Bella King, I Meant What I Said, Teatro Live!

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Intermission’s over, and Act II of the theatre season is about to begin.

Your nights out at the theatre are in progress. Rehearsals are happening in theatres across town. At Shadow (opening Jan. 22) Michael Peng shares the stage with musician Erik Mortimer, to star in An Iliad, a multi-award-winning modern re-telling of the Homer epic, an amazing concept in itself. The Citadel pays tribute to its 60-season history with a return to one of the 20th century’s greatest, and most enduringly powerful plays, produced in the theatre’s very first season. Death of a Salesman, in preview Jan. 24, stars John Ullyatt as Willy Loman, with Nadien Chu as his wife Linda. And more…. Broadway Across Canada’s touring Moulin Rouge, a splashy stage musical inspired by the Baz Luhrmann film, touches down at the Jube Tuesday. Look for upcoming 12thnight posts on all of the above.

And here are 10 other shows, in a long lineup of much-anticipated productions, that look too intriguing to miss.

Countries Shaped Like Stars. Created by Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano of Ottawa’s Mi Casa Theatre, the oddball enchantment of this whimsical fairy tale cum musical love story between two people who live on neighbouring peninsulas have made it a hit at festivals across the country. It was at the Fringe here in 2013, and I loved it (it’s just one of those theatrical Fringe shows that land lightly and stay with you), for its imaginative use of simple props, for its music … and its way of unhinging words from their usual mooring as it takes us to a time when anticipation grew on trees. Murray Utas directs a new Fringe Theatre production starring Dayna Lea Hoffmann as dragonfruit salesperson Gwendolyn Magnificent and Michael Watt as Bartholomew Spectacular, purveyor of fish popsicles. It runs Feb. 17 to 28 at the Backstage Theatre. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

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I Meant What I Said. There is much that is still mysterious about Stewart Lemoine’s first new full-length play in five years, premiering at Teatro Live! Feb. 20 to March 8. This I can tell you: it’s a comedy (OK, not a surprise, for a company and a playwright who devoted to adventures in expanding the frontiers of comedy). And the cast, directed by the playwright, is a quintet of Teatro’s younger generation stars led by Bella King and including Sam Free, Jayce Mckenzie, Eli Yaschuk, Nida Vanderham. Tickets: teatrolive.com.

And speaking of mysteries, Shakespeare is back in the park, forsooth. BIG NEWS from the Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s artistic director Dave Horak. After three summer’s exile from the Heritage Amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park, forsooth, they’re back in the park, the first group in the re-opened Heritage Amphitheatre, “with two full productions” June 18 through July 12. Their identity is to be revealed in the fulness of time (late January), “but I will tease that we are partnering with two other organizations so that we come back to the amphitheatre bigger than ever!” says Horak. “I’m hoping to make a big splash to welcome everyone back…. We’re even talking about fireworks for July 1st!”

Bouée (buoy or lifeline in English). What happens when a bunch of scientists undertake an up-date of humanity’s place in an infinite cosmos? “Cool, quirky, very physical,” as L’UniThéâtre artistic director describes this absurdist, highly theatrical play by Céleste Godin. The six-actor touring show from Satellite Theatre in Moncton NB takes L’Unihéâtre, Edmonton’s francophone theatre, for the first time across the river to the Roxy Theatre (10708 124 St.), where it runs March 6 and 7, with English surtitles. Tickets: lunitheatre.ca.

Cyrano de Bergerac, Citadel Theatre. graphic supplied.

Cyrano de Bergerac. The Citadel has commissioned a new adaptation of Edmond Rostand’s late-19th century high-romance swashbuckler from Edmonton actor/playwright Jessy Ardern, as the finale of their 60th anniversary season (May 2 to 24). The playwright retains the 17th century setting of a romantic adventure where wordplay meets swordplay — poetry by proxy — and in a nimble virtuoso touch has written it in rhyming couplets in homage to the elaborate verse form of the original. Amanda Goldberg directs this premiere production, starring Scott Shpeley as the great swordsman with the seductive poetic dexterity, and the epic nose. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.   

Everyone Is Doing Fine. Two art school friends land a job with a rich-guy hedge fund manager in this new comedy-drama by Calgary rising star James Odin Wade. Set at the treacherous, high-speed urban intersection of art, capitalism, sex, and ethics, the play was first seen in fledgling form at Workshop West’s 2023 Springboards Festival. The upcoming Workshop West premiere production (May 6 to 24) is directed by the company’s artistic producer Heather Inglis, who’s described it as “fast, smart, sexy, sophisticated.” Tickets: workshopwest.org.

Cry–Baby. Among the big Broadway musicals of this half of the season — The Wizard of Oz at the Citadel, Footloose at the Mayfield, 42nd Street at ELOPE, Once at Walterdale, A Chorus Line at MacEwan University — here’s a rom-com musical comedy we’ve never seen in these parts. A 2008 rock n’ roll musical based on the 1990 John Waters film, Cry-Baby it tells the story of a bad-boy rebel who falls for an upper-class square in 1950s Baltimore. And it comes with blue-chip creative cred. The book is by the Hairspray team of Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan; the music is by the late Adam Schlesinger, co-founder/muse of the terrific rock band Fountains of Wayne. Lauren Boyd directs a cast of 18 up-and-comers in a production from the enterprising indie company Uniform Theatre (they did Assassins at last summer’s Fringe). It runs in Theatre Network’s Phoenix Series at the Roxy (10708 124 St.) March 14 to 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.    

Casey and Diana. At the Citadel, finally Edmonton gets to see a hit play, by actor/playwright (and U of A theatre grad) Nick Green that premiered at Stratford in 2023 and has since played to full houses and critical raves across the country. We know Green from his plays like Happy Birthday Baby J and Coffee Dad, Chicken Mom and the Fabulous Buddha Boi. Casey and Diana is set in the AIDS crisis of the 1990s at Casey House, the Toronto AIDS hospice where the residents and staff are preparing for a visit by Princess Di, whose public compassion helped dislodge the exclusionary harshness of the era. The Citadel production April 4 to 26 is directed Lana Michelle Hughes, Shadow Theatre’s new artistic director. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.    

Request Programme, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic supplied.

Request Programme. In a tribute to its unusual shape-changing 50-year history, the season finale at Northern Light Theatre is a wordless performance piece that celebrates the large-scale experiments undertaken in the ‘90s by Trevor Schmidt’s artistic director predecessors D.D. Kugler and the late Sandhano Schultze. The 1973 piece, by the German avant-gardiste Franz Xaver Kroetz, follows a solitary woman who arrives home at her solitary apartment and does her usual solitary evening routine, makes dinner, cleans up, tunes in to a call-in radio show. And something happens that makes Request Programme a gut-grabber. And here’s the thing: the NLT production has a cast of 17 women artists of all ages — all actors with Northern Light credits on their resumés — one per performance. And since they do what they do onstage, every performance will be different. There is nothing like it in the season. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.

Ms. Pat’s Kitchen by Jameela McNeil, SkirtsAfire Festival.

Ms. Pat’s Kitchen. A featured production at the upcoming 14th annual edition of the SkirtsAfire Festival, Jameela McNeil’s play, set in Edmonton and celebrating our considerable Caribbean community, explores the fracture lines of an inter-generational mother-daughter relationship in a Jamaican family. And it steps up to the cultural and generational complications of the thorny issue of consent. I saw an early version at Nextfest; it’s been at the RISER New Works Festival, and now its mainstage premiere (March 5 to 8) at the ArtsHub Ortona (SkirtsAfire’s first venture into that river valley venue) is directed by Patricia Darbasie, and stars Noreta Lewis-Prince, Michelle Todd and Rochelle Laplante. Tickets: skirtsafire.com.

So, there’s 10. But there are so many more, including the return (July 10 to 26) of a signature Teatro Live! comedy, Stewart Lemoine’s Cocktails at Pam’s, a large-scale cocktail party in real time, directed by Teatro’s new artistic director Farren Timoteo who’ll be onstage in the cast of 11. The return of Chris Bullough Undiscovered Country in its latest incarnation at Theatre Network’s February Festival Weekend (Feb. 19 to 22),. Indie productions are still hatching, awaiting funding and sponsors….

And at our theatre schools, where some of the season’s most interesting work always happens, two classics of their kind. Tartuffe (directed by Kate Weiss) is at the U of A’s Studio Theatre (Feb. 5 to 14), and A Chorus Line (directed by Jim Guedo) at MacEwan University (March 25 to 29), in honour of this influential musical’s 50th anniversary.