Brainwaves galore: a (temporary) finale for our fave sketch comedy trio. ‘Girl Brain, Actually’ at the Roxy

Posted on December 8, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Caley Suliak, Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The show that opens Thursday in Theatre Network’s season at the Roxy puts holiday sparkles and Santa hats on a double milestone in Edmonton theatre.

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After eight dizzying years of laughing, sold-out houses the hit sketch comedy trio Girl Brain — which is to say Alyson Dicey, Ellie Heath and Caley Suliak— is taking a creative sabbatical. Girl Brain, Actually, inspired by the celebrated seasonal movie fave Love, Actually, is the trio’s farewell-for-now sketch show. “We don’t want to say forever,” says Dicey.

It’s a salute to their Edmonton fans, who have from the start been smitten with Girl Brain’s quick wit, their original situational, observational hilarity, characters that mine the absurdities and anxieties built into everyday life. And there’s this: Girl Brain, Actually is directed by Bradley Moss, his final production at Theatre Network after 30 years, 27 of them as artistic director.

Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Caley Suliak, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

“We’re take a wee break because we’re all moving to other exciting things in our lives” says Dicey. “We’re (each) too busy, in separate ways, and creatively motivated to do other things….” Says Heath, whose music career is really taking off (she releases her first album, produced by Hawksley Workman, next year). Dicey is making a full-time commitment to the Fringe, in a variety of gigs including fund-raising, sponsorships, communication in addition to directing the KidsFringe. Suliak, who works in communications at Workshop West and appears in the improvised weekly soap Die-Nasty, has “ideas brewing,” as she puts it, “for performances and solo shows,” a hint that she’s resuming her acting career.

Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey, Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Too busy to be Girl Brain? That in itself says something about the expansiveness of their story, and the theatre/comedy niche the trio have forged for themselves. Heath cites Kurt Cobain’s advice that “if nobody’s presenting a door for you to walk through, you’ve gotta make your own door.” And that’s what the three did, with Girl Brain.

Eight years ago, three actors, best friends looking to create space for themselves in the theatre scene here, fashioned a sketch comedy show. And they took it to a new little comedy theatre called Grindstone on an off-Whyte Strathcona street that wasn’t busy yet.

Actor/playwrights all three, they’d touched down on sketch comedy, mainly because “it’s the most theatrical of all the branches of comedy,” as Heath says. She thinks of it as “an abbreviated form of playwriting.” They’d spent months “writing stories and creating characters (both female and male, sometimes on ill-fated dates) that would be fun to play,” says Suliak, who has a particular specialty in mansplaining roles. No age or gender was safe. “I don’t know if you know this, but men are so funny!” Dicey laughs. “You may not have realized it because men are so under-represented in comedy (more laughter). “Hey, that’s a little preview of our show.”

On that fateful first night at Grindstone they’d find out whether Girl Brain was a kooky one-off  creative experiment, or something with legs, to mix our anatomical metaphors. They didn’t know what to expect, how the audience would react, whether they’d laugh. “That night is a big blur,” Suliak laughs. “We didn’t really know what we were doing. But the show was sold out, and so we’d navigate our way through this new river. And maybe we’d have a life jacket, and maybe we wouldn’t….”

“We swam!” Heath still can’t quite believe the response from the audience. “People came up to us in the lobby after and asked ‘when’s your next show?’…. It immediately felt like something special that we’d have to do again! It took off really fast; it snowballed.” Suddenly Girl Brain was everywhere, making people laugh at festivals, on theatre stages across town, hosting big sporting events….

Girl Brain, 2019: Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey. Photo by Brianne Jang, bb ccollective photography

“There are characters and scenes from those early shows that we’ve come back to later, refined or amalgamated,” says Suliak. Dicey thinks of the Girl Brain origin story as “a perfect storm” of opportunity and buzz. “Grindstone was also new in 2018girl and we were one of the only sketch groups there. AND Brianne Jang signed on (as the official Girl Brain photographer) with Caley as our social media manager…. We have people who love us as an online group and have never come to the theatre!”

Girl Brain. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Jang, a multi-talented actor/professional photographer who’s also the manager of the SkirtsAfire Festival, brought an adventurous originality sense of comedy to Girl Brain photo shoots. Ah, and a vivid sense of place. Girl Brain was our sketch comedy trio: Jang would pose the trio on the river valley steps, or at the mall, or in the swanky Roxy Theatre bathroom. Their posters, designed by Jang, are comedies in themselves.

From the start Girl Brain conceived of their sketch shows as theatrical; characters and a through-line were important to them. “It makes us different from other sketch groups,” says Dicey. “When Bradley (Bradley Moss) saw one of our shows he noticed. ‘’Keep doing that’,” he told us.” Actor/director/playwright Steve Pirot and Mike Kennard of Mump and Smoot fame, had similar thoughts. ‘You have something weird and I think you should lean into that’.”

Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey in Weekend at Girlies, Girl Brain at Theatre Network. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Last year’s Girl Brain Christmas special, Weekend At Girlies, inspired by the movie Weekend at Bernie’s, was a girls’ trip to a Mexican all-inclusive. With Love, Actually, Girl Brain has springboarded off an episodic movie, with recurring characters, “that flows very much in the way our shows have flowed in the last few years,” as Heath points out. And they’ve taken the action out West, way out West, to the Mall.

That Moss has signed on to direct is particularly meaningful to all three. It isn’t his first time directing the trio. In 2023, at Theatre Network’s Another F!*#@$G Festival, Girl Brain and Moss collaborated on Humans Never Onstage, a verbatim theatre production devised from interviews with real people, à la Studs Terkel’s Working. It was Moss’s idea. “We’re all big fans of his work” says Heath, who was in the cast of his production of Colleen Murphy’s Jupiter last season. Because Moss is leaving “this might be our last chance to work together in this space!”

When they started eight years ago, having a “girl brain” day was a droll throw-away line about falling through a crevice in the logic brain. It became a validation. And now Girl Brain is stepping off the curb again, venturing forth on new, separate creative pathways.  Brainwaves to come.

PREVIEW

Girl Brain, Actually

Created by: Alyson Dicey, Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak

Directed by: Bradley Moss

Where: Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre, 10708 124 St.

Running: Thursday through Dec. 21

Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca

 

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Tap dancing towards friendship: How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold … a holiday treat at Northern Light. A review

Posted on November 30, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor in How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

You know you’ve been truly dumped when the teacher just stops coming to the Thursday night beginner adult tap dance class you’ve signed up for — and it’s Christmas time.

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Talk about seasonal abandonment issues, a stab of holly through the heart, really. That’s the situation in which the two characters we meet in Trevor Schmidt’s delightful, beautifully cast new holiday comedy find themselves in the last studio on the left at the FreeBody Dance Station. No wonder the first line of How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, premiering at Northern Light, is “are you f-in kidding me?”

That would be Joanne (Kendra Connor), the feistier of the two, reflecting on the unseemly departure of Miss Amber on the eve of the big dance competition. Patty (Jenny McKillop), the more tentative of the two and chronically resigned to setbacks as the mother of six, confines herself to a sad shrug. “Miss Amber. She’s blonde.”

As we learn, in a weave of alternating monologues interspersed with snippets of rehearsal moves for “the single ladies routine,” the beginners class has been a Survivor-type chronicle of attrition (people move, they get busy, both Cathy-with-a-C and Kathy-with-a-K have quit in a tandem departure). Only Patty and Joanne remain.

And, this is the fun and the heart of it: they can’t stop coming on Thursday night from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. to the mirrored dance studio (designed by Schmidt and lighted by Rae McCallum). We sit and watch Patty and Joanne, from the front and the back, and see ourselves too. Each character has her own reasons, as they reveal in amusing little glimpses into their lives, deftly written by Schmidt. And the performances by Connor and McKillop in Schmidt’s production, comically precise and very funny, make little wisps of information about them really count.

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

Joanne, who evidently lives alone (except for mysterious roommate Karen), is the kind of person who knows what year Gypsy premiered, and how Irving Berlin’s White Christmas debuted in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. She’s crazy for musicals, a fan who yearns to be part of that magical world. Tap is a ticket to ride. And Connor, a petite firecracker in a Cats sweatshirt, negotiates a comical blend of brisk and dreamy, Joanne has a prosaic job in a bank, tapping invisibly behind the counter, a mental image of thwarted desire that makes you re-think your tedious exchanges at the TD.

Joanne, who has a wistful and melancholy quality about her in McKillop’s vividly funny performance, is a study in contrast. She’s tall and droopy, squinting to hike her glasses up, always a little late, dazed and distracted by the unremitting busy-ness of life with six demanding kids — five, plus Emma “who bites” — she calls The Monsters. She is not, to say the least, imbued with the can-do spirit of showbiz. She’s an unofficial spokesperson for the can’t-do. “It looks better with 10 people,” she says dispiritedly of their chances of re-working Miss Amber’s routine as a duo.

Patty just wants, needs, to get out of the house and do something for herself. And she’s already tried pottery classes (too messy) as a hobby initiative.

When Patty and Joanne decide to keep on, and create their own routine for the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, it’s a case of “I’m not a quitter vs “I never really liked Charmaine,” the office manager at FreeBody Dance Station.

What do they have in common, as a basis for the friendship that the play heads towards (not really a spoiler alert)? As it turns out in the course of this heart-warming little holiday comedy, they have loneliness. They have Lindsey Walker’s droll, apt sound design. And they have tap. There is absolutely no logical reason for tap dance. Taps on shoes aren’t useful, like cleats, or grips on snowboots, or cushion treads on pricey runners (don’t you have relevance fatigue?). But somehow tapping is the sound that happy makes.

There’s something valiant about the act of creation, no matter how fumbling its origins, as How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold… proposes. And Jason Hardwick’s comic tap choreography makes you laugh and feels kind of inspirational. The birth of an unlikely friendship in the improbable act of creating something together, that’s where we’re going with this sweet seasonal comedy. And the fun of getting there, an apotheosis realized in a big finish (costumes by Logan Stefura), makes this an hour to give yourself as a holiday treat.

REVIEW

How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written and directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Kendra Connor and Jenny McKillop

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: through Dec. 13

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com

 

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May your days be merry and bright … thoughts on the 2025 A Christmas Carol at the Citadel

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Troy O’Donnell and John Ullyatt in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Christmas Carol 2025, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

On the opening night of A Christmas Carol this past week at the Citadel it started to snow big time; all fall it hadn’t, not really, not till that very evening. And it felt like a stage effect under the streetlights, specially arranged by the theatre (and possibly a little overdone).  Mother Nature as back-up for a big, deluxe, music-filled production that contains both Winter Wonderland and White Christmas.

The clever, quick-witted David van Belle version of Dickens’ 1843 novella that’s returned to the Citadel’s Maclab stage for the seventh year, is the heir to a 19-year-old run of Tom Wood’s gorgeous Victorian era adaptation. It moves one of the greatest ghost stories of all time a century ahead to the post-World War II era, and across the Atlantic, with songs to match. It’s a different kind of nostalgia. And it takes Mr. Scrooge out of his Victorian counting house and relocates him to the proprietorship of Marley’s department store, on Christmas Eve, 1949.

John Ullyatt in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Retail at Christmas time? You might even consider sparing a shred of sympathy for Ebenezer the Exasperated. Until you see John Ullyatt as Scrooge, the avenging fury of the bottom line, snarling at his staff, barking at the in-store Santa (“wrap it up!”), firing the employee who didn’t front-rack the colour red, which he points out increases sales by 5.4 per cent “when it’s the primary point of visual contact.”

Repeated viewings of the production, created by Daryl Cloran and directed in glorious dramatic detail by Lianna Makuch, don’t dim my appreciation of the layered and powerful performance at its centre. Ullyatt makes of the story not an improbable overnight transformation but a re-discovery. And it’s the beauty of Ullyatt’s performance, this adaptation (and the one before it), and the production that the story’s ghostly last-minute intervention on Christmas Eve takes Scrooge on a journey, deeper and deeper into … himself. He re-claims the self gradually lost under layers of experience, of abuse, of loss, of grief in the world. And that newly rediscovered E. Scrooge esq. makes for a particularly joyful and funny Christmas morning, in the agile physicality of Ullyatt’s performance.

I found again, and maybe even more this year in Makuch’s production, the scenes at Scrooge’s boyhood tenement and the Fezziwigs’ party float in and out of his memory in a way that might be a dream, fast — am I imagining that it’s even faster and the running time is shorter? — and memorable. Ullyatt’s Scrooge is a watchful observer, at first resentful then amazed, then (and increasingly) stricken by what he revisits and sees out there in the world. The road to enlightenment isn’t paved.

Braydon Dowler-Coltman’s fine performance as the younger Scrooge, starting to gain a footing in the world, is a veritable study, subtle and expressive, in the way that ambition ever so gradually turns toxic. And Patricia Cerra as Scrooge’s lost love Belle (she doubles as the wife of Scrooge’s nephew Fred) is similarly complex, in a pivotal scene when her hope for a love with all the festive trimmings is shut down forever. Oscar Derkx returns to the role of Scrooge’s neglected nephew Fred, ever-hopeful, ever-cheerful, in an appealing performance that sheds a glow on the show’s notion of home, and what it means to be there.

There’s an attention to performance under Makuch’s direction. And it extends beyond the cast of two dozen adults to the 13-member Youth Ensemble, including Breanna Bender (who alternates with Emmy Richardson) as the at-risk youngest Cratchit, who delivers the line that lingers “God bless us, every one.”   

Maia Vinge, Alison MacDonald, Aubrey Malacad in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Van Belle’s adaptation does not have the life-and-death stakes of Dickens’ scoriating attack on Victorian capitalism: lose your job and die in debtor’s prison. Mrs. Cratchit (Alison MacDonald, who’s excellent) is a widow and single-mother who’s risen to management at Marley’s. Nope, no Bob. She’s the working poor — no medical benefits, no overtime, no raises, no paid stats — struggling to make a festive Christmas for her kids. I was struck again by the way the adaptation, and Scrooge’s acidic views on welfare, are ready to wrap themselves around our moment here and now, in a year of particular cruelty, bullying and back-sliding. And the double live portrait of the children Want and Ignorance, as products of affluence and entitlement rather than deprivation, remains telling, to say the least.

Troy O’Donnell and Cathy Derkach in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

When Mr. Fezziwig (Troy O’Donnell) refuses to employ part-time workers and  deprive them of a living wage, you wince. And a sense of loss has a particular resonance this year, with the absence of Julien Arnold, the wonderful actor who passed away last year during previews of the production — in the role of that most ebullient and joyful of employers and hosts, who makes of the workplace a surrogate family. It was Arnold’s particular gift as an artist and a collaborator to create family wherever he was.

John Ullyatt and Jesse Gervais in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Phoro by Nanc Price

Where is joy to be found? That’s what A Christmas Carol wonders. And Jesse Gervais’s sensationally funny and extroverted performance as the exuberant Ghost of Christmas Present (and presents), the spirit of showbiz who commits and then some to “the whole Christmas gig,” proposes a generous alternative view of what the world could be. “I don’t teach, baby,” he tells Scrooge, flinging flakes of “Christmas cheer” over everyone in sight.  “It’s all show and tell here!” The Victorian-clad choir instantly breaks into dance (choreographer: Laura Krewski).

Scrooge’s much put-upon servant Mrs. Dilber (Cathy Derkach, who joins the cast for the first time) is amazed, without dissolving into wonder, by Scrooge’s generous new self on Christmas morning. No wonder she leaves in a hurry, slamming the door before he can change his mind.

The central inspiration of Cory Sincennes’ two-tiered set, lighted by Leigh Ann Vardy, which has an onstage loft for the band, is the revolving door at Marley’s — a metaphor for the whirligig of time that’s the arc of the storytelling. In the course of seven years of revivals, the music has increasingly been absorbed into the storytelling. But wistful songs, like White Christmas or It’s The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, are uniformly attacked at an unatmospheric jaunty clip. And I still find the sound mix a bit crude (heavy weight to the band, especially the keyboards, over human voices).   

In one way, a thrust stage like the Maclab, surrounded by an audience, is the hardest space of all in which to tell a ghost story. In another, it’s particularly on the nose. When Scrooge, rattled by disconcerting noises and ghostly lights, says “who’s there?” the answer is … us, all of us. One of the most memorable scenes of the evening is the reunion of Scrooge and his infinitely generous-minded, cheerful nephew on Fred’s doorstep. “I didn’t know how to be part of a family,” says Scrooge humbly.

And the words of the Ghost of Christmas Present come back to us. “Some families you’re born with; some you just find.” A thought to take with us into 2026.

REVIEW

A Christmas Carol

Theatre: Citadel Theatre

Written by: David van Belle, adapted from the Charles Dickens novella

Directed by: Lianna Makuch

Starring: John Ullyatt, Alison MacDonald, Oscar Derkx, Ivy DeGagné, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Patricia Cerra, Cathy Derkach, Troy O’Donnell, Jesse Gervais, Breanna Bender, Emmy Richardson, Graham Mothersill, Steven Greenfield, Glenn Nelson, Maya Baker, Christina Ngyuyen, and the ensemble

Running: through Dec. 24

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820

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‘It’s all coming back to me now’: The 90s at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

The Spice Girls, Mayfield-style. Pamela Gordon, Jillian Mitsuko Cooper, Louise Duff, Devra Straker, Ruth Acheampong in The 90s, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“It’s all coming back, it’s all coming back to me now.”

True, Celine Dion wasn’t singing about a decade at the top of The  90s, the show now singing and dancing (and changing costumes and hair) at a breathless party pace on the Mayfield stage. But there’s a moment when you realize that what’s coming back to you in this latest holiday musical extravaganza from the Mayfield — where revues do not come in Size Small — is a decade with a wild and more than usually unclassifiable assortment of musical genres.

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In this, a debut Mayfield creation by the team of veteran theatre artists Kevin Dabbs and Christine Bandelow, directed by Kate Ryan, that musical expanse is nailed by an indefatigable strong-voiced cast of nine. They can all sing and dance with high-voltage expertise across a vast musical terrain, along with the top-drawer band of five led by musical director/arranger Jennifer McMillan.

For The 90s, Dabbs and Bandelow put their own mark on the holiday season show at the Mayfield by largely foregoing the kind of the narration endemic to revues that aim to tell “the story” of a decade.  Trust me, you won’t miss that. Chronology? Not the point here. This is all about the music, and operates on the collage principle.

Alabama, Mayfield-style. Brad Wiebe, Jahlen Barnes, Seth Johnson, Andrew Perry in The 90s, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

There are fun and fleeting comic interludes from TV hits of the period, Seinfeld, Frasier, Friends, etc. that slide smartly into the show and out again in Ryan’s production. And there are occasional clusters, like a Canuck grouping — k.d. lang, The Tragically Hip, Alanis Morissette, Vanilla Ice  — introduced by a tribute to “The Hill,” the atmospheric home of the Edmonton Folk Fest: It comes complete with a cityscape and sunset. Country music gets its own niche, with Shania (Pamela Gordon), Garth (Brad Wiebe), Faith Hill (Louise Duff).

Instead of a narrator there are two features of Ryan’s production that gather the musical numbers into an evening’s entertainment for you. One is Bandelow’s inventive, sexy choreography, which sets a tirelessly aerobic cast in perpetual motion. The other striking feature is the artful, ever-changing playground created by T. Erin Gruber’s set, and a remarkable play of projections by Emily Soussana (of PotatoCakes_Digital) across its striking positive/negative shapes.

The stage is fun to look at. Sometimes the pattern can look like cross-hatched rollercoasters, sometimes you feel you’re looking at an upside down molar perched on its roots. And sometimes it’s a conical entrance/exit that feels momentous, like a vortex, or a portal in the space/time continuum. Let’s go with portal.

Anyhow the projections and Gail Ksionzyk’s lighting are a veritable show in themselves: the imagery is sometimes psychedelic, sometimes abstract; sometimes there are flickering glimpses or snapshots of the period. Devra Straker’s conjuring of Cher in The Shoop Shoop Song, for example, is accompanied by fantastical mermaids, disappearing on lily pads.

Act II opens with Barbie and Ken (Debra Straker and Jahlen Barnes) come to life, the ear worm Barbie Girl, a lot of pink, and numbers like R.E.M.’s Shiny Happy People, repurposed for the occasion.

There are songs you’ll know, songs you’ll recognize that you didn’t know were from the ‘90s, lesser known songs by artists you know, songs and artists you don’t know at all (I speak for myself here, and plan to research the entire oeuvre of House of Pain). And here it is: yay,  a holiday show that doesn’t dip into Mariah Carey’s Christmas album for its Mariah Carey number (Fantasy, beautifully delivered by Ruth Acheampong).

In short (which the song list certainly isn’t), The 90s is high-test musical abundance delivered by a cast and musicians who can really sing and never stop dancing (or changing Leona Brausen’s splashy costumes). Music happens against a backdrop that’s playful and striking. And, as usual at the Mayfield, the sound design and mix (Harley Symington) are impeccable.

So sit back with your Spice Up Your Life or Backstreet Breeze theme cocktail post-buffet. And have a total immersion musical blast.

REVIEW

The 90s: It’s All Coming Back To Me Now

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre, 16615 109 Ave.

Written and Compiled by: Kevin Dabbs and Christine Bandelow

Directed by: Kate Ryan

Musical direction/arrangements: Jennifer McMillan

Starring: Ruth Acheampong, Jahlen Barnes, Jillian Mitysuko Cooper, Louise Duff, Pamela Gordon, Seth Johnson, Andrew Perry, Devra Straker, Brad Wiebe

Running: through Jan. 25, 2026

Tickets: mayfield theatre.ca, 780-483-4051

  

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Buddies in tap dance: meet the co-stars of Northern Light’s new holiday comedy, How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold …

Posted on November 27, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There’s something irresistible (and appealingly non-utilitarian) about tap dancing.

Patty and Joanne, the two hopeful hoofers who sign up for an adult beginners tap class in Trevor Schmidt’s new holiday comedy, feel it. And so do the co-stars of How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, premiering Friday in the Northern Light Theatre season (and in a Calgary production at Lunchbox Theatre the same day).

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Twenty years ago, give or take, when Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, were in musical theatre school at Grant MacEwan, they’d have called themselves “actors who move,” (not dancers, “nope! nope!”). Connor laughs. “I like to say I’m the actor who gets danced around.”

At MacEwan there were dance classes of all sorts, six or seven a week, for the upcoming  musical theatre triple-threats. “But tap was the only one I took to, the only one that made sense to me,” says McKillop. “I could pick up the choreography better than any other dance form! My favourite by far….”

Partly it was because the MacEwan classes had a bona fide tap dance virtuoso (the inspirational Cindy Kerr) as the teacher. And partly, as the pair are rediscovering in rehearsals, there’s the way tapping “connects your musicality, your body, your brain, simultaneously!,” says Connor, who’s the executive director of the Varscona Theatre. “I’d forgotten how hard that is. It’s good for your brain, the counting, how specific it is, the way you have to think about the feel of the song, the groove…. If you want a mental workout, a tap class is a great thing to do!”

Both actors, Teatro Live! leading ladies (and friends) of long standing, have big dance musicals on their resumés dating back to theatre school. Connor remembers ending up in the Citadel production of Mary Poppins, in the ensemble for the big production number Step In Time. When her second-year theatre school class did 42nd Street, one of the classic tap-dance musicals, there was Connor in the chorus. McKillop, in a different year from her co-star, remembers the ‘body percussion’ number in Peter Pan. 

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor in How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang.

Edmonton audiences will see Connor later this season in Teatro Live’s revival of Cocktails at Pam’s, and McKillop in the Mayfield’s Hurry Hard, set at a curling rink. Meanwhile, in How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, the catalyst for an unexpected friendship between mismatched middle-aged women who don’t know each other is … tap, the beginner class. And Patty and Joanne’s motives for joining are miles apart. Patty (McKillop) is the mother of five kids — “that’s a lot of kids!” — and the class is “something that gets her away from the kids and have a moment for herself.” Joanne (Connor) “has always wanted to be a performer, since she was nine years old; her childhood dream is being in musical theatre,” says Connor. “But she works in a bank and lives a kind of lonely life, with her cat.”

An adult tap dance class is a social occasion, yes, “but Joanne is also feeling this need to perform. We can understand that,” she says,, grinning at her stage partner. “We sure can!” McKillop agrees.

When the class is cancelled — “everyone except Patty and Joanne has quit” — “they keep coming every week anyhow,” says Connor. “They both want, need, to keep coming. And they decide to enter an amateur dance contest, and create their own routine.” Says McKillop, “They’re teaching themselves from the ground up.”

There’s no pressure to be slick or fabulous dancers onstage. Au contraire. “It’s all OK because we’re taking an adult beginners class so we have free range to be as bad as we want!,” Connor laughs. And they don’t have to meet Olympian standards of fitness either. The characters, says McKillop, are in “average shape, ordinary women!”

And “that’s not what it’s about” anyhow, she says. “It’s a really good buddy story,” says Connor. “Almost like a rom-com, but a platonic one, for two women! I really like that it’s about female friendship and women supporting each other and developing an unexpected friendship.” McKillop finds it appealing that, different as they are, “they find joy in something so simple, and I think that can change the trajectory of where they’re at…. Delightful!”

“They’re very different women! They push each other in different ways.” Joanne is the one who forges ahead and declares ‘we’re doing this!’. Patty is the more worried and stress-y personality, says McKillop. And they inhabit “a fun storyline.,” says Connor. “A feel-good Christmas rom-com that’s not actually romantic.” It’s not a kids’ play per se, she says, but she plans to bring her six-year-old daughter; McKillop will bring her 10-year-old niece. “We allude to swear words but we don’t actually say them…. Joanne is trying to clean up her language.”

The choreography devised by Jason Hardwick is “fun and funny,” McKillop says. “He’s so great at finding the comedy in choreography and working with people at their ability level…. We’re not doing anything impossible.” There’s even a big-finish lift that takes amusing advantage of their contrast in height. She says they have Hardwick do all the routines, film him, and practise.

Both Connor and McKillop have dropped in on some tap classes at Marr-Mac Dance to refresh their rarefied skills. “There’s something so freeing about going back to dance classes after 20 years…. We’re doing it for the joy of it, not for marks!”

“It all starts to come back,” laughs McKillop. “We’re returning to our roots!”

PREVIEW

How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written and directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Kendra Connor and Jenny McKillop

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: Friday through Dec. 13

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com

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There’ll be much mistletoe-ing and hearts will be glowing … the festive season begins on Edmonton stages

Posted on November 25, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

A Christmas Carol 2025, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Some day soon we all will be together….”

This week, actually, the festive season onstage can now officially begin.

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•Ebenezer Scrooge (John Ullyatt), a misanthrope with a frozen heart will stride briskly onto the Citadel’s Maclab stage in a pinstripe suit, scattering Bah! Humbug!s instead of Christmas bonuses around him. And a last-minute  ghostly intervention on Christmas Eve will return him to the joy of human connectivity.  

After 25 years, there’s no way we Edmontonians can have ourselves a ‘merry little Christmas’, as the wistful song goes, without a lavish Citadel production of A Christmas Carol onstage. That’s just how it is here, a bona fide holiday tradition since 2000.

It began with 19 years of Tom Wood’s Victorian era version. Returning Thursday is the seventh iteration of David van Belle’s post-war adaptation, which re-locates the 1843 Dickens novella ahead a century and across the Atlantic (with a secular songbook to match).

The production created by Daryl Cloran and directed this year and last by Lianna Makuch is a return haunted by the tragic absence of Julien Arnold, one of our finest and most loved theatre artists, who passed away a year ago during show previews. He was an unforgettably skilled, dimensional, joyful presence in the Christmas Carol company in so many roles — starting with a quintessential portrait of the lovable and beleaguered family man Bob Cratchit and including most recently the magnanimously extrovert host Mr. Fezziwig. Surely Arnold was the first Bob Cratchit ever to venture so far from type to play Scrooge, as he did one year. This year he is in the theatre as the Voice of Jacob Marley, the ghost with the cautionary message of redemption for Scrooge.

The adaptation takes us through the revolving door of Marley’s department store on Christmas Eve, 1949, where Scrooge presides as the flinty, bottom-line obsessive proprietor. If he had his way, no employee would be home for Christmas.

John Ullyatt as Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Since his first appearance in the role in 2022, Ullyatt has brought substantial emotional depth to Scrooge’s rediscovery of the self he has lost along the way. He’s back to lead a cast of three dozen in Cloran’s handsome, music-filled production, directed for the second time by Makuch. Some of the actors are returning to roles they’ve memorably occupied in the past — Braydon Dowler-Coltman as Scrooge’s younger self, Oscar Derkx as Scrooge’s cheery ever-hopeful nephew Fred, Alison MacDonald as the widowed Mrs. Cratchit, as well as Ivy DeGagné as the eerily wispy Ghost of Christmas Past and Jesse Gervais as the ebullient Ghost of Christmas Present. There are newcomers, too, including Cathy Derkach as Mrs. Fezziwig (with Troy O’Donnell as her hubby) and Mrs. Dilber.

The cast of Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price Photography

A Christmas Carol runs through Dec. 24 at the Citadel. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820. Actually, the festive spirit wafts through the Citadel everywhere. The Vinyl Cafe, which weaves two of Stuart McLean’s most popular stories (Dave Cooks The Turkey and Rashida, Amir and the Great Gift Giving) into a new musical continues its premiere run on the Shoctor stage through Dec. 7. Unwrap the 12thnight review here. And upcoming at the Citadel, Dec. 18 to 21, is Bear Grease: Shack Up For The Winter, LightningCloud Productions’ holiday version of their “Indigenous joyride” take on the 1978 musical we all know.

The cast of The Blank Who Stole Christmas, Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo supplied.

•In this the hap-happiest season of all, ballet companies have their Nutcrackers; theatres have their Christmas Carols, or It’s A Wonderful Life, or Miracle on 34th Street. What is an improv comedy company supposed to do? Five Yules ago Rapid Fire Theatre had the improbable inspiration of The Blank Who Stole Christmas, a high-spirited musical hit that combines scripted musical theatre and improv, Dr. Seuss and the Actor’s Nightmare, in the most impossibly demanding and unpredictable way.

The script is by Gordie Lucius and Joleen Ballentine, the songs by Erik Mortimer and Chris Borger. And at every performance, a different secret guest star arrives on stage, as a character of their choice, unknown in advance to their impromptu cast-mates. So the five actors who’ve actually been to rehearsal and learned their lines have to improvise around the hitherto unknown villain of Grinch-ian provenance. And, as you’ll glean, comic chaos ensues, and every performance is different.

The Blank Who Stole Christmas, Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo supplied.

The Blank Who Stole Christmas returns to RFT’s home base, the Exchange Theatre Friday. “Generally I’m casting folks who are skilled improvisers or improv-adjacent as the Blanks,” says Rapid Fire artistic director Matt Schuurman. “In 2022 Luke Thomson played Bruce Springsteen, and in 2024 Vicky Berg and Lindsey Walker played Hall & Oates. This year I’m casting the net wider than ever before….”

There’s hilarity (and a big challenge for the RFT improvisers) in the unlikely villains some guest stars have chosen. I mean, come on … Tiny Tim? Mrs. Claus (Jana O’Connor)? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (Alain Sadowski)?  “One time we had a local construction company buy out an entire performance. And just for them Paul Blinov did an impression of their VP as The Blank,” says Schuurman. “Nothing like having the actual guy in the audience while you portray him as a villain. Especially when he’s paying the bill at the end of the night!”

For one performance Schuurman himself, a tall lanky guy, opted to play Jack Skellington of Tim Burton fame. “I was on stilts for two hours wearing a rubber mask and have never sweat so much in my life.” He’s predicting, mysteriously that one of the Blanks will arrive on “the most challenging costume yet.”

“Some of the most fun and challenging moments have been when the Blanks have made huge choices the irreparably change the storyline,” says Schuurman. And the improvisers of the cast, in whose brains the ‘say YES’ mantra is engraved, have to adjust. Schuurman, who points to the moment “Baba Yaga (Belinda Cornish) snapped the neck of a main character minutes into the show,” loves when that happens.

It runs Friday through Dec. 21, in three versions depending on the amount of raunch and swearing. Nice: “family-friendly.” Naughty: “playful and cheeky.” Nasty: for the 18-plus crowd, “completely unfiltered, bold, blush-worthy.” Tickets and full schedule: rapidfiretheatre.com.

•Trevor Schmidt’s new holiday comedy, doing fancy footwork and aerial lifts with the longest title of the season, premieres this week at Northern Light Theatre. How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition is all about an unexpected friendship between strangers, and involves … tap dancing. Stay tuned for the 12thnight interview with the light-footed co-stars of Schmidt’s production, Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor. The show runs Friday through Dec. 13. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.

Delia Barnett and Truus Verkley in A Kidmas Carole, Puddle of Mudd Productions. Photo supplied.

• At Fort Edmonton’s annual Christmas Market, Puddle of Mudd’s A Kidmas Carole is back at the vintage Capitol Theatre Saturday through Dec. 14. It’s a family-friendly, interactive sort of holiday entertainment, by and starring Delia Barnett and Truus Verkley, and the kids join in. It’s on the Capitol roster along with It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol, a mashup of two seasonal classics starring Davina Stewart, Dana Andersen, Paul Morgan Donald and Andrea House (Saturday through Dec. 13). For both shows, a ticket gets you full access to the Park before and after the show. Tickets: yegxmasmarket.com.

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh the Christmas Musical. Photo by Adam Goudreau

•There’s more to come. The resident parodists of Grindstone Theatre (Byron Martin and Simon Abbott) have had the inspiration of  marrying the blockbuster action flick Die Harsh to A Christmas Carol. Who would do this? Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical has black comedy hilarity for days and nights. It returns to the Orange Hub for a third festive run Dec. 11 to 28. Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca.

And Girl Brain, the ace sketch comedy troupe, has a new holiday show too: Girl Brain, Actually at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre Dec. 11 to 21, directed by Bradley Moss as his farewell flourish. More about this fun in an upcoming 12thnight post.

•And mistletoe-free but holiday-friendly …

The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!’s season-launching comedy continues its madcap and ingenious four-actor romp through the spy thriller genre, and the Hitchcock film at the Varscona. Have a peek at the 12thnight review here.

The Mayfield’s The ‘90s: It’s All Coming Back To Me is your portal to revisiting the decade of Nirvana, Whitney Houston, Madonna…. It runs through Jan. 25. Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca.

Svitlo: Discover The Light Within, Vohon Ukrainian Dance Ensemble’s epic dance-theatre evocation of Ukrainian folkore onstage in all its strange and wonderful imagery and movement, finally arrives on the Jube stage Friday, with a cast of 50, including eight members of Gerdan Theatre from Ukraine. See 12thnight’s preview with creator/designer Larissa Poho here. Tickets: ticketmaster.ca.

The Castle Spectre, Paper Crown Theatre, Photo by Henderson Images.

The Castle Spectre, Paper Crown Theatre’s original stage adaptation of a 1797 gothic melodrama (with swordplay!) by M.G. Lewis, continues its run at the Gateway Theatre (8529 Gateway Blvd) through Sunday. Lauren Tamke directs.  Tickets: showpass.com. 

Counterintuitive holiday fare: Carrie The Musical, based on the blood-letting Stephen King novel. MacEwan University’s production at the Triffo Theatre (11110 104 Ave.) runs through Sunday. Tickets: purchase.macewan.ca.

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Vohon Ukrainian Dance Ensemble brings folklore to life in epic dance theatre. Svitlo: Discover the Light Within, a preview

Posted on November 18, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Svitlo: Discover The Light Within, Vohan Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Ukrainian folklore, the mythology of a rich and ancient culture, comes to life, on a grand scale, in the show that arrives on the Jube stage Nov. 28.

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Svitlo: Discover The Light Within is the work of the Vohon Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. And Larissa Poho, one of the company’s artistic directors and one of the creators of Svitlo, says “it’s what happens with artists who are into folklore and video games and Marvel movies….” And it has something in common, too, with the work of the Japanese animation studio Ghibli (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke).

The story Poho and her writing partner Matt Karpiak have fashioned for Svitlo is “a hero’s journey, an epic quest through darkness to discover light….” Which She undergoes a transformation, as she fights to return the light back to her home, which has been plunged into shadow when the Moon gains ascendancy over the Sun.”

In its own original, theatrical way, as she points out, the new dance-theatre piece, 50 performers strong, celebrates Ukrainian arts — stories, dance, song, folk art — as way to share Ukrainian identity, a medium for cultural resistance, resilience, and hope In a dark and oppressive world. “And it doesn’t shy away from the darker elements of our folklore, “the myths and legends of an oppressed and war-torn people.”

Svitlo: Discover The Light Within, Vohan Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. Photo osupplied.

“Matt and I had never seen a Ukrainian dance production that showed the darkness of our folklore,” says Poho. “Let’s not shy away from loss, from death,” they decided. The Rusalky, for example, the Ukrainian version of the alluring mermaids who appear in many cultural traditions, have their nasty side (“well, they do drown people and they’re terrifying,” says Poho casually).

Some of the creatures of Ukrainian folklore have a certain lightness (like the Poterchata, Ukrainian will-o-the-wisps) or a humorous quality, like Ukrainian household spirits. “They can be helpful; if you have good manners and are nice, they might just tease you.” Taking its cue from the world, the Ukrainian folkloric repertoire is marked by a constant “interplay of light and darkness,” Poho says. She quotes the Ukrainian national anthem, a poetic tribute to Ukrainian resilience: “our enemies will vanish like dew in the sun….”

Edmonton is a city of many Ukrainian dance ensembles, “each with their own culture, their own aesthetic.” Three years ago Poho, who notes that Edmonton is “the Ukrainian dance capital of Canada,” found herself particularly drawn to Vohon, mainly because “they love theatricality,” she says. “They love stage magic. They love fog, and fire (in fact, Vohon means fire in Ukrainian), and stage narrative…. Their core values are about inclusivity, and fun, in addition to their technical excellence.”

The love of theatricality is the through-line of Poho’s own amazingly multi-faceted career as a dancer, choreographer, actor, playwright, singer, musician, musical director and arranger, designer, visual artist. And Svitlo, which plays Grande Prairie, Calgary, Saskatoon and Regina before arriving in Edmonton Nov. 28, is a kind of manifesto for a multi-disciplinary artist like Poho. She’s been “part of the story crafting, choreography, direction, some costume and set building.” She’s the lighting designer and she’s also the stage manager, calling the multitude of cues that take a huge cast through mountains, villages, enchanted forests where the tree move, the bottom of a river … a journey of non-stop action in changing locations.    

“Matt (Matt Karpiak) and I wrote this show together two years ago, in his kitchen. And then we hired (Saskatoon-based) composer Jordan Welbourne to create a score.” Most Ukrainian dance companies often enlist their creative teams, including costumers and designers, from Ukraine, Poho says. “But since we are a diaspora community, and we want to support our own, we decided that for this production, we’d have Canadian-Ukrainian artists build the show. Our dancers themselves (there are 45 in the core company, ages 16 to mid-30s) stepped up as costume and scenic designers, and built everything themselves.” Poho was delighted: “I did the preliminary work, the research and sourcing, and they took it and ran!”

It’s been a skill-expanding experience for the Vohon dancers. One took stilt-walking lessons especially for the show, for example, and performs four feet off the stage as the river guardian. Morgan Yamada led fight and stunt training workshops with the cast.

Gerdan Theatre, Svitlo: Discover The Light Within, Vohan Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. Photo supplied.

For the first time in Vohan’s 37-year history, “we are collaborating with a folk ensemble from Ukraine…. Eight top artists, five women and three men, from the popular Gerdan Theatre, based in the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi, are integrated into the storytelling of the show. In one striking scene they’re the dryads (tree spirits) who move the trees through the enchanted forest as they sing.. “The sound is amazing, other-worldly,” says Poho. “When they sing they sound like 40 people.”

“They’ve never collaborated with a dance group, and Vohon has never performed with live vocalists. So for both Svitlo is a big first.” The Gerdan artists are all fluent in English, but Poho has conducted rehearsals in both languages, “so they’d feel more at home.”

Poho, who encountered the Gerdan ensemble on one of her trips to Ukraine, started Ukrainian dance at age four. “Such a huge part of my life.” Her entry point into theatre was theatre design at the U of A. After that, it was musical theatre at MacEwan (“I’d never performed in a musical or sung in English before”). And she makes an extraordinary accumulation of theatrical skills sound inevitable. “Every step came up organically for  me,” she says, casually. “I love storytelling. I’m interested in how do we tell the story? How do we get all the elements together to support the story?”

Poho, a busy theatre designer and musician whose own “Ukrainian kitchen party” show Moonshine sold out every performance at last summer’s Fringe, has gathered a team of her fellow theatre professionals to help bring Svitlo to the stage. “This is me bridging two worlds. It’s Larissa’s heart on the stage.”

“It’s very important to me to share Ukrainian stories in an accessible way…. And it’s important for my community to see that our stories deserve to be told to a wider audience,” says Poho. “They belong outside community halls and in the bigger community, on the world stage…. Everyone has a connection to a folk tradition, a heritage, global lore. I try to tap into this universal concept of belonging.”

PREVIEW

Svitlo: Discover The Light Within

Theatre: Vohon Ukrainian Dance Ensemble with Gerdan Theatre

Written by: Larissa Poho and Matt Karpiak

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

When: Nov. 28

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca

 

  

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A test of comic timing and ingenuity: The 39 Steps launches Farren Timoteo’s artistic directorship at Teatro Live!, a review

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Geoffrey Simon Brown in The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It seems exactly right, inspired really, that Farren Timoteo should launch his Teatro Live! artistic directorship of the comedy theatre company with a show that turns a 1935 Hitchcock spy thriller into a manically high-speed, hilariously low-budget adventure for four actors. Correction: four actors, plus four trunks, four chairs, a ladder, a movable door, and a whole bunch of hats.

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In an age of inflated big-money stage extravaganzas, you’ve got to love any theatrical enterprise that starts with the actors assembling stuff on a bare stage.

The 39 Steps, Patrick Barlow’s stage riff on the movie thriller adapted from John Buchan’s intricately plotted 1915 spy novel, is a test of ingenuity and comic timing that’s a tribute to theatre and its less-is-more brigade of practitioners. And it’s also a chance to use the words zany and clever in one sentence; I’m grabbing it while I can.

It begins with our ridiculously suave hero Richard Hannay, recently returned from Canada, languishing in ennui, pipe in hand, in his London flat. In the production directed by Timoteo (himself a Teatro leading man of note), the dashing Hannay is played in high tweedy style by Geoffrey Simon Brown, with a ’30s Leslie Howard accent that’s as clipped as his moustache.

He’s bored with the world, the news of endless “wars and rumours of war,” and himself. He requires “something mindless and trivial. Something utterly pointless,” he says. “I know! A trip to the theatre!”

And so it begins, with a theatre joke and a slinky femme fatale (Priya Narine in the first of her three femmes fatales in the show) with an unidentifiable mittel-Euro accent, a gun, and a knife in her back. And suddenly Richard Hannay, accused murderer, has been seduced out of his armchair into a sinister international intrigue that involves the fate of the whole country.

Katie Yoner and Michael Watt in The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

What ensues in this Hitchcock spoof cum homage is a top-velocity chase, by train, by car, by crop-duster (a little wink at North By Northwest), on foot, through the fog and mist of the Scottish highlands into sinister hotels, remote inns, creepy farmhouses, cop shops…. It is for the Clown 1/ Clown 2 duo of  Michael Watt and Katie Yoner, the one statuesque and the other petite, to populate the stage with 130-plus characters. Newcomers both to Teatro, they start with a funny music hall duo at the Palladium, and expand their escalating repertoire to include hapless coppers, vaudevillian detectives, rustics, hoteliers, aassassins, innkeepers, a milk man, a professor, an engineer, sheep …), a lot of moustaches, and a dizzying assortment of accents — sometimes multiples in a single scene.

Yoner (of Rat Academy fame) is an experienced bouffon with a tiny (sometimes inaudible) voice. Watt, whose purchase on a whole lexicon of accents and volumes is unerring, is a find as a physical comedian. They both commit, valiantly, to the most outlandish theatrical demands, as they scramble to keep up with the plot.

Michael Watt, Katie Yoner, and Geoffrey Simon Brown in The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

And since their theatrical duties include rearranging the trunks, the chairs, the ladder and the door, and the odd lamp (designer: Chantel Fortin) to establish locales, assisted materially by Rory Turner’s noir-esque lighting — their inventiveness and comic busy-ness are extreme. The crop-dusting image is executed ingeniously with a ladder and lights. Lighting and Brown’s agility conjure a chase scene in and on top of a hurtling train. A walk-through in a sinister Scottish mansion is amusing theatrical legerdemain.

Minimalism is a strenuous workout with a big comic payoff, it turns out. As the plot gathers more and more characters and voices, the quick changes get more frenzied, and sillier. Weapons, along with Brian Bast’s wigs, hats, costume pieces, fly through the air. This larky Timoteo production is based on the rarefied art of the timed near-miss (and the mysterious wandering impulses of fake moustaches).

Priya Narine and Geoffrey Simon Brown in The 39 Steps, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Brown’s dashing Hannay, the straight man of the enterprise, perpetually on the move, gets nearly trapped over and over, and escapes by the skin of his teeth, without breaking a sweat. Must be those years in Canada, old chap. But will Narine’s Hitchcock blonde, or her the rural maiden, be his undoing? Is this a classic case of cherchez la femme fatale?

The actors and Timoteo and co embrace high-style silliness, so that you can just sit back, take your mind off worry mode, and let clever theatricality work its magic. The first show of the Timoteo tenure is a ripping night out.

REVIEW

The 39 Steps

Theatre: Teatro Live!

Written by: Patrick Barlow, adapted from Hitchcock’s movie The 39 Steps

Directed by: Farren Timoteo

Starring: Geoffrey Simon Brown, Priya Narine, Michael Watt, Katie Yoner

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: through Nov. 30

Tickets: teatrolive.com

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‘The perfectly imperfect holiday’: Vinyl Cafe The Musical premieres at the Citadel, a review

Posted on November 14, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

The cast of Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Vinyl Cafe The Musical, the new Canadian holiday musical premiering at the Citadel in a Daryl Cloran production, is a cool idea bravely built on a double challenge.

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On one hand it’s an homage to a bona fide Canadian institution, as vintage as the vinyl in the hero’s indie record shop, very Canuck in an appealingly unself-conscious way. For its inspiration it dips into the story and character archive of the late great storyteller/humorist Stuart McLean, a voice in the ear of nostalgic CBC Radio listeners from 1994 to 2017.

On the other hand Vinyl Cafe The Musical is … a musical. A singing dancing musical theatre entertainment for 2025, and the festive season. For an audience that includes people who know nothing in advance of the Toronto couple Dave and Morley, and their kids, their neighbours, their urban ‘hood (or CBC Radio).

That duality made for a fascinating opening night experience Thursday. When the hapless and hopeful Dave (Mike Nadajewski) says to his wife Morley (Patricia Zentilli) at the outset, “it’s Christmas. Relax. We got this….” by way of brushing away her mounting mental checklist of seasonal tasks, there were those in the house seats who got it as a pre-emptive punchline to Dave’s chronic misadventures (Dave, the man of famous last words), and laughed. And there were those (I sat near an assortment) who didn’t. Fair enough. You don’t have to study up to enjoy.

Mike Nadajewski and Patricia Zentilli in Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

In any case making a big piece of musical theatre from stories grounded in the small, and the familiar homey details of daily life (the motto of Dave’s shop: “we may not be big but we’re small”) is a delicate theatrical matter. The charm of the episodic source material, with its texture of the quotidien and its distinctive narrative voice, is tricky to capture as reinvented for the stage in a musical’s more extrovert energy, bolder outline, and heightened dramatic frictions.

Does Vinyl Cafe The Musical succeed? On this first viewing, there’s a lot to love, and some things to reconsider, about the new 16-actor six-musician musical, two years in the making, created (and directed) by Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran with longtime Vinyl Cafe producer and McLean estate executor Jess Milton.

Damon Pitcher and Muhaddisah in Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price Photography

The book — curiously, this most Canadian enterprise is by a Mexican-American playwright, Georgina Escobar, with Milton — has hits and misses, which will no doubt be worked on for future iterations of the show.

The driving force is the relationship of all the characters onstage to Christmas, the most stressful holiday of them all, the one with the weighty obligation to make people joyful and the tendency (and to-do lists) to make people crazy. And the musical weaves together two of McLean’s most popular stories, Dave Cooks The Turkey and Rashida, Amir and the Great Gift Giving, the latter an amusing newcomers’ perspective on festive traditions.

Morley, who’s feeling beleaguered by Christmas, Martha Stewart’s holiday tips, and ‘101 ways to fold a napkin’, longs to reclaim the special holiday spirit. In order to appease her, Dave’s one obligation is to take charge of the fateful turkey. And his breezy confidence that this will be easily accomplished is what threatens to be his undoing. It all becomes Dave and Turkey, a funny, farcical, hallucinatory union (with its own duet and pas de deux, amusingly choreographed by Gianna Vacirca), which I won’t spoil for you. It’s a literal embodiment, in poultry form, of go big or (maybe and)  go home.

Leon Willey and Nadien Chu in Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

The dramatic conflict starts in the friction between easy-going Dave, embodied with loose-limbed ease by Nadajewski, and his officious, fiercely competitive, perfectionist neighbour Mary Turlington (Nadien Chu, in riotous comic red-alert), the President of the Neighbourhood Christmas Club. It escalates into a veritable war for the ownership of Christmas in the ‘hood. When Dave sings “we’re heading for a very Mary Christmas,” it’s an opening gambit.

If you know Dave and his turkey situation from the story, you’ll know that a posh hotel kitchen figures prominently in his solution to his culinary deadline crisis. But the hotel scenes and a disjointed little subplot about Tommy and his Aunt Sue, a hotel chef with her own backstory, could use a re-think. They seem to stop the show, until Dave’s back in action, wing to wing, puns akimbo, with poultry.

Kristin Johnston, Nadien Chu, Jameela NcNeil in Vinyl Cafe The Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

On this first hearing, the pop songs by the Canadian team of composer Colleen Dauncey and lyricist Akiva Romer-Segal are accessible, comfortably rhymed, and mostly a bit on the bland side with some notable exceptions. These include a funny tango number for Dave and Mary locking horns, and a couple of knock-out songs for Morley, beautifully delivered by Zentilli. I Am A Train is all about her feeling that Christmas is a grinding milk-run of repeating duties. Along Comes Life, in Act II, is a lovely ode to going off-book in your life plan. Stephanie (Rain Matkin), the teenage daughter of the family, has a sweet duet Scare Me Away with Tommy (Shaemus Swets), the boyfriend she’s brought home to meet the family. Family, incidentally, rhymes with calamity.   

But the opening song, which has Dave at the door of his shop, seems oddly flat and generic. And the only rock number, The Beast Inside, sung by Dave and Morley’s nerdy pre-teen son Sam (Benjamin Hill, a real theatre find, alternating with Cooper Nash Rajotte), is energetic but seems like a set piece inserted awkwardly (the sound mix didn’t help) that doesn’t get much of a pay-off except a fleeting sight gag.

Cloran’s cast is excellent, and the production establishes a real family dynamic. It’s led by the rueful, distractible Dave as conjured by Nadajewski, a remarkably physical comic actor. He’s a particularly Canadian sort of hero, forever misstepping blithely and then scrambling to pry himself out of scrapes. Nadajewski the human pretzel has an inspired scene actually inside a Canada Post letter box. Zentilli is just right as the graceful, more practical Morley, exasperated by Christmas as overtime. And the neighbour couples, Rashida and Amir (Muhaddisah and Damon Pitcher) and the Turlingtons, Mary the Yuletide dragon and her affable, defeated hubbie Bert (Chu and Leon Willey) are vividly cast too.

Nick Boegel and Rain Matkin in The Vinyl Cafe, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

Cory Sincennes’ set conjures a whole neighbourhood of rooms — bedrooms, a kitchen, competing living rooms, a record store —  sliding magically across the stage behind the brick townhouse facade. And Jareth Li’s lighting has fun with a sparkly season.

Naturally, you don’t have to be a prophet to feel a resolution coming on; it isn’t a spoiler to say that Vinyl Cafe The Musical ends with a validation of community and family — Christmas as ‘a beautiful day in the neighbourhood’ — where festive joy prevails, as per the catchy finale ensemble number about a “perfectly imperfect holiday.” Speaking of imperfections and working with them, if the translation of story and characters into musical hasn’t quite arrived yet in a satisfying and cohesive final form, the new musical has a lot going for it as it starts its journey to other theatres across the country. And you leave feeling the seasonal bounce.

REVIEW

Vinyl Cafe: The Musical

Theatre: Citadel Theatre, based on The Vinyl Cafe story collection by Stuart McLean

Book by: Georgina Escobar with Jess Milton

Music and lyrics by: Colleen Dauncey and Akiva Romer-Segal, respectively

Directed by: Daryl Cloran

Starring: Mike Nadajewski, Patricia Zentilli, Nadien Chu, Rain Matkin, Muhaddisah, Damon Pitcher, Kristin Johnston,  Jameela McNeil, Nick Boegel, Benjamin Hill, Cooper Nash Rajotte, Leon Willey, Sheamus Swets, Andrés F. Moreno, Kristel Harder, Koko

Running: Saturday (in preview) through Dec. 7

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820

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‘I’m starting with the man in the mirror’: MJ moonwalks the Jube stage, a review

Posted on November 12, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Jordan Markus as MJ, and the company of the First National Touring Company. Broadway Across Canada, photo by Matthew Murphy

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

MJ, the touring Broadway bio-musical that has arrived on the Jube stage, is a curiosity in every way. Like its star, and subject, Michael Jackson, arguably the 20th century’s greatest and most influential entertainer, a singer/dancer nonpareil, it’s complicated, contradictory, conflicted. It’s also amazingly light on its feet, and dazzling to behold.

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A jukebox musical, crammed with some of the biggest hits in pop music history in its song list of three dozen, MJ dances its way out of the circumscribed dimensions of that genre with an agile cast, choreography by director Christopher Wheeldon, a specialist in dance musicals — and in Jordan Markus a sensational star. He moves the Michael Jackson moves; he dances the Michael Jackson dance (in all its concave dipping, leg-forward glides, Fosse diagonals); he (moon)walks the walk. He captures the strangely wispy other-worldly figure with the breathy high whisper of a voice, who’s perpetually in motion at the centre of MJ.

Robert as MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy

A first-rate band of a dozen or so, conducted by Nathanael Wilkerson, is onstage too. And the sound quality, for once at the Jube, is just excellent (original sound designer Gareth Owen). So you’ll hear, and see, Thriller, Billie Jean, Bad, Man in the Mirror, in top form. In short, MJ has great music and great dancing going for it. And lots of both. And it’s on a grand theatrical scale: a stunning design (Derek McLane), brilliant lighting (designer: Natasha Katz), layers of Peter Nigrini’s gorgeous projections, a eyeful array of costumes by Paul Tazewell that re-create the performer’s famous wardrobe.

But here’s the thing. Since its existence depends on compliance with the Michael Jackson estate (“by special arrangement” as the program says), MJ is curatorial about the Michael Jackson story, alert to re-polishing a legacy tarnished by plausible allegations of child sexual abuse that started emerging immediately after the 1992 present time of the play.

It is a sympathetic portrait of the star. And, as many reviewers have pointed out since the musical’s 2022 Broadway debut, whether you can get past queasy accusations that are once known impossible to un-know, will have an impact on your experience of the show. The opening night audience loved the show, clamorously cheering the donning of the sparkly glove, the doffing of the signature hat.

Jordan Markus and Devin Bowles in MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy

In the libretto written by the celebrated playwright Lynn Nottage (Intimate Apparel, Ruined, Sweat), who’s won the Pulitzer Prize twice, Jackson is a prodigious talent traumatized by his past. And his present is infiltrated constantly by a harsh childhood of touring with his siblings in the Jackson 5, abused by a vicious stage father (Devin Bowles). In Nottage’s script there are three Michael Jacksons, the startling little boy (Quentin Blanton Jr.), the teenager who’s beginning to understand his own talent (the terrific Brandon Lee Harris), and MJ.

And along with his father and mother (the warm-voiced Ranané Katurah) his younger selves physically infiltrate the life of Jackson in the present, not only as flashbacks but also inhabiting other characters in MJ’s story of a brilliant performer haunted by ghosts. The double-casting of Wheeldon’s production is meaningful. The impact of Bowles as both the father and the tour manager, two contrastive authority figures, has particular weight.

MJ is nothing if not cleverly put together. Except, that is, for the inept framing device — crude, for such an accomplished playwright — of an MTV reporter  (Kristin Stokes) who’s scored a rare interview with media-averse Jackson for a documentary. “I wanna keep this about my music,” he says.  “But is it possible to separate your life from your music?” she asks.

There’s a question that weaves its way through MJ (and quite possibly all jukebox biomusicals). And his aggrieved response taps into a continuing theme that the tabloid media are predatory and the truth is beside the point. “No matter what I do it always get twisted….Just because you see it on a TV screen don’t make it factual.”

But the verbal exchanges with the reporter, as written, are oddly banal and dull, starting with gambits like “what drives you creatively?” or “when you perform it’s like a switch gets turned on….” Or this one: “It feels like you’re courting controversy.” Well, yeah. It’s one thing to allude to the shallow water in which the media swim, with Jackson as victim; it’s  another to actually build those questions into the script.

Jordan Markus as MJ, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy

So, Michael, where do you get your ideas? Yikes. It’s telling, not showing, to hear that “I process my ideas through my body.” And the showing, is well within the compass of Markus’s performance — the way life events and their emotional accretions seem to arrive in his movement lexicon, with its original angles, strange playfulness, tortured extensions. The Jackson 5 scenes, including an Amateur Night performance at the Apollo, are vividly realized onstage, and like past and present they flow wonderfully together in this production. If Jackson never seems quite grown-up or of this earth, it’s to the choreography and direction we look, not the thudding script.

The trickiest thing about MJ, bound to seem slippery, is that when Rachel, desperate as she claims to “get inside his his head” (ah, those crack MTV investigative reporters), frequently alludes to allegations and tabloid stories, she’s actually talking about his whitening skin colour and his enhanced nose, not the allegations and stories the musical knows we’re thinking about. It’s one thing to be (contractually) evasive; it’s another to drop hints in order to sidestep them.

The song lyrics themselves, in numbers astutely positioned in the musical, tell a story with reverb, too — Beat It, with its advice to avoid responsibility (“it doesn’t matter who’s right or wrong”), or Human Nature with its title as the answer to every why? question about human behavior.

The show begins at the outset in the rehearsal hall where Jackson’s corps of dancers are limbering up,“Five minutes to Michael!” Then “two minutes to Michael!” says the man in the suit. And after that, fanfare cum warning, there he is, the artist himself, sliding quietly into the rehearsal hall, right into Beat It. And we get to see a driven and demanding working pro, constantly tinkering, in detail (and expense), with the upcoming, maybe ruinously costly, Dangerous tour. There’s a delish scene where MJ dances with Fred Astaire and Bob Fosse, and the Cotton Club’s Nicholas Brothers.

That perfectionist, a true original whose music videos remain peak experiences of that form, is remarkable to see in action in MJ’s big, full-bodied production numbers in this fulsome touring show. The rest of the story unspools in clouds.

REVIEW

MJ

Broadway Across Canada

Book by: Lynn Nattage

Directed and choreographed by: Christopher Wheeldon

Starring: Jordan Markus, Devin Bowles, Kristin Stokes, Brandon Lee Harris, Quentin Blanton Jr. (alternating with Bryce A. Holmes), Michael Nero, Rajané Katurah, J. Daughtry, Austin Rankin

Where: Jubilee Auditorium

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: ticketmaster.ca

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