Snow White – a pantomime, Edmonton Repertory Theatre. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

People, lighten up. It’s a theatre town, my friends, and you are sliding inexorably into the season of the holiday show, of every stripe and persuasion.

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It launches officially this very week, with the return of the Citadel’s lavish production of A Christmas Carol, the return of Rapid Fire Theatre’s own holiday tradition The Blank Who Stole Christmas, the return of the giddy theatre-panto-podcast mash-up It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol to Fort Edmonton’s Capitol Theatre. AND the return of a vintage all-ages entertainment to that vintage venue, thanks to a new Edmonton theatre company.

The panto, the high-spirited holiday tradition that might be Britain’s kookiest export ever — daffier than the shrimp crisp, Marmite, or the pronunciation of ‘slough’ — is to be found, come Wednesday, at the  elegant Capitol Theatre, a 1929 reproduction on 1920 St. in Fort Edmonton Park. Snow White is the calling card of the new Edmonton Repertory Theatre. And for the occasion artistic director Jennifer Krezlewicz has fashioned (and directs) an original eight-actor musical comedy — “my first full-length play” — from the Grimm fairy tale.

As she points out,  Snow White – a pantomime comes with all the classic panto ingredients: a cross-dressing Dame, a beautiful princess, an aspirational fairy, a princess, a status villain, an unexpected hero, a gilt-edged invitation to the audience to be rowdy…. And, yes (to anticipate your question) there’s a pantomime cat, Oregano by name (christened in honour of MLA Janis Irwin’s celebrity puss-in-boots).

Snow White – a pantomime, Edmonton Repertory Theatre. Photo suppied

You can’t have a panto without slapstick, goofy jokes, dancing … and music. Krezlewicz reached out to the star kids’ entertainer Fred Penner, “and he agreed to be in the show!” Not only does Penner voice the Magic Mirror (you know, the one on the wall who answers the fateful question ‘who’s the fairest of them all?’) and the Good Fairy, but to Krezlewicz’s delight he wrote the company an original song, Brave. “I sent him the script, and he thought I did OK!” she says modestly.

Krezlewicz, who’s directed pantos before now but never written one, was an early panto convert as a kid: Ross Petty’s Cinderella (a Toronto panto tradition for many years), via “my parents’ Beta recording…. It was so funny, so geared to silly. That was the catalyst that (pushed) me into comedy.” And it was an experience she’s passed on to her own kids, four in number, ages seven to 15. As “super-funny people” themselves, they contribute to the comedy quality control. “Guys, is this funny?” Krezlewicz asks. And she’s prepared to hear ‘not really’, and adjust accordingly.

It’s all about fun, she says. “Kids don’t have to sit still; they don’t have to ‘behave’.” And “audience interaction” is built into the entertainment. The fourth wall vanishes into the ether. “We have two actors walk through the audience to get back onstage.”

“We’ve been workshopping as we go, on the fly,” she says of the production that runs as part of the Edmonton Christmas market at Fort Edmonton Park. “The cast are so flexible, consummate pros, and so funny! If the crew is laughing, this is good.”

“For me, quality family programming is lacking here, outside of festivals,” Krezlewicz thinks. It’s a contribution Edmonton Repertory Theatre can make, she says. “If you can engage a six-year-old.…”

Chris Bullough and Andy Northrup in Snow White – a pantomime, Edmonton Repertory Theatre. Photo supplied.

Edmonton Repertory Theatre (a re-branding of a theatre that disappeared in 2015) “was born out of the idea that the process of theatre needs to adapt,” to be more accessible to artists with kids and family responsibilities, for example. “Twenty people are involved in a show with a cast of eight,” says Krezlewicz. So if a cast member can’t make a matinee, there’s a replacement. Unusually, “all our rehearsals are in the evening, over an extended rehearsal period…. So people can pay their mortgages at the end of the day. We’re working on building a work-life balance.”

She describes it as “a hybrid model” for professional theatre, “a reinvention of what’s possible in the post-pandemic world.” And she’s pleased with this debut production: “when the actors show up, they’re really prepped and ready to work.

The core company of 10 has big plans, including a home venue where, as a rep company, they can do more than one show at a time. “There’s a lack of mid-sized venues with availability,” Krezlewicz says of their research into the venue scene city-wide. Currently, they’re studying the feasibility of reno-ing the Princess Theatre, with its 300-seat main house, its 120 seats downstairs, and its their floor rehearsal and event space.

Krezlewicz’s theatre history started with dance. And she was an actor until the early 2000’s, when she left theatre for eight years (“and desperately missed it”). “I fell into directing,” she says of a gravitation to being the artist who “controls the space and paints the pictures.”

A 2018 women director’s intensive course at the Banff Centre was a life-changer, she reports. And the mentorship of Carey Perloff of Seattle Rep, the long-time artistic director of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre, has been seminal, as Krezlewicz describes.

Her vision for Edmonton Repertory Theatre includes “classic pieces (“I want to play in rich text”) with a blend of contemporary work.” Meanwhile, there’s an inaugural production, big and boisterous. “No grants,” she says. “It’s been a matter of begging, borrowing, calling in favours. An incredible journey.”

PREVIEW

Snow White – A Pantomime

Theatre: Edmonton Repertory Theatre and Wild Heart Collective, as part of Edmonton Christmas Market

Written and directed by: Jennifer Krezlewicz

Starring: Chris Bullough, Andy Northrup, Debbie Plaquin, Francie Goodwin-Davies, Michelle Todd, Asian Holm, Rogan Coffey, Hanna Kate Skibin, Kevin Tokarsky, Sue Huff, Justin Deveau, Kid from Edmonton Riverhawks

Where: Capitol Theatre, Fort Edmonton Park

Running: Wednesday through Dec. 17

Tickets: yegxmasmarket.com/capitol-theatre-events