Scott Shpeley and Shannon Blanchet in Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, Catalyst Theatre. Photo by Tim Nguyen.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s a big week for the (deliciously) macabre in Edmonton.

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

Catalyst Theatre premieres a new film of their signature musical play cum gothic fantasia Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe at the Citadel’s Zeidler Hall Saturday. Broadway Across Canada brings Beetlejuice the Musical to the Jube stage Tuesday through Sunday. And in the Citadel’s Rice Theatre, three goblins, intrigued by the human activity called theatre, have picked the bloodiest play they can find in the Shakespeare canon and they’re staging a production of Macbeth (Goblin: Macbeth).

Nevermore, arguably Alberta’s most successful and travelled theatrical export ever, has crossed the country, the border, and the pond. Catalyst’s original creation (book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Christenson; set, lighting and costumes by Bretta Gerecke) is a true original, macabre and inventive. It imagines, in a playfully theatrical and witty way — in rhyme, music, striking surreal imagery, stylized physicality — the haunted (and haunting) doom-laden life of Edgar Allan Poe as one of his own hallucinatory thrillers.

Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, Catalyst Theatre. Photo by Tim Nguyen.

Co-commissioned by the Luminato Festival in Toronto and the Magnetic North Festival in Ottawa, it premiered in 2009 jointly at the National Arts Centre and the Winter Garden in Toronto after preview runs at Keyano Theatre in Fort McMurray and Catalyst’s black-box Strathcona headquarters at the time (now the Gateway Theatre). Since then the Nevermore archive includes London runs; it’s played LIFT (the London International Festival of Theatre) and BITE (Barbican International Theatre Events). It’s been at the  PuSh Festival in Vancouver and the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, and many other theatres across the country. Nevermore has been in New York twice, at the New Victory Theatre on 42nd St., and Off-Broadway at New World Stages in 2015. It was nominated for three Off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Awards, including best new musical (and lost to an obscure little concoction called Hamilton).

Years in the making, the film, directed like the stage play by Christenson, reassembles the original seven-member cast led by Scott Shpeley as Poe (and including Shannon Blanchet, Sheldon Elter, Beth Graham, Ryan Parker, Garett Ross, Vanessa Sabourin). After Saturday’s premiere, which coincides with Poe’s 216th birthday, Nevermore will be available as a digital rental later this month. Details at catalysttheatre.ca.

Madison Mosley and Justin Collette in Beetlejuice the Musical, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy

•Based on the 1988 Tim Burton movie of the same name, Beetlejuice the Musical (music and lyrics by Eddie Perfect, book by Scott Brown and Anthony King) chronicles the fortunes of a bereaved teenager Lydia, and the haunting of a house by the deceased couple who fell to their deaths through the floorboards. There’s a jaunty song for that, just so you know! Tickets for the touring production: ticketmaster.ca.

Kragva, Moog and Wug in Goblin: Macbeth, Spontaneous Theatre at the Citadel. Photo supplied

•The cast of Goblin: Macbeth, a joint creation by Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak of Spontaneous Theatre, are goblins curious about humanity, its weird theatrical practices, and its star playwright who includes witches, ghosts, and fairies in his plays. It opens Thursday in the the Citadel’s Highwire Series in the Rice Theatre and runs through Feb. 2. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.  Have you seen the 12thnight.ca PREVIEW with Northan?