2025: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 2

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Brennan Campbell and Braydon Dowler-Coltman, As You Like It, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

2025: here’s a small selection of performances, design inspirations, moments, experiences, bright ideas (in no particular order) that have stayed with me. You will have your own personal assortment (feel free to let your mind wander through its memory tracks).

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

A small sampling of performances that linger:

Alexander Ariate in Horseplay (at Workshop West), an exuberantly imaginative and physical performance as a horse named Horse dismayed to find that pursuing a dream means giving up something, too, in a pressurizing world that’s hard on the bonds of friendship. “It’s hard to be grown up and know the world.” Ariate’s performance as the amiable career slob and Oscar in The Odd Couple (at Teatro Live) was another gem.

Simon Abbott, Cameron Kneteman, Mhairi Berg, Maureen Rooney in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Mhairi Berg in a charismatic double-performance as both Girl and the younger self of Girl’s Granny, both feisty both quick-witted, in Morningside Road, the intricate new “Canadian Celtic” musical she wrote with composer Simon Abbott.(Speaking of doubling, Berg in a balletic pas de deux and as a tap-dancing FBI agent, among an assortment of other characters in Grindstone Theatre’s Die Harsh lodges in the mind too).    

Michele Fleiger as an old Alberta labour activist fallen into disrepair, re-discovering her skills, her sense of outrage, and her playfulness in  Nicole Moeller’s Wildcat at Workshop West.

Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Troy Feldman, Davinder Malhi in The Life of Pi, Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Davinder Malhi, compelling as the precocious human star of Life of Pi (at the Citadel), panic-stricken but resourceful, traumatized but wonderstruck in his 227-day ordeal adrift at sea in a tiny life-boat with a Bengal tiger.

Mike Nadajewski and Patricia Zentilli in Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Andrew Nadajewski’s funny and endearing performance as the easy-going, rueful but ever-hopeful, Dave whose seasonal misadventures are at the heart of the Citadel’s new holiday musical Vinyl Cafe The Musical.

Cody Porter in Angry Alan (at Northern Light Theatre) brought an essential quality of reasonable “ordinary” even likeable decency to a character whose chronic disappointments in his life make him prime recruitment material for the men’s rights movements. Without a performance as nuanced as this one, the play would be de-fused and fail to fire.

Katie Yoner and Michael Watt in The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Michael Watt who committed to an outlandish assortment of characters, of every age, gender, profession and accent (along with his stage partner Katie Yoner) in The 39 Steps (Farren Timoteo’s introductory production as Teatro Live!’s new artistic director). A performance of riotous comic physicality in a dizzying high-speed four-actor take on Hitchcock’s spy thriller.

Chariz Faulmino and Mark Sinongco in Disney’s Frozen: The Broadway Musical, Citadel Theatre and Grand Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

In a cast with high-power musical theatre talent (including Chariz Faulmino and Kelly Holiff) and a spectacular array of technical achievements in theatricality, Mark Sinongco’s performance as a nice-guy ice retailer, sidekick to a scene-stealer of a reindeer, had impact in Disney’s Frozen the Broadway Musical (at the Citadel).

In a scarily inflammatory ensemble Marguerite Lawler as the quick-witted sardonic Sutton, the wiseass of a circle of queer friends reeling after a shooting in a queer nightclub in Hayley Moorhouse’s Tough (at Edmonton Fringe Theatre). Their performance was an index to the play’s signature combination of rage and humour.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith in The Odd Couple brought a whole arsenal of precision comic physicality to Felix, the morose neurotic neatnik of Teatro Live’s very funny revival of the Neil Simon comedy classic of mismatched roommates. A veritable sight gag in himself, whether wielding a vacuum cleaner or lowering himself into a chair.

Brian Dooley as the working-class patriarch unravelling in booze and grievance through three generations in Colleen Murphy’s Jupiter (at Theatre Network) in a memorably harsh and committed performance.

Braydon Dowler-Coltman’s fine-tuned performance, romantic and comic, as Orlando in Dave Horak’s Freewill Shakespeare As You Like It in Louise McKinney Riverfront Park brought a delicate layer of discovery to the plight of the young romantic hero who falls madly in love, and races through the Forest of Arden pinning ardent verses to trees.

In a bravura comic performance, Ron Pederson, as all (but one) of the blue-blood D’Ysquiths, assorted upper-class twits, snobs, grotesques and buffoons who meet their maker in an octet of ingenious ways in Grindstone Theatre’s A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder.

And Oscar Derkx brought precise comic timing to the the other D’Ysquith, the charming and likeable serial murderer of all the above in appealing performance crucial to the success of the kooky-macabre faux-Edwardian musical.

Sam Free and Bella King in On The Banks Of The Nut, Teatro Live! Photo by Ryan Parker

Bella King as the bright instigator of comic chaos, who takes charge of the professional and romantic fortunes of everyone else in the screwball comedy On The Banks of the Nut, revived by Teatro Live!

Lora Brovold, in a glowing, expressive performance in Michael Czuba’s After Mourning – Before Van Gogh (Shadow Theatre) as the older version of Van Gogh’s stubborn sister-in-law Joanna — on a heroic obstacle-strewn mission to make the world recognize and appreciate the “worthless” paintings of an obscure genius.

In a sparkling ensemble led by Luc Tellier as Ziggy Stardust as Puck the fairy party organizer, John Ullyatt as the bossy stagestruck weaver Bottom who magnanimously offers to play all the parts in the play-with-in-a-play staged by a gaggle of rustic artisans in Midsummer Night’s Dream The 70s Musical at the Citadel. 

Moments that lodge in your 2025 memory bank (collecting interest)

As the caregiver character in Bea, Michael Watt’s very funny monologue explaining A Streetcar Named Desire, and Stanley’s particular appeal, for the benefit of his client patient. “I do like a good intermission.”

As one of the 13-year-old dance-mad girls in Dance Nation (at SkirtsAfire Fest), Kijo Gatama’s monologue late in the play, that starts in the proposition that “I might be frickin’ gorgeous,” escalates into an impressive, even scary, manifesto of power ready to be unleashed on the world. “What am I going to do with all this power?”

The father-son scene in Goblin: Macbeth in which Banquo’s teenage son is much put out to be ordered to stop playing Smoke on the Water on his accordion.

The double drag-act in Cardiac Theatre’s KaldrSaga, a moment of boisterous rapport for a fractious father-teenage son relationship. The latter is sulky because dad nixes his changing his major from martial arts to musical theatre studies “Hammerstein to Hamilton.”

In using only rope and April Viczko’s superb lighting, the mountain-climbing scene in Rachel Peake’s production of Disney’s Frozen The Broadway Musical is a theatrical counterweight to an essentially cinematic property. It’s gorgeous.

Bottom’s death scene, a veritable cadenza of morbidity from John Ullyatt, a ne plus ultra moment in Midsummer Night’s Dream The 70s Musical.   

Newcomers of the year:

Kole Durnford, the Métis playwright from Stony Plain AB whose mainstage debut Horseplay — playful,  cleverly meta-, funny, and heartbreaking — about a friendship between a horse and a jockey was an imaginative insight into the high price of dreams and ambition.

In After The Trojan Women,  Amena Shehab, actor-turned-playwright, drew from her own experience as a Syrian refugee to find a continuity between the displaced survivors of the Euripides tragedy and the contemporary Middle East.

Comeback artist of the year (which makes her a newcomer too): Veteran actor Maureen Rooney made a welcome return to the mainstage after many a season — in Morningside Road as the tart-tongued Scottish Granny whose stories of growing up in Edinburgh in the ‘30s constitute a whole life philosophy for her Canadian granddaughter.

Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus in Big Stuff. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Wall? What fourth wall? It was a year of particular invention by theatre artists who found creative ways to include and interact with the audience. The elite improvisers of Rapid Fire did that with The Blank Who Stole Christmas, an original musical partly scripted, partly improvised, different every night since the star villain is an invited guest unknown to cast or audience in advance. In Big Stuff, one of my favourite nights in a theatre in 2025, the sketch comedy duo of Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus created a warm hospitality in which audience members felt truly at ease sharing their own stories about their stuff in the story of grief, loss, and love that emerged from the stuff onstage. Magical.

Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Troy Feldman, Davinder Malhi in The Life of Pi, Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Puppet actor of the year: Richard Parker, the ferocious Bengal tiger at the centre of Life of Pi, as set in motion by Braydon Dowler-Coltman and Troy Feldman (honourable mention to Olaf the snowman, shepherded through his small but impactful role by Izard Etemadi in Frozen).

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor in How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang.

Five, Six, Seven, Eight… Choreography has a wonderfully creative year in Edmonton theatre, aesthetically, narratively, dramatically. A very small sampling includes Amber Borotsik’s exhilarating airborne pas de deux for two friends, a horse and a jockey, in Horseplay. Ainsley Hillyard’s ingeniously choreographed fight scene (Orlando and Charles the wrestler) in Freewill Shakespeare’s As You Like It, which played out as virtual reality combat. Jason Hardwick’s very funny choreography for two mis-matched renegades from an adult beginner tap class in How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition (Northern Light Theatre). Robin Calvert’s astute choreography for unemployed steel workers who don’t actually know how to dance, as they worked up a strip number in the Mayfield’s The Full Monty. Gianna Vacirca’s fun, richly allusive movement choreography for the four subplots of Midsummer Night’s Dream the 70s Musical at the Citadel.

 The most unusual casting of the year: In Banana Musik (Common Ground Arts’ new Prairie Mainstage Series), Kris Alvarez’s charming, free-form memoir about her immigrant parents, the playwright appeared onstage with her actual mom and dad, non-performers, as they cooked, ate, and made music together.

Design inspirations of the year:

Director Trevor Schmidt’s design for Radiant Vermin with expert collaboration from Larissa Poho’s lighting and Matt Schuurman’s video. The design itself chronicles the incremental “dream home” upgrades that are part of the shocking Faustian bargain set forth in the play (at Northern Light), a (very) dark and snarky satire that’s made for the age when “affordable housing” is an oxymoron.

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in Radiant Vermin, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography. Set and costumes Trevor Schmidt, lighting Larissa Poho, video and projections Matt Schuurman

Lieke den Bakker’s striking set, evoking both nightclub and boxing ring, for Tough Guy, along with Kena León’s pounding and visceral score, both danceable and violent.

The stunning visuals of Haysam Kadri’s production of Life of Pi at the Citadel, its sea- and skyscapes, its theatrical evocation of exotic worlds and storms which play across a kind of outsized bubble, is the work of set designer Beyata Hackborn, lighting by April Viczko, video by Corwin Ferguson.

Maya Baker, April Cook, Kelsey Verzotti, Sarah Horsman, Layne Labbe in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

Beyata Hackborn’s design for Legally Blonde at the Citadel, a veritable arcade of light-up arches in popsicle colours (lighted by Renée Brode), with riotously pink costumes by Rebecca Toon, are a considerable part of the fun of a fizzy musical.

Daniel Van Heyst’s dreamy design (set and lighting) for Where You Are (at Shadow Theatre), is a detailed evocation of rural Ontario at its most genial.

Dave Clarke’s sweeping soundscape for After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Darrin Hagen and Morag Northey’s soundscape for Jupiter, a combination of lyrical riffs and the ticking of time, and Joelysa Pankanea’s compositions are examples of the really expert sound design that happened on Edmonton stages this year.

Mhairi Berg’s lovely settings for the songs in As You Like It, one of Shakespeare’s most music-filled plays, take the Act I electronic rock riffs (by Darrin Hagen) into the pastoral, and acoustic, world of the Forest of Arden, in the al fresco Freewill production.

 

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2025: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 2

2025, and live theatre as the prize human connector: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 1

Posted on December 31, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Kevin Klassen, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Troy Feldman, Davinder Malhi in Life of Pi, Citadel Theatre/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Lighting by April Viczko, projections by Corwin Ferguson, set by Beyata Hackborn. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

2025: What a crazy, scary year it’s been. The world seems impossibly fractious, incoherent, unrecognizable. Can anyone really say they feel at home there?

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

But the full-throttle invasion of screens of every size by A.I. has made the liveness of live theatre, where you share a room with real live people — more demonstrably authentic (and uncontrollable by algorithm) — more precious than ever.

It felt like that kind of year in Edmonton theatre. Challenging, yes, in every way, but energizing in placing a high value on human connection through storytelling. As a song in one of my favourite shows of the year, the new homegrown musical Morningside Road, has it, home is a place “built of stories we call our own.”

Our theatre artists, ingenious adventurers in the field of making much with little, took us to experiments in surprising venues — an off-the-track music club (An Oak Tree), the basement of a house on a tranquil urban street (Lucky Charm), a brick-lined hall in an old armoury (KaldrSaga)….

Michele Fleiger and Maralyn Ryan in Wildcat, Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre. Photo supplied.

They’ve invited us to reflect on the anxieties and chaos of our socio-cultural moment in ways that seem absolutely current, no matter the vintage of the play. Northern Light Theatre’s Radiant Vermin, for example, took a 10-year-old play about housing prices and greed, and found it flammable now. In a big year for new Canadian work on Edmonton stages Nicole Moeller’s new crime caper Wildcat at Workshop West was strikingly local in its references and hopeful about re-animating our atrophied capacity for resistance and change. Hayley Moorhouse’s Tough Guy, which premiered at the Fringe, set about unearthing ‘queer joy’ in the non-stop traumatizing harshness of the age.

Goblin: Macbeth, Spontaneous Theatre. Photo supplied.

There was delight to be found in the creative drive of artists to re-animate the classics — whether by pairing a rom-com hit of the 1590s with Supertramp in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the 70s Musical at the Citadel, or handing over a tragedy to a trio of curious goblins (Goblin: Macbeth), or relishing the perfectly mis-matched roommates for Belinda Cornish’s hilarious revival of The Odd Couple at Teatro Live!. Ah, or launching a new company (Edmonton Repertory Theatre) in these parlous times with the (very) Canadian classic Billy Bishop Goes To War.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

And the artists who brought work to the 44th annual edition of the Fringe, our mighty summer live theatre extravaganza, seemed to lean into plays, as opposed to “Fringe shows,” in a way we hadn’t seen in a while — and sold 138,500 tickets doing it.

It’s been a memorably non-static year in Edmonton theatre. New artistic directors at the Mayfield (Kate Ryan), Teatro Live! (Farren Timoteo), Shadow Theatre (Lana Michelle Hughes at the end of the current season). New companies (Edmonton Repertory Theatre). The return of hibernating companies (Cardiac Theatre), and changes pending at Theatre Network with the departure of artistic director Bradley Moss after 30 seasons, and at Common Ground Arts with the joint departure of managing producer Mac Brock and Found Fest director Whittyn Jason.

To jostle, I hope, your own memory bank of highlights from a tumultuous year, here are a dozen of my favourite shows, in no particular order. It’s Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2, an assortment of memorable performances, designs, experiments, and moments.

Bailey Chin, Daviner Malhi, Kevin Klassen in Life of Pi, Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Life of Pi. Both the fantastical story itself (borrowed from a 2001 Yann Martel novel, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti) and the thrilling theatricality of how it gets told made a captivating experience to launch the Citadel’s 60th anniversary season. Haysam Kadri’s beautiful Citadel/Royal Manitoba Theatre production was a stunning collaboration of humans and puppets (Puppet Stuff Canada), lighting, projections, sound, set, by artists at the top of their game — all to tell a magical story about stories, about a boy, a quartet of zoo animals, and finally a ferocious Royal Bengal tiger adrift together in a lifeboat on the fathomless Atlantic for 227 days. The 12thnight review is here.

Mhairi Berg and Maureen Rooney in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Morningside Road. This funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully sculpted new homegrown “Canadian Celtic” musical cum memoir, by the combined forces of playwright Mhairi Berg and composer Simon Abbott, is an intricate time-travelling story about stories, and the way they’re populated, in colour, by memory. In the present is Girl (Berg) immersed in the oft-repeated stories Granny (Maureen Rooney), a peppery sort of Gaelic sage, tells about growing up in pre-war Edinburgh and beyond. And stories, like the songs, are layered in its complicated, fascinating archaeology of time. It’s for three actors (including Cameron Kneteman) and a live band of three who seem to float in memory in the Shadow Theatre premiere production directed by the company’s new artistic director Lana Michelle Hughes. This is a gem with a future. Check out the 12thnight review here.   

Alexander Ariate as Horse in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux. Set and costumes Beyata Hackborn, lighting Sarah Karpyshin

Horseplay. This irresistibly imaginative funny, heart-wrenching coming-of-age story of love, ambition, a friendship tested by crushing competitive pressures from the world, is about two BFFs, a horse named Horse (Alexander Ariate) and a jockey named Jacques (Lee Boyes). It got an outstanding premiere production at Workshop West, directed by Heather Inglis. And it introduced us to a stellar newcomer, playwright Kole Durnford. Have a peek at the 12thnight review here.

Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus in Big Stuff. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Big Stuff. This appealing original, by and starring the married comedy duo Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus, starts with the thorny relationship we have to our ever-accumulating stuff — to toss or not to toss, that is the question. And somehow, magically, it includes their relationship and our connection, via stuff, to the people, the moments, the motifs we’ve lost. How can a show about grief be so funny? And how does this delightful, amused and amusing pair establish such a warm rapport with us and our own stories about our own stuff, and our own people. There was a kind of magical embrace going on in the Citadel’s Rice house.

Goblin: Macbeth. This creation of Spontaneous Theatre, outrageously puckish as a concept, is one of the great surprises of the theatre year. Not that the expertise by Rebecca Northan, Bruce Horak and Ellis Malone was unexpected. But the three curious goblins who get intrigued by the odd human activity called theatre and have a go at Shakespeare’s tragedy did turn out a compelling, affecting, thoroughly intelligible three-goblin Macbeth in this fun, playful, smart show. Fingers crossed the Citadel is signing up for the new Goblin: Oedipus as you read this. Check out the 12thnight review here.

Mathew Hulshof, Bella King, Rachel Bowron in On The Banks Of The Nut, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

On the Banks of the Nut: The premise of this 2001 Stewart Lemoine screwball, revived with a younger generation of actors at Teatro Live!, has a madcap comic value all its own: an expedition by a hapless federal talent agent (Sam Free) and a bright and breezy office temp (the dazzling Bella King) through the rustic wilds of Wisconsin in 1951. They are in search of “a citizen of exceptional talent” (aren’t we all?). And the intersection of this airy quest and the aphrodisiac effect of great orchestral music make for a hilarious adventure, with an all-star cast directed by the playwright. And Mathew Hulshof with his dander up does have a certain unmistakeable resemblance to Gustav Mahler. The 12thnight review is here.

new  A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Luc Tellier (centre) as Puck, Citadel Theatre. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream the 70s Musical. Matchmaking Shakespeare’s most popular rom-com with Supertramp and the Everly Brothers and a 25-song jukebox of danceable 70s hits is arguably an idea too kooky to resist. And this nutso ingenuity, devised by Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran, has, it turns out, a hilarious aptness to it you (I mean I) didn’t really expect. Will and Marvin Gaye, who knew? Great chunks of lyrical poetry vanish into stardust; instead, the hothouse intensity of love and love-gone-wrong get power ballads, rocking laments, and the exhortation to “give a little bit, of your love to me.” A cast of serious actor-singers dig in. And the ultimate theatrical pay-off is the transformation of the artisan garage band, led by John Ullyatt as Bottom the weaver, into rock stars. Major fun. The 12thnight review is here.  

Cody Porter in Angry Alan, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Angry Alan. A surprising little stinger of a play by the Brit writer Penelope Skinner sheds light on one of the great mysteries of our time: how on earth do reasonable, even decent, guys get seduced, recruited, radicalized, by the preposterous claims of the men’s rights movement? In Trevor Schmidt’s Northern Light production Cody Porter, in a terrific performance as chronic underachiever Roger, stumbles onto the website of the title, and tumbles headlong into the Google vortex where explanations of his disappointing life, caged by rampant feminism, await. Utterly plausible, and scary as hell. Check out the 12thnight review here.

Ellie Heath, Brian Dooley, Monk Northey in Jupiter by Colleen Murphy. Photo by Ian Jackson

Jupiter. A new and fulsome epic from the feisty and fearless Colleen Murphy takes us into the heart of a working-class family haunted across the 30-year multi-generational fault lines of dysfunction and dark secrets. It premiered at Theatre Network in a production directed by Bradley Moss, and his  cast (which included the canine star of the season Monk) was led by Brian Dooley as the booze-soaked patriarch and Ellie Heath as the bright high school brainiac who fades into disappointed middle age. It made a lot of the Canadian family dysfunction repertoire seem pretty insipid in comparison. The 12thnight review is here.

Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse, Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson.

Tough Guy. In this muscular and accomplished play by Hayley Moorhouse five queer friends are trying in five ways to negotiate the emotional fall-out from the trauma of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub. In addition to the super-charged performances of Brett Dahl’s Persistent Myth production, what’s remarkable about Tough is the way the playwright has stepped up to doubts about the artistic expression, on stage or screen, of queer trauma in a homophobic/ transphobic world. Does queer art restore agency to the queer experience? Is there such a thing as “queer joy”? Tough Guy was brave enough to want to know. The 12thnight review is here.

Louise Casemore in Lucky Charm, Found Festival 2025. Photo by Brianne Jang

Lucky Charm. The most ingenious storytelling of the year happened in the atmospheric downstairs of a bungalow on a neighbourhood street. Louise Casemore’s strangely fascinating puzzle of a play (first developed at the Found Festival) is a séance, an invitation to lift the veil between the living and the world of the dead. It’s offered to us by the widow of the world’s most celebrated escape virtuoso, ironically like her late husband Harry Houdini a notable debunker of spiritualism. And somehow in the course of Max Rubin’s production, Bess Houdini’s own story as a Jazz Age player is unlocked, by our own memories. An intriguing conjuring of spirits, up close. Check out the 12thnight review here.

Dance Nation, SkirtsAfire Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Dance Nation. The mainstage production at SkirtsAfire in 2025 was an insightful, funny, disturbing play by the American writer Clare Barron that took us into the fraught world of pre-teen dance-crazy 13-year-olds, onstage and off-, poised anxiously on the threshold between childhood idylls and grown-up complexities. The characters are played by adult actors, ages 20something to 50something, who range freely between their younger and current selves. Amanda Goldberg’s ensemble production, her first as the new festival artistic producer, captured the stresses, the dreams, the triumphs. See the 12thnight review here.

The tip of the iceberg, as I think of exciting evenings in the company of The Pink Unicorn, Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, The 39 Steps, and so many more.

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 2025, and live theatre as the prize human connector: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 1

‘Twas the nights before Christmas and all through the house(s)… a big opening night in Edmonton

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Miracle on 34th Street The Musical, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Sue Temme.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

’Twas the nights before Christmas, and all through the house….

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Shows. Yes, it’s a big opening night tonight, gift-wrapped, on Edmonton stages:

•Kris Kringle is the guest of honour through Tuesday at the vintage Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park. In Miracle on 34th Street The Musical, a version of the classic 1947 Christmas movie by Meredith Willson of Music Man fame, Kris gets a gig as a Macy’s department store Santa. He has his work cut out for him overcoming skeptics, who have their doubts about his credentials, especially a Macy’s employee and her daughter, who have inured themselves to disappoint. Benjamin Smith directs the NUOVA Vocal Arts production, two dozen actors strong and starring Hal Kerbes, that runs tonight through Tuesday as part of the Fort’s Christmas Market. Tickets aren’t easy to come by (unless you’ve made special arrangements with a department store Santa near you). But check: they’re available at eventbrite.ca.

•Crystle Lightning and Henry Cloud Andrade, the ingenious creators of Bear Grease, their hit Indigenous take on that musical engraved in our collective DNA, have a devised a holiday sequel. Bear Grease: Shack Up For The Winter has a quick run (six performances) on the Citadel’s Shoctor stage tonight through Sunday. The production directed by Lightning stars Bryce Morin as Danny, Shannon Rodriguez Sweeney as Sandy, Tammy Rae Lamouche as Rezzo, Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.

•Tonight through Saturday at the Varscona, in Nutcracker Burlesque you can have the fun of seeing a chestnut cracked by a new nutcracker. House of Hush reimagines The Nutcracker through the plume-framed lens of burlesque, in a script devised by Nikki Hulowski, who co-hosts the extravaganza with Rusty Strutz. Scarlett von Bomb choreographs the nine-member cast. Tickets: eventbrite.ca.

•The creatures of the Boreal Forest get festive in Enchanted Antlers: Furget Me Not, a new holiday show from Theatre Prospero, at the Varscona Saturday and Sunday. It invites audiences “to discover their inner ungulate” in an interactive story created by Jennifer Spencer, with music by Julie Golosky. It’s BYOA (bring your own antlers). Tickets: pay-what-you-can, varsconatheatre.com.

•And continuing: A Christmas Carol at the Citadel (tickets: citadeltheatre.com) through Dec. 24; Die Harsh The Christmas Musical at the Orange Hub through Dec. 28 (tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca); Girl Brain, Actually at the Roxy through Sunday(tickets: theatrenetwork.ca); Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka, at the Jube Saturday and Sunday (tickets: ticketmaster.ca). And Rapid Fire Theatre’s inspired The Blank Who Stole Christmas  through Sunday at the Exchange Theatre. Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com.

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Twas the nights before Christmas and all through the house(s)… a big opening night in Edmonton

A grand-scale folk ballet fantasy for the season: meet the stars of ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Leda Tarnasky and Nicolas Pacholok in ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Ryan Parker.

‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Dodd’s Eye Media

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There are shows built into our holiday DNA. The frozen-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge stars in one of them, a classic ghost story cum tale of last-minute redemption (A Christmas Carol, now running at the Citadel). The other polestar of the seasonal galaxy is The Nutcracker, the indelible Christmas Eve coming-of-age fantasy that dances its visions of sugarplums onto stages annually as a classical ballet — OR in the case of the lavishly appointed, large-scale production that lights down on the Jube stage this weekend, a huge-cast Ukrainian folk ballet version of the magical 1892 classic.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

By now Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by the Edmonton Ukrainian dance company Shumka is a tradition in the west of the country. This year the production directed by Tasha Orysiuk, Shumka’s artistic director has already played Victoria (accompanied by the Victoria Symphony), Medicine Hat, and Camrose. This weekend the cast of over 70 Shumka dancers (and choristers from the Kappella Kyrie Slavic Chamber Choir) will be home for Christmas, as the song has it.

Not only is the corps entirely from the Shumka company and school, the lead roles are for the first time occupied by Shumka dancers, too, instead of guest stars from Ukraine. At the centre of Nutcracker is the young girl Clara who finds herself under the Christmas tree in a magical realm of dolls, toys, and an army of mice, and the Nutcracker Prince with whom she falls in love, are played by Leda Tarnawsky and Nicolas Pacholok.

In addition to the famously aerobic physicality and style of Ukrainian dance — “really fun, high energy, high octane,” as Pacholok says — both dancers find “the intense focus on the story and the theatre of it” one of the most distinctive features of the Ukrainian Nutcracker. Unlike many Nutcrackers, where the story of Act I cedes to a virtuoso ballet showcase in Act II, “the story continues through the entire show,” says Tarnawsky. “You really get a chance to invest in these characters and their journey, their emotions and their stories.”

Leda Tarnawsky in ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Ryan Parker

“A pretty cool way to tell the story,” she says of “Clara’s coming-of-age story, becoming a young woman and falling in love.” As Pacholok points out, the Prince, too, has “more to do in the second act,” where he and Clara take over some of the dance normally assigned to the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier. “Which helps tie the story together.” And the production’s interest in characters, acting, storytelling set it apart from traditional, more dance-centric Nutcrackers.

“The choreography and (technical) level required are definitely a cut about what we’re used to in our corps dancing. But the corps choreography is quite demanding and explosive too!” Pacholok says. “That’s not reserved for us!”

A couple of times this past year the show’s original choreography team of Victor Litvynov (of the National Ballet of Ukraine) and John Pichlyk (the former Shumka artistic director) have worked with the corps, and with the leads, including Joshua Pacholok as Drosselmeier (Clara’s mysterious magus godfather), to make this year’s edition unique.

Nicolas Pacholok and Leda Tarnawsky in ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Dodd’s Eye Media.

Both Pacholok and Tarnawsky bring to Shumka’s Nutcracker long histories with the company (which was recently inducted into the Canadian Dance Hall of Fame). Pacholok started dance training  age six, at the Shumka school, “and started taking it more seriously at 14 or 15.” He started in the company as an apprentice, then a full member. He remembers his “accidental” first role in the Mouse Battle “when someone injured their toe and couldn’t go in…. I was onstage for a few seconds, catching someone in a life and running back off.” He landed the story role of Fritz, Clara’s brother, in 2019 when it was vacated by its guest star occupant of many years.

Nicolas Pacholok in ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Dodd’s Eye Media.

After eight and a half years with the company, Pacholok, a U of A mathematics grad, has taken his Shumka training into the wide world of ballet. Since January he’s been a trainee, on scholarship, with the Joffrey Ballet in New York. “The next push for me is exploring the professional ballet space. Who knows from there?” He adds, “But Shumka will always be a big part of my future down the road.”

Tarnawsky, now in her fourth year of civil engineering at the U of A, has been doing Ukrainian dance since the age of four. She grew up in the Ukrainian dance world. Her parents, both former dancers, met there (Darka Tarnawsky is an ex-executive director of Shumka). “Engineering is fun,” she laughs. “But my heart’s always been in the arts.” And she has the resumé to prove it, including gigs teaching Ukrainian dance, working for the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts, helping organize the Shumka Dance Festival…. “Busy, for sure!” as she says. But then, that’s true of a lot of Shumka dancers, “who work for long hours before rehearsals.”

Like Pacholok, Tarnawsky started in Nutcracker as “an accidental mouse, jumping in for someone….” Through the years, she’s been a corps dancer, and graduated to bigger roles. “The last time we had a big partnering dance,” says Pacholok, “was when Leda was one of the dolls and I was Fritz, Clara’s brother.”

Nicolas Pacholok and Leda Tarnawsky in ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’. Photo by Dodd’s Eye Media.

Both Tarnawsky and Pacholok refer to their new roles as “dreams come true.” The former describes playing Clara as “exciting but nerve-wracking. I never expected it to be a possibility!”

What they both find particularly striking in the Ukrainian Nutcracker is, as Tarnawsky puts it, “the way the story continues through the entire show.” Ah, and there’s the music. The Tchaikovsky score that’s ringing in your head when you read this is woven with Ukrainian music, including Carol of the Bells, and a version of the signature Ukrainian Hopak happens at the end of Act II. The sustaining theme, as Pacholok puts it, is “the expression of joy through dance.” 

In the performing, says Tarnawsky, Ukrainian dance is a total immersion experience: “every single part of the body.” And the theatrical extravagance of the Shumka Nutcracker, including its deluxe costuming, says Pacholok, is “a way of bringing the audience into the story.”

PREVIEW

Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker

Presented by: Shumka

Directed by: Tasha Orysiuk

Choreographed by: Viktor Litvynov and John Pichlyk

Starring: Leda Tarnawsky, Nicolas, Pacholok, Joshua Pacholok, Annikka Dobko

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Running: Dec. 20 and 21

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca

Posted in Features, Previews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A grand-scale folk ballet fantasy for the season: meet the stars of ‘Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker by Shumka’

Yippee-ki-yay, you’ll get a kick out of Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, a review

Posted on December 12, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Christmas show is the natural home of the flashback, ’tis true. (I give you Scrooge’s night course in how to not be a relentless jerk).

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

But it’s a special kind of Christmas show that opens with an amusingly truncated wartime tableau, gunshots, and a chorus of disaffected blonde Germanic henchmen who lament working a heist on Christmas Eve (no overtime). “I vish I could haff a normal Christmas.”

Normal? Ha!

Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, back for a fourth Yuletide outing, is a loony, impressively ingenious double-parody of the quintessential blockbuster action thriller Die Hard and the quintessential Dickens ghost story A Christmas Carol. And it’s a marriage that’s damn funny, as I can testify from a return visit to the show — this year’s buffed-up edition directed by Sarah Dowling at the Orange Hub.   

The creation of resident Grindstone Theatre parodists Simon Abbott (music and lyrics) and Byron Martin (book and lyrics), who are the perpetrators of Hot Boy Summer and ThunderCats, Die Harsh comes with its own particular cross-branding of nostalgia.

It’s nerd fuel on all fronts. Take the score: Abbott and Martin are steeped in musical theatre; there are assorted references to Sweeney Todd, Annie, Les Mis, The Rocky Horror Show… The opening number is a spot-on amusingly choreographed James Bond pastiche with a German accent (“he just von’t … die harsh!”). And after that there are pure musical theatre numbers, power ballads, patter songs, rock, rap. Yup, the Ghost of Christmas Present (Alexis Hope) is a rapper. Hans Schmuber (David Findlay), the villainous, Scroogian leader of an international gang of German terrorists, sings his own take on Dr. Frank N Furter’s signature number: “ich bin ein sexy German terrorist.” The finale ensemble number is a lovely Christmas 11 o’clock number, “what is this feeling gaining way…? Christmas will never be the same”).

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Speaking of heists, the set-up (and configuration of Camille Paris’s bi-level set, lighted by Scott Peters) is lifted from the blockbuster movie by smart and smart-ass budget theatre — which is part of the fun. Hans Schmuber and his gang, looking for a big haul, take corporate hostages in Origami Corp’s  L.A. skyscraper at the company Christmas Eve bash. And as ghosts arrive to take charge of Hans’s moral redemption, they use the elevator (an upgraded model from last year’s) that dominates the set. Expect the first when the elevator bell dings once.

Mhairi Berg, Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Alexis Hope in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

The funniest prop is the tin foil vent in which NYPD cop John McWayne (Evan Dowling) hides out in Origami Tower when he arrives on the West Coast looking for his estranged wife Holly (Mhairi Berg). The second funniest is the cardboard limo in which the cool cat Ghost of Christmas Present (Alexis Hope) and Hans share a spliff with a very large teddy bear in the back seat.

To see a cast of six (extremely able-bodied) singer/dancers take on a zillion-dollar action thriller is to get a kick out of silly comic complication. The actors are in perpetual quick-change mode. Newcomers Alexis Hope and Beatrice Kwan hurl themselves nimbly into a ridiculous assortment of roles. Findlay is terrific as the suave, glinting villain, the “cunning Hun” with the showbiz gene and a line of Ebenezer dismissals: “I can’t afford to make idle henchmen happy.”

Mhairi Berg and Evan Dowling in Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Cézanne Laurette

And equally deadpan are Dowling, a hoot as the hard-ass Noo-Yawk cop/Elmer Fudd crossover, and Berg, a triple threat of remarkable comic versatility as a variety of plucky women including Holly, a news reporter, cops, orphans….  She shares a showstopper of an FBI tap number with Kwan (and you thought the FBI only tapped phones). Which makes Berg the only star of the season to wear both tap and ballet pointe shoes.

How this turns into Christmas Carol on Christmas morning is something you’ll have to see for yourself. Tiny Tim and Mr. Fezziwig have Die Harsh versions … but I’m not going to spoil their shameless entrances for you. Suffice to say that Martin and Abbott have great affection for music hall tradition, and its goofball arsenal of sight gags and mouldy jokes. Is Hans nothing but a common thief. “No, I’m an exceptional thief.”

Director Dowling has sharpened the edges of scenes that move both narratives forward, and also clarifying the spatial relationships between characters in inventively stylized theatrical ways.  Abbott himself leads the excellent band — Cooper Ray, Kessler Douglas, Curtis den Otter — from the keyboard on the roof of Origami Tower.

And they rock. Yippee-ki-yay, you’ll get a kick out of this exuberant Christmas special.

REVIEW

Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone Theatre

Created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Sarah Dowling (original director Byron Martin)

Starring: David Findlay, Evan Dowling, Mhairi Berg, Rain Matkin, Alexis Hope, Beatrice Kwan

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: through Dec. 28

Tickets: showpass.com

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Yippee-ki-yay, you’ll get a kick out of Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, a review

What were their own favourite sketches in 8 years of Girl Brain? Ellie Heath reports back

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Girl Brain, 2019: Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey. Photo by Brianne Jang, bb ccollective photography

A Girl Brain postscript, from Ellie Heath

As Girl Brain prepares to open their finale show ‘Girl Brain, Actually’ at Theatre Network (Dec. 11 to 21) before their sabbatical, I wondered about their own favourite sketches in eight Girl Brain years of sketch comedy? Ellie Heath consulted with her cohorts Alyson Dicey and Caley Suliak. This is what she wrote….

Alyson’s Favourite Sketch: Magic School Bus

“Alyson wrote a parody of The Magic School Bus for one of our first shows. It’s an epic, cinematic, and way too technically complicated scene (which came to be Alyson’s specialty…).

In the scene, Miss Drizzle cheerfully drags her students on an educational “field trip” inside the body of an absent classmate, Donna—who’s staying home with mysterious “lady problems.” What starts as a goofy anatomy lesson about puberty quickly escalates into a chaotic emotional odyssey as they explore Donna’s firing neurons, budding romantic feelings, secret fears, and overwhelming teenage angst. The students are terrified while Miss Drizzle remains unnervingly upbeat, guiding them through hormonal chaos like it’s the world’s strangest science exhibit. In the end, they escape just as the metaphorical walls close in—learning that adolescence feels a lot like a haunted house full of emotions, confusion, and general “shit” coming at you.”

Caley’s Favourite Sketch: Lamp Mask

“Caley, as she often does, wrote a ‘weeping vag’ scene based verbatim on a real life experience. It was late at night, the character was at home doomscrolling, and after one too many glasses of white wine spritzers, she decided that a red light therapy mask from China would fix all of her problems. She entered in her card number, went to bed, and promptly forgot about her purchase for the next three weeks.

When the box arrived, she was surprised and thrilled to start her anti-aging journey. The packaging was gorgeous, but upon opening it, she discovered the mask itself was something straight out of a Star Wars nightmare gone wrong. It required three different cord types to make it work, rendering it nearly impossible to plug in anywhere in her apartment. After struggling for nearly an hour with different extension cords and outlets, she turned to the instructions, which were even more confusing…ex: “Step 5 – prohibit use of crowd, light allergic person. Use, or stop using.”

Dejected, she decided to chalk it up to a lesson learnt in online shopping. At least she hadn’t paid that much for it, right? Wrong. Tears welled in her eyes, as she checked the receipt. $278.

Lamp Mask has been used in many Girl Brain shows, and never for its intended purpose. It remains one of the most expensive Girl Brain props to date.”

Ellie’s Favourite Sketch: Herpes

“One of Ellie’s earliest sketches is Herpes. She wrote it shortly after receiving her own diagnosis, using comedy as a way to flip the script on the shame she initially felt. The scene centres on three women attempting to outdo each other with increasingly dramatic declarations of relationship commitment. Two friends go back and forth until they finally turn to the third woman, wondering why she hasn’t chimed in.

She calmly reveals that the only thing her boyfriend ever gave her was herpes. Instead of recoiling in horror, the friends are jealous, because, in their minds, she is now bound to her partner for life… courtesy of herpes.

Getting to perform the sketch with Alyson and Caley is always the cherry on top every single time it revisits the stage.”

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What were their own favourite sketches in 8 years of Girl Brain? Ellie Heath reports back

Calling all grinches: there’s a holiday show for you on an Edmonton stage this week to make you jolly

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Mhairi Berg in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If seasonal stress and/or ennui, or spending time in a mall parking lot have so far squashed your festive spirit beyond recognition it’s pretty obvious you need the booster shot of a live holiday show. And you’re in luck: like tannenbaums and sweaters with antlers, they come in every size, shape, and personality in this theatre town.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Herewith, a 12thnight guide to getting jolly at a theatre near you.

•If you like your musical comedy black and nutty, check out what a couple of smart, sassy parodists besotted with musical theatre can do when they join a blockbuster action thriller to … A Christmas Carol in unholy matrimony. Really. Die Harsh: the Christmas Musical, by the Grindstone Theatre satirist team of Byron Martin (book) and Simon Abbott (music), is the only holiday show in town with its own gang of international terrorists. Die Harsh returns for a fourth holiday season Thursday and runs at the Orange Hub  (10045 156 St.) through Dec. 28. Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca.

The cast of The Blank Who Stole Christmas, Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo supplied.

•Rapid Fire Theatre’s very own holiday tradition, back for a fifth Yule,  is a musical that, in an original, unpredictable, crazily complex way, combines scripted musical theatre and improv. The Blank Who Stole Christmas has a different Grinchian villain every night. A different secret guest star, unknown to the cast in advance arrives onstage as a character of their choice. Surprise! So the five actors who’ve rehearsed the script and the music have to improvise around the newcomer who might be as unlikely a villain as Tiny Tim or Mrs. Santa. At a recent show, the Addams Family led by Mark Meer showed up. It runs at RFT’s Exchange Theatre through Dec. 21 in three different versions, dependent on the amount of swearing and raunch you’re up for: Nice (“family-friendly”), Naughty (“playful and cheeky”) and Nasty (“completely unfiltered, bold, blush-worthy” for the 18-plus crowd). Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com.

John Ullyatt in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price,

•The Citadel’s holiday tradition of 26 years standing is a lavish and beautiful production of A Christmas Carol. For the last six, David van Belle’s music-filled version has located the flinty Ebenezer across the pond and ahead a century where he’s grimly totting up the bottom line as the proprietor of Marley’s Department Store, a terror to the staff. And John Ullyatt is a memorable Scrooge in the production directed by Lianna Makuch.  Have a peek at the 12thnight review here. It runs through Dec. 24. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820,

Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Caley Suliak, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, bb collective photography.

•At Theatre Network, the sketch comedy trio Girl Brain, specialists in finding hilarity in everyday anxieties and absurdities, celebrate their coming sabbatical with a finale holiday show. Girl Brain, Actually, is as you might suspect inspired by that movie (OK, if Love, Actually was set at West Edmonton Mall). Theatre Network artistic director Bradley Moss, who’s leaving the company after 30 years, directs the show as his exit offering. Read all about it in the 12thnight preview here. Girl Brain, Actually runs through Dec. 21. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

•If you’ve been known to actually leave a Black Friday sale location if the store soundtrack has looped to Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, prepare to have your preconceptions melt. That song its re-born as a climactic moment of resolution in Patty And Joanne Win High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Trevor Schmidt’s new holiday comedy. What it’s needed all along was tap dancing; who knew? The Northern Light Theatre production is a light funny bon-bon of a comedy, with a sweet centre in performances by Kendra Connor and Jenny McKillop as hopeful middle-aged tappers. It runs through Dec. 13. Read the 12thnight review here. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.

The Best Little Newfoundland Christmas Pageant Ever, Whizgiggling Productions. 2022 photo supplied.

•Whizgiggling Productions, the indie theatre proudly named after the Newfoundland lingo for acting silly and foolish, is back this weekend with the 16th incarnation of their signature holiday show The Best Little Newfoundland Christmas Pageant … Ever!. Welcome to the Rock. The annual town pageant is at risk when the Herdmans, “the worst kids in school,” show up for the auditions (mainly because they’ve heard there are snacks), shove everyone aside and claim all the best parts. They’re perplexed by the whole Christmas plot with the “three wise guys”: What? Mary ties him up and shoves him in a feedbag? Where’s Child Welfare?. It’s a funny glimpse into the high-stress world of amateur theatricals, and it’s heartwarming, and you get to sing along. The cast this year includes Vicky Berg, Billy Brown, Kayla Gorman, Natalie Czar Gummer, Cheryl Jameson, Bob Rasko, Lindsey Walker. It runs Friday through Sunday at the Varscona (10329 83 Ave.). Tickets: tickets.varsconatheatre.com.

Davina Stewart, Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald in It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol, at the Varscona. Photo by Ryan Parker.

•At Fort Edmonton Park, one of E-Town’s most atmospheric locations (even snow looks good there), It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol has been back at the vintage Capitol Theatre, as part of the Christmas Market. Billed as a “hilarious, haunting, and silly” re-telling of the classic, the show has an all-star cast: Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald and Davina Stewart. Their final performance is Saturday. Also on the Christmas Market roster is the final weekend, Saturday and Sunday, for A Kidmas Carol, a Puddle of Mudd family-friendly and interactive entertainment by and starring Delia Barnett and Truss Verkley. Tickets and schedules for both shows, at yegxmasmarket.com, include full access to the Park before and after.

Randy Borsosky and Andréas Wallace in Present Laughter, Walterdale Theatre. Photo by Scott Henderson

Mirth is what you’re after, right? Not just eggnog. Noel Coward’s 1939 comedy, Present Laughter borrows its title from Shakespeare ‘s Twelfth Night: “present mirth hath present laughter.” The  story of Garry Essendine, the aging matinee idol with acres of charm and vanity to match, amply qualifies as mirthful. And, hey, it’s about theatre, and Walterdale Theatre has set it at Christmas time. The Walterdale Present Laughter, starring Randy Brososky, the man of all hours, is the first time in nearly 25 years the play  has been on an Edmonton stage. It runs through Saturday at Walterdale’s vintage Strathcona playhouse on 83 Ave. Tickets: showpass.com.

Next week there is more theatrical festivity to be had: Bear Grease: Shack Up For The Winter, a holiday version of LightningCloud’s hit production, is an Indigenous twist on the 1978 musical that’s built into our DNA. It runs at the Citadel Dec. 18 to 21 (tickets: citadeltheatre.com). NUOVA Vocal Arts’ production of the seasonal classic Miracle on 34th Street is at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park Dec. 18 to 23, as part of the Christmas Market there. And Canada’s Ukrainian Nutcracker, a spectacular huge-cast take on the seasonal classic from Shumka, is at the Jube Dec. 20 and 21. Tickets: ticketmaster.ca. Stay tuned for an upcoming  12thnight preview interview with Clara and the Nutcracker Prince!   

Posted in Features | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Calling all grinches: there’s a holiday show for you on an Edmonton stage this week to make you jolly

Brainwaves galore: a (temporary) finale for our fave sketch comedy trio. ‘Girl Brain, Actually’ at the Roxy

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Caley Suliak, Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The show that opens Thursday in Theatre Network’s season at the Roxy puts holiday sparkles and Santa hats on a double milestone in Edmonton theatre.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

After eight dizzying years of laughing, sold-out houses the hit sketch comedy trio Girl Brain — which is to say Alyson Dicey, Ellie Heath and Caley Suliak— is taking a creative sabbatical. Girl Brain, Actually, inspired by the celebrated seasonal movie fave Love, Actually, is the trio’s farewell-for-now sketch show. “We don’t want to say forever,” says Dicey.

It’s a salute to their Edmonton fans, who have from the start been smitten with Girl Brain’s quick wit, their original situational, observational hilarity, characters that mine the absurdities and anxieties built into everyday life. And there’s this: Girl Brain, Actually is directed by Bradley Moss, his final production at Theatre Network after 30 years, 27 of them as artistic director.

Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Caley Suliak, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

“We’re take a wee break because we’re all moving to other exciting things in our lives” says Dicey. “We’re (each) too busy, in separate ways, and creatively motivated to do other things….” Says Heath, whose music career is really taking off (she releases her first album, produced by Hawksley Workman, next year). Dicey is making a full-time commitment to the Fringe, in a variety of gigs including fund-raising, sponsorships, communication in addition to directing the KidsFringe. Suliak, who works in communications at Workshop West and appears in the improvised weekly soap Die-Nasty, has “ideas brewing,” as she puts it, “for performances and solo shows,” a hint that she’s resuming her acting career.

Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Too busy to be Girl Brain? That in itself says something about the expansiveness of their story, and the theatre/comedy niche the trio have forged for themselves. Heath cites Kurt Cobain’s advice that “if nobody’s presenting a door for you to walk through, you’ve gotta make your own door.” And that’s what the three did, with Girl Brain.

Eight years ago, three actors, best friends looking to create space for themselves in the theatre scene here, fashioned a sketch comedy show. And they took it to a new little comedy theatre called Grindstone on an off-Whyte Strathcona street that wasn’t busy yet.

Actor/playwrights all three, they’d touched down on sketch comedy, mainly because “it’s the most theatrical of all the branches of comedy,” as Heath says. She thinks of it as “an abbreviated form of playwriting.” They’d spent months “writing stories and creating characters (both female and male, sometimes on ill-fated dates) that would be fun to play,” says Suliak, who has a particular specialty in mansplaining roles. No age or gender was safe. “I don’t know if you know this, but men are so funny!” Dicey laughs. “You may not have realized it because men are so under-represented in comedy (more laughter). “Hey, that’s a little preview of our show.”

On that fateful first night at Grindstone they’d find out whether Girl Brain was a kooky one-off  creative experiment, or something with legs, to mix our anatomical metaphors. They didn’t know what to expect, how the audience would react, whether they’d laugh. “That night is a big blur,” Suliak laughs. “We didn’t really know what we were doing. But the show was sold out, and so we’d navigate our way through this new river. And maybe we’d have a life jacket, and maybe we wouldn’t….”

“We swam!” Heath still can’t quite believe the response from the audience. “People came up to us in the lobby after and asked ‘when’s your next show?’…. It immediately felt like something special that we’d have to do again! It took off really fast; it snowballed.” Suddenly Girl Brain was everywhere, making people laugh at festivals, on theatre stages across town, hosting big sporting events….

Girl Brain, 2019: Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey. Photo by Brianne Jang, bb ccollective photography

“There are characters and scenes from those early shows that we’ve come back to later, refined or amalgamated,” says Suliak. Dicey thinks of the Girl Brain origin story as “a perfect storm” of opportunity and buzz. “Grindstone was also new in 2018girl and we were one of the only sketch groups there. AND Brianne Jang signed on (as the official Girl Brain photographer) with Caley as our social media manager…. We have people who love us as an online group and have never come to the theatre!”

Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Jang, a multi-talented actor/professional photographer who’s also the manager of the SkirtsAfire Festival, brought an adventurous originality sense of comedy to Girl Brain photo shoots. Ah, and a vivid sense of place. Girl Brain was our sketch comedy trio: Jang would pose the trio on the river valley steps, or at the mall, or in the swanky Roxy Theatre bathroom. Their posters, designed by Jang, are comedies in themselves.

From the start Girl Brain conceived of their sketch shows as theatrical; characters and a through-line were important to them. “It makes us different from other sketch groups,” says Dicey. “When Bradley (Bradley Moss) saw one of our shows he noticed. ‘’Keep doing that’,” he told us.” Actor/director/playwright Steve Pirot and Mike Kennard of Mump and Smoot fame, had similar thoughts. ‘You have something weird and I think you should lean into that’.”

Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey in Weekend at Girlies, Girl Brain at Theatre Network. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Last year’s Girl Brain Christmas special, Weekend At Girlies, inspired by the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, was a girls’ trip to a Mexican all-inclusive. With Love, Actually, Girl Brain has springboarded off an episodic movie, with recurring characters, “that flows very much in the way our shows have flowed in the last few years,” as Heath points out. And they’ve taken the action out West, way out West, to the Mall.

That Moss has signed on to direct is particularly meaningful to all three. It isn’t his first time directing the trio. In 2023, at Theatre Network’s Another F!*#@$G Festival, Girl Brain and Moss collaborated on Humans Never Onstage, a verbatim theatre production devised from interviews with real people, à la Studs Terkel’s Working. It was Moss’s idea. “We’re all big fans of his work” says Heath, who was in the cast of his production of Colleen Murphy’s Jupiter last season. Because Moss is leaving “this might be our last chance to work together in this space!”

When they started eight years ago, having a “girl brain” day was a droll throw-away line about falling through a crevice in the logic brain. It became a validation. And now Girl Brain is stepping off the curb again, venturing forth on new, separate creative pathways.  Brainwaves to come.

PREVIEW

Girl Brain, Actually

Created by: Alyson Dicey, Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak

Directed by: Bradley Moss

Where: Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre, 10708 124 St.

Running: Thursday through Dec. 21

Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca

 

Posted in Features, Previews | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Brainwaves galore: a (temporary) finale for our fave sketch comedy trio. ‘Girl Brain, Actually’ at the Roxy

Tap dancing towards friendship: How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold … a holiday treat at Northern Light. A review

Posted on November 30, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor in How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

You know you’ve been truly dumped when the teacher just stops coming to the Thursday night beginner adult tap dance class you’ve signed up for — and it’s Christmas time.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Talk about seasonal abandonment issues, a stab of holly through the heart, really. That’s the situation in which the two characters we meet in Trevor Schmidt’s delightful, beautifully cast new holiday comedy find themselves in the last studio on the left at the FreeBody Dance Station. No wonder the first line of How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, premiering at Northern Light, is “are you f-in kidding me?”

That would be Joanne (Kendra Connor), the feistier of the two, reflecting on the unseemly departure of Miss Amber on the eve of the big dance competition. Patty (Jenny McKillop), the more tentative of the two and chronically resigned to setbacks as the mother of six, confines herself to a sad shrug. “Miss Amber. She’s blonde.”

As we learn, in a weave of alternating monologues interspersed with snippets of rehearsal moves for “the single ladies routine,” the beginners class has been a Survivor-type chronicle of attrition (people move, they get busy, both Cathy-with-a-C and Kathy-with-a-K have quit in a tandem departure). Only Patty and Joanne remain.

And, this is the fun and the heart of it: they can’t stop coming on Thursday night from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. to the mirrored dance studio (designed by Schmidt and lighted by Rae McCallum). We sit and watch Patty and Joanne, from the front and the back, and see ourselves too. Each character has her own reasons, as they reveal in amusing little glimpses into their lives, deftly written by Schmidt. And the performances by Connor and McKillop in Schmidt’s production, comically precise and very funny, make little wisps of information about them really count.

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

Joanne, who evidently lives alone (except for mysterious roommate Karen), is the kind of person who knows what year Gypsy premiered, and how Irving Berlin’s White Christmas debuted in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. She’s crazy for musicals, a fan who yearns to be part of that magical world. Tap is a ticket to ride. And Connor, a petite firecracker in a Cats sweatshirt, negotiates a comical blend of brisk and dreamy, Joanne has a prosaic job in a bank, tapping invisibly behind the counter, a mental image of thwarted desire that makes you re-think your tedious exchanges at the TD.

Joanne, who has a wistful and melancholy quality about her in McKillop’s vividly funny performance, is a study in contrast. She’s tall and droopy, squinting to hike her glasses up, always a little late, dazed and distracted by the unremitting busy-ness of life with six demanding kids — five, plus Emma “who bites” — she calls The Monsters. She is not, to say the least, imbued with the can-do spirit of showbiz. She’s an unofficial spokesperson for the can’t-do. “It looks better with 10 people,” she says dispiritedly of their chances of re-working Miss Amber’s routine as a duo.

Patty just wants, needs, to get out of the house and do something for herself. And she’s already tried pottery classes (too messy) as a hobby initiative.

When Patty and Joanne decide to keep on, and create their own routine for the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, it’s a case of “I’m not a quitter vs “I never really liked Charmaine,” the office manager at FreeBody Dance Station.

What do they have in common, as a basis for the friendship that the play heads towards (not really a spoiler alert)? As it turns out in the course of this heart-warming little holiday comedy, they have loneliness. They have Lindsey Walker’s droll, apt sound design. And they have tap. There is absolutely no logical reason for tap dance. Taps on shoes aren’t useful, like cleats, or grips on snowboots, or cushion treads on pricey runners (don’t you have relevance fatigue?). But somehow tapping is the sound that happy makes.

There’s something valiant about the act of creation, no matter how fumbling its origins, as How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold… proposes. And Jason Hardwick’s comic tap choreography makes you laugh and feels kind of inspirational. The birth of an unlikely friendship in the improbable act of creating something together, that’s where we’re going with this sweet seasonal comedy. And the fun of getting there, an apotheosis realized in a big finish (costumes by Logan Stefura), makes this an hour to give yourself as a holiday treat.

REVIEW

How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written and directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Kendra Connor and Jenny McKillop

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: through Dec. 13

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com

 

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Tap dancing towards friendship: How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold … a holiday treat at Northern Light. A review

May your days be merry and bright … thoughts on the 2025 A Christmas Carol at the Citadel

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Troy O’Donnell and John Ullyatt in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Christmas Carol 2025, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

On the opening night of A Christmas Carol this past week at the Citadel it started to snow big time; all fall it hadn’t, not really, not till that very evening. And it felt like a stage effect under the streetlights, specially arranged by the theatre (and possibly a little overdone).  Mother Nature as back-up for a big, deluxe, music-filled production that contains both Winter Wonderland and White Christmas.

The clever, quick-witted David van Belle version of Dickens’ 1843 novella that’s returned to the Citadel’s Maclab stage for the seventh year, is the heir to a 19-year-old run of Tom Wood’s gorgeous Victorian era adaptation. It moves one of the greatest ghost stories of all time a century ahead to the post-World War II era, and across the Atlantic, with songs to match. It’s a different kind of nostalgia. And it takes Mr. Scrooge out of his Victorian counting house and relocates him to the proprietorship of Marley’s department store, on Christmas Eve, 1949.

John Ullyatt in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Retail at Christmas time? You might even consider sparing a shred of sympathy for Ebenezer the Exasperated. Until you see John Ullyatt as Scrooge, the avenging fury of the bottom line, snarling at his staff, barking at the in-store Santa (“wrap it up!”), firing the employee who didn’t front-rack the colour red, which he points out increases sales by 5.4 per cent “when it’s the primary point of visual contact.”

Repeated viewings of the production, created by Daryl Cloran and directed in glorious dramatic detail by Lianna Makuch, don’t dim my appreciation of the layered and powerful performance at its centre. Ullyatt makes of the story not an improbable overnight transformation but a re-discovery. And it’s the beauty of Ullyatt’s performance, this adaptation (and the one before it), and the production that the story’s ghostly last-minute intervention on Christmas Eve takes Scrooge on a journey, deeper and deeper into … himself. He re-claims the self gradually lost under layers of experience, of abuse, of loss, of grief in the world. And that newly rediscovered E. Scrooge esq. makes for a particularly joyful and funny Christmas morning, in the agile physicality of Ullyatt’s performance.

I found again, and maybe even more this year in Makuch’s production, the scenes at Scrooge’s boyhood tenement and the Fezziwigs’ party float in and out of his memory in a way that might be a dream, fast — am I imagining that it’s even faster and the running time is shorter? — and memorable. Ullyatt’s Scrooge is a watchful observer, at first resentful then amazed, then (and increasingly) stricken by what he revisits and sees out there in the world. The road to enlightenment isn’t paved.

Braydon Dowler-Coltman’s fine performance as the younger Scrooge, starting to gain a footing in the world, is a veritable study, subtle and expressive, in the way that ambition ever so gradually turns toxic. And Patricia Cerra as Scrooge’s lost love Belle (she doubles as the wife of Scrooge’s nephew Fred) is similarly complex, in a pivotal scene when her hope for a love with all the festive trimmings is shut down forever. Oscar Derkx returns to the role of Scrooge’s neglected nephew Fred, ever-hopeful, ever-cheerful, in an appealing performance that sheds a glow on the show’s notion of home, and what it means to be there.

There’s an attention to performance under Makuch’s direction. And it extends beyond the cast of two dozen adults to the 13-member Youth Ensemble, including Breanna Bender (who alternates with Emmy Richardson) as the at-risk youngest Cratchit, who delivers the line that lingers “God bless us, every one.”   

Maia Vinge, Alison MacDonald, Aubrey Malacad in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Van Belle’s adaptation does not have the life-and-death stakes of Dickens’ scoriating attack on Victorian capitalism: lose your job and die in debtor’s prison. Mrs. Cratchit (Alison MacDonald, who’s excellent) is a widow and single-mother who’s risen to management at Marley’s. Nope, no Bob. She’s the working poor — no medical benefits, no overtime, no raises, no paid stats — struggling to make a festive Christmas for her kids. I was struck again by the way the adaptation, and Scrooge’s acidic views on welfare, are ready to wrap themselves around our moment here and now, in a year of particular cruelty, bullying and back-sliding. And the double live portrait of the children Want and Ignorance, as products of affluence and entitlement rather than deprivation, remains telling, to say the least.

Troy O’Donnell and Cathy Derkach in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

When Mr. Fezziwig (Troy O’Donnell) refuses to employ part-time workers and  deprive them of a living wage, you wince. And a sense of loss has a particular resonance this year, with the absence of Julien Arnold, the wonderful actor who passed away last year during previews of the production — in the role of that most ebullient and joyful of employers and hosts, who makes of the workplace a surrogate family. It was Arnold’s particular gift as an artist and a collaborator to create family wherever he was.

John Ullyatt and Jesse Gervais in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Phoro by Nanc Price

Where is joy to be found? That’s what A Christmas Carol wonders. And Jesse Gervais’s sensationally funny and extroverted performance as the exuberant Ghost of Christmas Present (and presents), the spirit of showbiz who commits and then some to “the whole Christmas gig,” proposes a generous alternative view of what the world could be. “I don’t teach, baby,” he tells Scrooge, flinging flakes of “Christmas cheer” over everyone in sight.  “It’s all show and tell here!” The Victorian-clad choir instantly breaks into dance (choreographer: Laura Krewski).

Scrooge’s much put-upon servant Mrs. Dilber (Cathy Derkach, who joins the cast for the first time) is amazed, without dissolving into wonder, by Scrooge’s generous new self on Christmas morning. No wonder she leaves in a hurry, slamming the door before he can change his mind.

The central inspiration of Cory Sincennes’ two-tiered set, lighted by Leigh Ann Vardy, which has an onstage loft for the band, is the revolving door at Marley’s — a metaphor for the whirligig of time that’s the arc of the storytelling. In the course of seven years of revivals, the music has increasingly been absorbed into the storytelling. But wistful songs, like White Christmas or It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, are uniformly attacked at an unatmospheric jaunty clip. And I still find the sound mix a bit crude (heavy weight to the band, especially the keyboards, over human voices).   

In one way, a thrust stage like the Maclab, surrounded by an audience, is the hardest space of all in which to tell a ghost story. In another, it’s particularly on the nose. When Scrooge, rattled by disconcerting noises and ghostly lights, says “who’s there?” the answer is … us, all of us. One of the most memorable scenes of the evening is the reunion of Scrooge and his infinitely generous-minded, cheerful nephew on Fred’s doorstep. “I didn’t know how to be part of a family,” says Scrooge humbly.

And the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present come back to us. “Some families you’re born with; some you just find.” A thought to take with us into 2026.

REVIEW

A Christmas Carol

Theatre: Citadel Theatre

Written by: David van Belle, adapted from the Charles Dickens novella

Directed by: Lianna Makuch

Starring: John Ullyatt, Alison MacDonald, Oscar Derkx, Ivy DeGagné, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Patricia Cerra, Cathy Derkach, Troy O’Donnell, Jesse Gervais, Breanna Bender, Emmy Richardson, Graham Mothersill, Steven Greenfield, Glenn Nelson, Maya Baker, Christina Ngyuyen, and the ensemble

Running: through Dec. 24

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on May your days be merry and bright … thoughts on the 2025 A Christmas Carol at the Citadel