By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Shakespeare gets reimagined in two high-contrast productions in the upcoming $13 million 2024-2025 season unveiled by Citadel Theatre artistic director Daryl Cloran Monday night.

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

Of the four musicals announced in the 10-show lineup at Edmonton’s biggest playhouse (up from nine show this season), one’s a version of the Bard’s most popular comedy, one’s a Broadway blockbuster, one’s Broadway-bound, and one is a small-scale Alberta-made Indigenous version of a ‘70s classic.

Big productions, with international connections, will be onstage next season. And, by way of balance, “we get behind local artists and small innovative Canadian projects, too … an important part of our job,” says Cloran, of a lineup that includes a new mainstage crime caper of Alberta provenance.

Taking its cue from the continuing success of his much-travelled border-crossing As You Like, a romantic comedy partnership between Shakespeare and the Beatles, Cloran is devising (and directing) a big new ‘70s musical version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which premieres Feb. 22 to March 23. It match-makes Will and David, Shakespeare and Bowie respectively, in a glam-rock era production that capitalizes on “the fantastical elements of Dream,” says Cloran. It’s easy to see Puck in that world, looking like a David Bowie.”

“So much of Dream is about performance,” he says. “The ‘mechanicals’ are building a show, and it’s easy to see them as a struggling rock band…. So there’s great room for song. And that period in particular felt like a fit” for Bowie, Elton John, the BeeGees, Marvin Gaye, Olivia Newton-John et al. The Citadel is currently at work acquiring rights to that ear-worm repertoire. Cloran’s script-adaptation partner is Kayvon Khoshkam, artistic director of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, memorably funny as the clown Touchstone in the Beatles-infused As You Like It.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical, premiering on the Maclab stage), has a highly unusual companion piece in the Citadel’s Rice Theatre. A trio of goblins, in full goblin gear, happen upon a Complete Works of William Shakespeare, and pick the goriest to perform. Goblin:Macbeth (Jan. 11 to Feb. 2), which arrives trailing raves from successful runs at Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach, Stratford and currently Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre, is the work of the unstoppably inventive theatre artist Rebecca Northan (Blind Date, Undercover) along with Bruce Horak. And this Spontaneous Theatre Creation re-launches the Citadel’s Highwire Series after a year’s hiatus. “Everything you love about Rebecca Northan…. Such a cool mix of the improv and the Shakespeare,” as Cloran describes. “Great comedy and moments of profound Shakespeare acting.”

The “big family musical” in the lineup is Disney’s Frozen: The Broadway Musical (Feb 1 to March 2). Rachel Peake (The Garneau Block, 9 to 5), whose Citadel production of The Sound of Music is coming up in March, directs the new production of the 2018 hit. Among other contagious songs by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, it contains Let It Go, which, as every adult knows, once heard never lets go. “Big production values, big costumes, big design challenges,” says Cloran. “A coup to get the rights!”

With The Ballad of Johnny and June (Nov. 2 to 24), the Citadel collaborates with the La Jolla Playhouse — the California theatre where many Broadway musicals, including Come From Away and Jersey Boys, got their start — on a new musical love story about country music stars Johnny Cash and June Carter. The production “has its sights set clearly on Broadway,” says Cloran. And it brings back to Canada notable director Des McAnuff, whose resumé includes a stint as Stratford Festival artistic director, and Broadway hits like Ain’t Too Proud, the Donna Summer Musical, and The Who’s Tommy.

McAnuff’s assistant director in his Stratford days, incidentally, was Cloran, who worked on Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra (starring Christopher Plummer) and the musical A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.

The fourth of the season’s musical offerings is the LightningCloud production of Bear Grease (Oct. 17 to 27). It’s a much-travelled Indigenous take by (and starring) the Edmonton couple Crystle Lightning and Henry RedCloud Andrade (Evandalism) of the Enoch Cree Nation, on the 1978 classic Grease. “Super-fun,” says Cloran of the piece, which premiered at the Edmonton Fringe. “Really smartly done…. And they have big dreams for the show.” Inclusion in the Highwire Series, returning after a year’s hiatus, is “a great way for us to showcase local artists, get behind a local group and amplify their success, shine a light on it nationally,” says Cloran.

The 2024-2025 season opens (Sept. 21 to Oct. 13) with Cloran’s own production of A Streetcar Named Desire, the Tennessee Williams masterwork he has long wanted to direct, as he says. “A great story, iconic characters,” he says of the co-production with Theatre Calgary. Casting announcements await.   

The mainstage season includes a new play by Alberta writer Arun Lakra, a rare, possibly unique, example of opthalmologist-turned-playwright. Heist (March 22 to April 13), developed as part of the Citadel’s 2022-23 Playwrights Lab and currently onstage at Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre, is a crime caper which gets its inspiration from films like Ocean’s Eleven. “Arun has landed on something very cool here,” says Cloran. Figuring out how to put a heist onstage, the complications of a perfect robbery complete with diamonds, lasers, guns, double-crosses, betrayals, will be the intriguing challenge for a director as yet unannounced.

The season finale (May 3 to 25, 2025), is the North American premiere of a London stage production of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, in the playwright’s 100th anniversary year. A hit at London’s Almeida Theatre which transferred to the West End, the production is an adaptation by Keith Reddin (Life During Wartime) and Anne Washburn (Mr. Burns, a post-electric play) of multiple Twilight Zone stories from the CBS TV series. And after a New York workshop the show brings to Edmonton  the much-awarded English director Richard Jones, to build and hone at the Citadel with an eye to Broadway, à la Hadestown and Peter Pan Goes Wrong in which the theatre had a hand.

As Cloran describes, the piece “takes a bunch of Twilight Zone stories, intertwines them (with the story of an astronaut abandoned in space), and leans into the theatricality.” As in the case of Hadestown and Six, “the international partnership allows not only allows our audiences to see shows first, but us to do a bigger (budget) productions than we could afford to do on our own.”

Before the season starts, the Citadel’s summer production  (July 6 to Aug. 4), is is by Henry Lewis, Henry Shields and Jonathan Sayer, the Mischief Theatre trio who brought Citadel audiences Peter Pan Goes Wrong in 2022. In fact, the 2011 comedy of near-misses and incipient chaos is a precursor of sorts, in which we first meet the earnest, accident-prone thesps of the Cornley Drama Society as they struggle valiantly to put on a 1920s-style murder mystery. Dennis Garnhum, the former artistic director of both Theatre Calgary and the Grand Theatre in London, Ont., directs the Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre/ Theatre Calgary co-production.

No holiday season in Edmonton is conceivable without A Christmas Carol onstage at the Citadel. It’s just that way here. A Christmas Carol returns for a 25th anniversary and the sixth iteration of David van Belle’s 1950s adaptation, Nov. 23 to Dec. 24. And in a cast of more than 30, John Ullyatt returns to the role of the flinty Ebenezer. Lianna Makuch, who has assistant-directed the lavish production for the past few season, steps up to direct.

2024-2025 season packages go on sale, citadeltheatre.com, Jan. 29. Casual tickets for The Play That Goes Wrong are on sale March 14, and the rest of the season July 4. Meanwhile the current season continues with Rubaboo, The Sound of Music, The Mountaintop, and The Three Musketeers.

Looking ahead at the Citadel’s 2024-2025 season: 

Mainstage series: A Streetcar Named Desire (Sept. 21 to Oct. 13, 2024); The Ballad of Johnny and June (Nov. 2 to 24, 2024); Disney’s Frozen: The Broadway Musical (Feb. 1 to March 2, 2025); A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (Feb. 22 to March 23, 2025); Heist (March 22 to April 13, 2025); The Twilight Zone (May 3 to 25, 2025).

Summer presentation: The Play That Goes Wrong (July 6 to Aug. 4, 2024)

Highwire Series: Bear Grease (Oct. 17 to 27, 2024); Goblin: Macbeth (Jan. 11 to Feb. 2, 2025).

Holiday production: A Christmas Carol (Nov. 23 to Dec. 24, 2024).