Casting its spell
To celebrate its 12th year of presenting Broadway fare to Vancouver audiences, Uncle Randy Productions pulls out an old chestnut—but gives it a new spin. Its revival of the rock musical Godspell, at North Van’s Centennial Theatre from November 8 to 18, finds a contemporary troupe of actors arriving at an old theatre, then falling into the hippie-heyday roles and hit songs like “Day by Day”.

Ukrainian harmony
The Ukraine has given us elaborately decorated Easter eggs, folk dances that really kick it, and truly transcendent choral music. Most of us have seen the first two art forms, but now, the acclaimed Kyiv Chamber Choir makes a rare visit to acquaint us with the third. In a show Sunday (November 5) at the Ryerson United Church, they’ll sing everything from sacred music to selections from a millennium’s worth of Ukrainian compositions. Their last concert in Canada, at the George Weston Recital Hall in 2005, was so good it’s now available on CD.

Juliet is the son
In Shakespeare’s R&J, New York playwright Joe Calarco’s reimagining of Romeo and Juliet, four boys in a repressive Catholic boarding school play all of the characters. For them, just reading the script is a transgressive act. Calarco says his reframing isn’t about homophobia or homoeroticism; it’s about blind, youthful passion. Jack Paterson, who did such a fine job with Julius Caesar last season, directs this MD Theatre Co-op production, which runs at the Beaumont Studios from this Tuesday (November 7) until November 18. Josh Drebit, Jason Emanuel, Chris Fassbender, and Omari Newton perform.

The buzz hive
A new way of tasting theatre promises to be honey-sweet. From next Thursday to Saturday (November 9 to 11), in a giant warehouse space at 304 Dunlevy Avenue, 11 theatre companies will contribute to one wild evening. Each company will perform its own show in its own separate cell and those cells will cluster around a central café and bar. Audiences will be able to view as many of the offerings as they like, but only 20 people will see any show at a given time. We’re talking about some of the best of Vancouver’s alternative theatre companies here: Boca del Lupo, Electric Company, Felix Culpa, Leaky Heaven Circus, neworldtheatre, The Only Animal, Radix, Rumble Productions, Theatre Replacement, Theatre SKAM, and Western Theatre Conspiracy. Swarm on down.

Asian invasion
Comedy is reaching such heights these days it seems as if everyone’s putting on theme tours. Whether it’s the Comedians of Comedy (alternative), Just for Laughs tour (festival faves from Montreal), Blue Collar Comedy (southern hicks), Kings of Comedy (African-American), or the Latin Kings of Comedy (uh, Latin), promoters are cottoning on to the fact that there’s a large, untapped comedy market. The latest caravan to roll through town is the A-List Comedy Tour, the “A” representing the largest and most peopled of the seven continents. The tour, which touches down at Vancouver’s Funny Bone at the Plaza of Nations, features the best and brightest Asian-Canadian comics, including Ron Josol, Sugar Sammy, Jeffrey Yu, and Paul Bae.

Diverse dance
The best thing about a mixed dance bill is that there’s sure to be something for everyone. Then there’s the fact that the numbers are short: if a piece turns you off, you know it will be over soon enough. But the odds of enjoyment soar when the lineup is as solid as the one for Static. Among the performers for the ninth installment of the Connecting Community Dance Series are Ballet B.C.’s Donald Sales, flamenco maven Rosario Ancer, bharata natyam dancer Sudnya Naik, contemporary movers Desiree Dunbar and Anne Cooper, and Rhakki Sinha and Gurpreet Sian, who specialize in bhangra. Check out the sure-to-please show at the Moberly Arts & Cultural Centre tonight to Saturday (November 2 to 4).

Beatles with a string section
The Fab Four’s music goes highbrow as Vancouver symphony musicians accompany the Classical Mystery Tour, this Friday and Saturday (November 3 and 4) at the Red Robinson Show Theatre and November 12 and 13 at the River Rock Show Theatre. The concert features a quartet of mop-topped impersonators (some scooped from the Broadway hit Beatlemania) backed by a full orchestra on 30 of the Beatles best-loved tunes.

Bang a gong
Gamelan, the court music of Java, is a uniquely sophisticated and entrancing style, so it’s no wonder that it’s been exported worldwide. In the past few years, however, a lot of non-Indonesian gamelan ensembles have switched focus from replicating Javanese sounds to coming up with new hybrids of their own, and one of the most adventurous is Vancouver’s own Gamelan Madu Sari. Having already recorded one batch of cross-cultural tunes on its excellent New Nectar CD, the SFU-based ensemble will premiere its next selection at the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre on Saturday (November 4).