Noori Gill, Dayna Lea Hoffmann, Mel Bahniuk in Mermaid Legs, SkirtsAfire Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Lights up, Edmonton. Take your seats, friends; intermission is over. And Act II of the theatre season is about to begin.

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The tip-off? Next week, Farren Timoteo’s terrific (and much-travelled solo show Made In Italy returns to town, on the Citadel mainstage. Broadway Across Canada arrives on the Jube stage with the touring musical Mean Girls (book by Tina Fey), just ahead of the opening of a new movie version. Before that, there’s a Saturday night cabaret at the Grindstone, starring two of this theatre town’s hottest young musical theatre talents: An Evening With Bella King and Josh Travnik: A Capricorn Cabaret.

There will be more, much more, of course, when the vagaries of funding settle for indie theatre. Look for the Plain Janes to return to the Fringe with a musical, Pump Boys and Dinettes, after a year’s hiatus, and there will be a mainstage show, too. Details to come.

Meanwhile, what looks too good to miss?

To whet your appetite, here’s a sampling, in no particular order, of a dozen possibilities, among many, for your nights out at the theatre. Intriguing how many are new plays, premiering on a variety of Edmonton stages before anyone anywhere else gets to see them.

Mel Bahniuk, Dayna Lea Hoffmann, Noori Gill in Mermaid Legs, SkirtsAfire Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang

Mermaid Legs: Billed as “a surreal theatre dance fantasia” (and adorned with the season’s most intriguing title), this new play by actor/playwright Beth Graham (Pretty Goblins, The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, Weasel) is the mainstage centrepiece of this year’s  11th annual SkirtsAfire Festival. It’s all about sisters, the bonds of sisterhood, the destabilizing damages of the stigma attached to mental illness. The three-actor four-dancer SkirtsAfire production (Feb. 29-March 10  at the Gateway Theatre) directed by Annette Loiselle is her grand finale as the festival’s co-founder and artistic director. And it stars actors Noori Gill, Mel Bahniuk, Dayna Lea Hoffmann, and dancers Mpoe Mogale, Alida Kendall, Max Hanic and Tia Kushniruk. Tickets: skirtsafire.com.

Wonderful Joe by Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes. Brochure photo.

Wonderful Joe: The latest from the actor/playwright/designer/ marionettiste extraordinaire Ronnie Burkett, premiering at his home-away-from-home Theatre Network, is a love letter to the imagination,” as he has described. And old man and his dog Mister, who lose their home, set forth into the great big screwed-up heartbreaking world for one last adventure. Joe has a gift for spotting magic and beauty in the small, the overlooked, the lost and disenfranchised. On their journey the travelling companions meet Jesus, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus … and a homeless troupe of actors. The production created by and starring Burkett runs April 2 to 21 at the Roxy. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

Christine Lesiak and Tara Travis in The Spinsters, Small Matters Productions. Photo by Ian Walker

The Spinsters: You want the real dirt on the palace, that scandalous business with the footwear, the ragtag victim who gets first a makeover from a fairy godmother — and then the prince? Of course you do. So why not ask Cinderella’s infamously snarly and treacherous step-sisters for the low-low-down? This much-anticipated new dark comedy is from Small Matters Productions, ingenious purveyors of original physical comedy and interactive theatre. And music, movement, shadow puppetry are involved! Christine Lesiak (FOR SCIENCE!, The Space Between Stars) and Tara Travis (Till Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Who Killed Gertrude Crump?) are the joint creators and stars. And the production in the Edmonton Fringe Theatre season Jan. 16 to 27 is directed by Jan Selman. Look for a 12thnight interview with Lesiak and Travis soon. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

Candy & The Beast, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic by Curio Studio.

Candy and the Beast: If you saw Two-Headed/ Half-Hearted, an ingenious two-character song cycle for conjoined twins at Northern Light a couple of seasons ago, you’ll know that prairie gothic has a powerful attraction for playwright/director/designer Trevor Schmidt. This new “multidisciplinary murder mystery/thriller” for two characters seems to return to the dark underbelly of the hinterland with its story of a small-town sister and brother, amateur detectives, who set out from their trailer court to track down a serial killer. Schmidt’s production, starring Jayce McKenzie and Bret Jacobs, runs April 5 to 20. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.

The Pillowman: Theatre Yes, whose community-building venture The Play’s The Thing warmed hearts in the fall, returns to the stage in April with something very different: Martin McDonagh’s luridly chilling and provocative 2003 (very) dark comedy. The protagonist, who’s being interrogated by police in a Kafka-esque regime, is a storyteller, whose luridly gruesome fairy tales, designed to keep you awake at night, have landed him and his brother in the slammer. It’s a play that can’t not be argued about. It happens downtown April 11 to 21 in the Pendennis Building, where I’ve never set foot before. Max Rubin directs. Tickets: theatreyes.com.

Pith!: Teatro Live! revives Stewart Lemoine’s magical 1997 tribute to the transforming power of theatre, the imagination, and storytelling. In the production directed by the playwright Feb. 9 to 25 at the Varscona, Andrew MacDonald-Smith, the company’s co-artistic director, returns to a role he played a decade ago: Jack Vail, the vagabond who changes the melancholy life of a widow paralyzed by hope (Kristin Johnston), with an invitation to travel with her maid (Jenny McKillop) on an imaginary South American journey. Tickets: teatro.com.

This Is The Story Of The Child Ruled By Fear: Workshop West hosts the Edmonton stop (Jan. 31 to Feb. 4 at the Gateway) of a cross-country tour of David Gagnon Walker’s highly unusual immersive experiment in communal storytelling. Developed at the Found Festival here, with subsequent runs at high-profile national festivals like SummerWorks in Toronto and the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, it’s an invitation to join the multi-talented theatre artist Gagnon Walker in reading aloud the “poetic fable” of the rise and fall of an imaginary civilization in an imaginary land, as emergencies proliferate and crises gather force. Audience participation, yes, but to your own comfort level: you can read a character, you can join the ensemble, you can sit back and listen. Christian Barry of Halifax-based 2b Theatre directs the Strange Victory Performance production with Judy Wensel. Tickets: showpass.com.

Glenn Nelson, Reed McColm in The Drawer
Boy, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied.

The Drawer Boy: Michael Healey’s Governor General’s Award-winning 1999 play, a Canadian theatre classic that hasn’t been seen in these parts since the early 2000s at the Citadel, is a sort of back story, but more than that a beautiful and intricate tribute to the power of storytelling. It chronicles the adventures of a young actor who’s part of a Toronto company on their foray into the Ontario heartland to research rural life for the play that would become another classic, the landmark collective The Farm Show. John Hudson directs the Shadow Theatre production that stars Glenn Nelson and Reed McColm, and as the young actor Miles, Paul-Ford Manguelle, most recently seen in a cluster of roles in Grindstone Theatre’s Die Harsh. Meet him in an upcoming 12thnight interview. Tickets: shadowtheatre.org.

Vaches The Musical: You can’t help but be intrigued by the musical that arrives in the L’UniThéâtre season March 21 to 23 at La Cité francophone. Vaches, by Stéphane Guertin and Olivier Nadon was inspired by the dramatic Quebec ice storm of 1998. The protagonist, farmer Jean, is up against the elements, the military, and the mayor as he tries to save hundreds of cows from certain death. The five-actor production is from Ottawa’s Création En Vivo. And, says L’UniThéâtre’s new artistic director Steve Jodoin, it’s “funny and touching, comedy with heart.” With English surtitles. Tickets: lunitheatre.ca.   

Lora Brovold in Dead Letter, Workshop West Playwright’s Theatre. Photo by Dave DeGagné

Dead Letter: Conni Massing’s mischievous new rom-com/mystery takes the universal hunger for meaning and cosmic connection down to the small-scale — to the minor hidden mysteries of our lives. The catalyst is the appearance of a dead letter, years old, in the protagonist’s mailbox. Massing, whose history with Workshop West is long and distinguished (most recently Matari), has a way with witty dialogue and recognizable characters. Heather Inglis’s production (May 17 to June 2 at the Gateway) has the additional draw of a premium cast: Lora Brovold and Collin Doyle, real-life wife and husband rarely onstage together, with Maralyn Ryan. Tickets: showpass.com.

Sunday In The Park With George: You don’t get many chances in life to see Stephen Sondheim’s mesmerizing 1983 masterpiece inspired by the famous painting of the same name by the pointillist  Georges Seurat. It’s a glorious tribute to art and artists, and the price tag on creating it, in a merger of past and present. Jim Guedo directs a MacEwan University theatre arts production March 20 to 24. Tickets: tickets.macewan.ca.

Citadel Theatre, graphic supplied.

The Three Musketeers: Your chance to see a major intersection of  actors, swords and swashbuckling onstage is the lure of the Citadel season grand finale. It’s an adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas tale with its ensemble mantra, “all for one and one for all.” Daryl Cloran’s big-cast production (April 20 to May 12) will have all the period trappings, including lavish costumes, and a contemporary sensibility tuned to comedy, a specialty of the savvy American adapter Catherine Bush. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.