make a canvas of Montreal’s famed Main.

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