Recently at the Havana Cafe, I was having lunch with David Bloom (Artistic Director, actor, writer, fight master - all-round Renaissance Man of Vancouver's alternative theatre scene). To arrange this meeting was an exercise in perseverance. Why?

We muse little on the cult of death in 2013. Instead of funerals, everyone is invited to attend a celebration of life. But a funeral is what it is. A memorial service. A remembrance of a soul gone from this earth.

In their production of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Jane Heyman and Jesse Johnston, together with the company of The Only Child Collective, have offered up a rare gift to Vancouver theatre-goers.

The difficulty in writing about a show such as 2 Pianos 4 Hands is that there is very little left to say that hasn’t been said or repeated in the 16 years and 5,000 performances that have elapsed since it appeared, to great acclaim, in its first incarnation at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

I’ve been struggling to make full sentences of this review, the performance was so image-heavy. So I thought I’d start out with some images:

Rolling sky, luscious mountains, fog and mist and forests green,
lovers through the landscape running,
clowns and antics in their dream.

The director's notes for Pi Theatre's Terminus include descriptions such as “classic storytelling. It's an explosive yarn full of chill, spills and a few dark laughs”. . . “surreal, violent tales with an urban focus.”

I'm really not sure I can provide a more accurate description than that.

Haunted by Daniel Karasik is the winning script from the 2011...