wake up and smell the coffee is not a re-release of the 2001 cranberries album

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

Gibsons Heritage Playhouse

Thurs 24 Feb - preview pay-what-you-can, 8:00pm

WARNING: Very coarse bleepin language & sensitive subject matter!

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee is in fact a one-man show that one of Canada's best character actors, P. Adrien Dorval is bringing to the stage at the Gibsons Heritage Playhouse over the next 3 weeks. Tonight is the preview, pay-what-you-can show so get there early to grab your seat...

Based on the critically acclaimed stage show by Eric Bogosian, this running rant of dark humor attacks some scary issues by poking fun at the fears that seem to plague society these days, while at the same time satirizing contemporary values.

Dorval will be portraying a series of characters throughout the show which include a salesman who may just be Satan, a shockingly amoral Hollywood producer and a guru with questionable motives, it seems that any and everybody is fair game for the sharp-tongued satirist - and in the post 9/11 era where paranoia runs rampant, the show provides a brutally honest but shockingly entertaining alternative to the mainstream mindset.

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee is not slapstick or a stream of jokes but it is funny and smart and brutally f*&cken angry.

Tickets are $20 and are available at Hallmark Cards (Sunnycrest Mall, Gibsons), Gaia's Fair Trade Gifts (Gibsons) & Sechelt Visitor Centre (Sechelt)

Show times:

Fri 25 Feb & Sat 26 Feb, 8:00pm

Thurs 3 Mar to Sat 5 Mar, 8:00pm

Thurs 10 Mar to Sat 12 Mar, 8:00pm

(mats 27 Feb & 6 Mar @ 2:00pm

For more information visit P. Adrien Dorval's facebook page.

Poster image is from P. Adrien Dorval's facebook page and butchered by me with the intent of showing some of the many characters in the show.

the relationship between a taxi driver and his fare

Goodbye Solo

Monday 21 Feb, Gibsons Heritage Playhouse, 7:30pm

Presented by the Sunshine Coast Film Society

Ramin Bahrani is a director who is finding a style of American cinema that is different from both Hollywood commerce and indie-Sundance drear: his new movie is an instantly gripping, funny, quietly persuasive drama that held me from the first frames.

Souleymane Sy Savane gives a superbly likeable performance as Solo, a Senegalese taxi driver in North Carolina. One day, he picks up a morose old white guy called William, played by Red West, who offers Solo $1,000 to take him to a remote and dangerous beauty spot on a certain date. The exuberant and compassionate Solo suspects that William wishes to make away with himself, and so tries to involve himself in his life, even insisting that William coach him for his upcoming Airline Flight Attendant exam.

The film has been likened to Kiarostami's 1997 classic & Palme d'Or winner, The Taste Of Cherry, which it has much in common with stylistically and thematically. However Goodbye Solo is nonetheless entirely distinctive: about friendship and perhaps also about the impossibility of ever really knowing another person.

For more information on Goodbye Solo which screens tonight at Gibsons Heritage Playhouse see the Sunshine Coast Film Society website.

Review by Peter Bradshaw at the Guardian.co.uk

Image credit: axiomfilms-shop.co.uk

stan & bren and a double-booked hotel room

A Bedfull of Foreigners, Gibsons Heritage Playhouse

Thursday 10th to Saturday 12th February, 8:00pm

(mat Feb 12 at 2pm)

The farcical British comedy, A Bedfull of Foreigners, which was brought to stage late last year by the Peninsula Players is back by popular demand tonight through Saturday.

Set in a French hotel in a small village near the German border, holiday-makers Stanley Parker and his wife Brenda find themselves sharing a double-booked hotel room with a British businessman, his German wife…AND his French mistress!

Adding to the confusion, are a hotel porter, who may or may not have been born in Lapland and subsequently joined the Foreign Legion and a lustful German hotel manager in Renaissance costume and a strangely high singing voice.

If you've been suffering from Fawlty Towers withdrawals for the past 30 years and the repeats just haven't been enough for you, then make sure you catch A Bedfull of Foreigners. It's British slapstick comedy at its best - mistaken identities, inefficient staff, hasty cover-ups, seductions and confrontations all run rampant throughout the play which is supposedly pretty darn hilarious (if a little dated). 

Check out the Driftwood Players Facebook page for more information.  

man's best friend

My Dog Tulip, Monday 7th February, 7:30pm

Gibsons Heritage Playhouse (brought to you by Sunshine Coast Film Society)

Adapted from a semi-autobiographical novel by J.R. Ackerley, My Dog Tulip is an eloquently told woofs and all portrait of Ackerley’s intimate relationship with his best friend, a cheeky Alsation.

The film’s hand-drawn animation by the directors Paul and Sandra Fierlinger and Christopher Plummer's conversational narrative combine to make “My Dog Tulip,” one of the most sophisticated dog movies ever created. Animated with 58,320 beautiful minimalistic drawings and swirling pastel colours, the film’s quaint and unassuming look both perfectly suits the story and narration and belies its more risqué elements.

With next to no dialogue, directors Paul Fierlinger and Sandra Fierlinger rely on Christopher Plummer's extensive voice over lifted from Ackerley’s writing. With wry, acerbic flair Acklerley discusses all aspects of dog life – spiritedly embracing the less than sophisticated subjects of poop, fornication, ass whiffing and other doggie matters.

It is through Acklerley’s observations about Tulip that the narrator emerges as a strong character. Not unlike the protagonist of Notes on a Scandal, Acklerley’s perspective is both high-minded and scandalous, painting a picture of a loner and borderline misanthrope who observes human behaviour from a distance – and, in this instance, canine behaviour from close-up.

With it’s mixture of brevity and profundity, lofty ideas, low brow humour and a lovely visual style, My Dog Tulip plays like an adult picture book littered with candid and concise illuminations on the dynamic between pooches and people.

The film works both as a deep and affecting personal ode to the bond between man and dog and as a piece of frivolous entertainment. Like Adam Elliott’s sublime claymation Mary and Max, My Dog Tulip can crack poo jokes one moment and make poignant soul-tingling observations the next, while never jeopardising the sense that this is real art. And very good art, too. Review by Luke Buckmaster at Crikey.com.au 

For anyone interested in animated art, it is well worth reading an insightful interview with film makers Paul and Sandra Fierlinger on BMFI's blog here