Author Archives: Liz Nicholls

Reimagining history in a cautionary tale: Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, a Thou Art Here epic at the Fort

Posted on July 19, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It began with a vision of an Indigenous/settler Romeo and Juliet, star-cross’d lovers reaching across the colonial divide. And gradually a bigger, richer, more complex story — poised at an historically critical juncture in our collective … Continue reading →

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A visceral reverb that stays with you: Brick Shithouse at Found Fest

Posted on July 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It’s stayed with me, the way dangerous theatre does. So I wanted to tell you about Brick Shithouse. I was lucky to catch the last performance of the fenceless theatre production that sold out its whole run … Continue reading →

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The breezy and the sharp in a comedy of (bad) manners: Private Lives at Teatro Live! A review

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “I think that very few people are completely normal really, deep down in their private lives….” argues Amanda in Noel Coward’s 1930 comedy of (bad) manners, the season finale at Teatro Live!. It’s a declaration on … Continue reading →

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Teatro Live! announces a new season

Posted on July 15, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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 … Continue reading →

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So … what could possibly go wrong? The Play That Goes Wrong at the Citadel, a review

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Live theatre is a risky business. And there’s a show onstage in town designed expressly, with single-minded high-precision calculation, to mine the comic gold in that. The Play That Goes Wrong, currently making people laugh en … Continue reading →

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Classic comedy: a summertime weekend in Edmonton theatre

Posted on July 13, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Hey, Edmonton, look what’s waiting for you onstage this weekend. Something about summer inspires our theatre artists to tangle with the classics, reimagine them, put them in new shapes: A classic playwright (you guessed, Shakespeare), in … Continue reading →

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Fast and furious: the righteous frustration of Ashleigh Hicks’ characters in Brick Shithouse, at Found Fest 2024

Posted on July 2, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca The largest production in the Found Festival’s 13-year history of unexpected encounters with art opens this week in a place you might not even know about yet. As in most of Found’s surprises, that place is … Continue reading →

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Nostalgia at the lake: On Golden Pond at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on July 1, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “How does it feel to turn eighty?” a 15-year-old kid demands of Norman Thayer, the curmudgeonly retired English prof/ octogenarian wiseacre in On Golden Pond. “Twice as bad as turning 40,” he says without missing a … Continue reading →

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Finding Found, the festival of unexpected encounters with art and artists

Posted on June 30, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca “What’s going on here?” There’s a question that tickles the perpetrators of the Found Festival, devoted to art (and encounters with artists) in unexpected places. For a dozen Julys, no alley or park, no warehouse, or … Continue reading →

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Storytelling in the theatre: a long weekend on Edmonton stages

Posted on June 29, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca A long weekend in Edmonton: four plays, four stories that demonstrate, in four very different ways, the possibilities of storytelling on a stage, in a theatre. •Michel(le), the season finale at L’UniThéâtre, from Vancouver’s Théâtre La … Continue reading →

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