By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the centre of Teatro Live!’s upcoming 43rd season, announced this past weekend, are revivals of two seminal Stewart Lemoine comedies of very different hue. And the 2024-2025 lineup at a company devoted to comedy in all its permutations is bookended by two evergreen hits: a hit thriller of English provenance, and one of the theatre repertoire’s most popular and enduring American comedies.

Jeff Haslam and Kristen Padayas in On The Banks of the Nut (2010), Teatro Live!. Photo supplied.

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Lemoine’s 2001 screwball comedy On The Banks of the Nut, set in the Wisconsin hinterland in 1951, is set in motion by the rural expedition of a “federal talent agent” and a plucky temp. The music of Mahler is involved, specifically the post-horn solo in Mahler’s Third Symphony, which changes the life of the proprietor of the Nut River Lodge.

The premiere production 23 years ago introduced two newcomers, Brianna Buckmaster and Josh Dean, at the outset of their theatre careers, alongside Teatro veterans Jeff Haslam, Davina Stewart, and Leona Brausen. And that’s what Lemoine, who directs this first revival since 2010 (May 30 to June 13, 2025), intends to do this time out with new talent from this year’s auditions.

Leona Brausen and Eric Wigston, On the Banks of the Nut (2010), Teatro Live!. Photo supplied.

If Teatro artistic director Andrew MacDonald-Smith has a particular affection for On The Banks of the Nut, it’s because “it was the first Lemoine I ever saw,” he says. “It was the fall of my first semester at MacEwan (theatre arts)…. I think I saw it 10 times; I just fell madly in love with Lemoine comedy. By about the seventh time, Stewart said, “don’t buy a ticket; just buy popcorn.” Soon MacDonald-Smith would join the ensemble at the company devoted to comedy in all its permutations and possibilities. And soon he would be a Teatro leading man. He laughs. “You never forget your first Lemoine.”

Davina Stewart and Jeff Haslam in The Noon Witch (1995), Teatro Live!. Photo supplied

With The Noon Witch (Feb. 21 to March 9) Teatro to one of the first plays the company staged at the Varscona in 1995. Lemoine says he’d heard of the eccentric Hungarian legend that inspired it via a 20-minute Dvorak tone poem. The title character of the piece, set in 1920s Budapest, is a supernatural creature who appears at mid-day and lures men to a watery death by plying them with rich fatty food so that they sink. Lemoine, who laughs that he had “a Hungarian period,” had first introduced the lead characters Anatole and Josef some years before in A Moment in Budapest (part of The Argentine Picnic), famous in the Teatro archive for the consumption of real goulash onstage by the cast every night.

A very different kind of mysterious apparition emerges from the mist in the Teatro season-opener, The Woman in Black, a genuinely unnerving Edwardian thriller adapted for the stage in 1987 by the Brit playwright Stephen Mallatratt from the Susan Hill novel. After a 35-year run in London’s West End, it closed in March 2023. Andrew Ritchie, the artistic director of Thou Art Here, directs the Teatro production that runs October 11 to 27. MacDonald-Smith calls The Woman In Black “a thriller with a sense of humour.”

The season finale July 11 to 27 is Neil Simon’s 1965 The Odd Couple, arguably the most successful comedy in the entire Simon canon. It was last produced on the Varscona stage 20 years ago, in a Teatro-Shadow Theatre co-production.

The mismatched roommates whose incompatibility is the crux of the hilarity are two New Yorkers, Felix and Oscar. The one is a neurotic neatness freak, with a homemaker’s skill set; the other is an easy-going poker-playing slob. Belinda Cornish, currently starring in the Teatro production of Private Lives, directs. Her production stars MacDonald-Smith as the uptight Felix, with Alexander Ariate as Oscar.

Tickets and subscriptions: teatrolive.com.