Theatre

“When I grow up, I want to be a dinosaur.” Seldom have young children spoken truer words, especially amongst the little boys. Then time moves on, and reality sets in. Excluding for Ken Ham and his followers, who believe that humans and dinosaurs literally lived together before a Flood of biblical proportions struck. For the rest of the folks in the world, dinosaurs may only be seen in things like books, movies and museums. But the undeniable fact remains: Dinosaurs were the best things before sliced bread. Since then, other impressive things have come to pass. Like YouTube: Entertainer, educator, and collector of fools. And so one young boy, now a grown man, finally gets to live out his childhood dream of being a Tyrannosaurus rex and sharing it with the world. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then impersonation is a shady form of comedy. A drama ...

As the adage goes, never work with animals or children. However, for the stage production Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, there’s little avoiding either of these. The animals and children have a sprinkling of magic as well. It’s not the children that are cursed though, but the owls. The play, in its preview stage, was using live owls. One owl took flight into the auditorium, it then failed to return to its handler. (It’s most likely the owl didn’t deliver the mail either.) Not exactly a seamless production and some teething problems to deal with. The show’s producers offered a statement that the “owls’ welfare and enrichment needs” were of the “utmost importance to the production” and that the purpose of the preview was “designed to allow the creative team time to rehearse the changes or explore specific scenes further before the play’s official opening.” Which ultimately has meant ...