Category Archives: Reviews

Populating a world and reclaiming the past, all on a bare stage: Basic Training, a review

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca In Basic Training, the impressively multi-character solo play currently running as part of the Edmonton Fringe Theatre season, Khalil Ashanti tells a fascinating story. It is his own. It’s the story of a childhood terrorized by … Continue reading →

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Back to our alma mater, for a class reunion at Rydell High. Grease at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca We all went to Rydell High. And none of us ever graduated. That’s the thing about Grease: every production of the 1972 musical by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey is a class reunion, so to speak. … Continue reading →

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On the dark side of the fine art of storytelling: The Pillowman at Theatre Yes, a review

Posted on April 12, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca There’s a hooded figure, head bowed, waiting for us in a grim basement downtown. It’s a mysterious place we’ve never been before, and, ominously, it’s lined with plastic. Uh-oh. With Martin McDonagh’s 2003 The Pillowman, Theatre … Continue reading →

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On the outside looking in: Candy & The Beast, a new Trevor Schmidt thriller at Northern Light Theatre, a review

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It’s a dark and threatening world, a miasma of secret dangers and fear, in which we find ourselves in Candy & The Beast, a new and multi-faceted mystery thriller by (and directed by) Trevor Schmidt premiering … Continue reading →

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The gift of belief: unmissable Wonderful Joe, The Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Something wonderful, and wonder-filled, happened last night at Theatre Network. We found ourselves on Eileen Street, in a miniature urban neighbourhood on the wrong side of the tracks. Where the homeless are home, and the misfits … Continue reading →

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Humanizing a hero in a mysterious encounter: The Mountaintop at the Citadel, a review

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca A road-weary man with a cough and holes in his socks arrives back in an undistinguished Memphis motel on a stormy night in April 1968, dying for a cigarette and checking for hidden microphones before he … Continue reading →

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The long weekend in a theatre town

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca What happens on a long weekend in a theatre town? For starters, a new indie puppet musical and a musical theatre classic, an insightful and captivating comedy about teenage girls, a musical revue, a new play … Continue reading →

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Back-combing the ’60s: Hairspray at the Jube, a review

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Something has happened to the light-hold flexible Hairspray we’ve always known. It’s gone Ultra-Clutch. In a world of chronic downsizing — of prospects, budgets, the polar ice cap … — there’s something reassuring, in theory, about … Continue reading →

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An evening in the park with Sondheim and up-and-comers at MacEwan, and more

Posted on March 22, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca Last night in a packed theatre I got a chance to see the only musical in the repertoire where the rhyme of “rapturous” and “capture us” floats through the air. Both apply to the experience of … Continue reading →

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Building a robot and making friends: fresh and funny Robot Girls premieres at Shadow Theatre, a review

Posted on March 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca It’s fresh. It’s funny. Its sharp-eyed insights into the fraught high-stress lives of junior high teenage girls are blended into fast-acting chemistry in Trevor Schmidt’s winsome, hilarious, often touching, new comedy Robot Girls. It’s a tricky … Continue reading →

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