Fringe Full of Stars: further thoughts from 12thnight on how to get intrigued, and what to see

Posted on August 11, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Elena Porter in I’ll Be Here: a musical cabaret. Broken Toys Theatre. Photo by Ryan Parker

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Starting Thursday you have the fun of launching yourself into the galaxy of Fringe Full of Stars, the 44th annual edition of the oldest and biggest of the continent’s Fringes (and the prototype for the rest).

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

You have 223 shows to choose from, in 40 venues, at this year’s Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival (through Aug. 24). OK, it’s a lot (and the 152-page $15 glossy guide weighs a ton in your purse). But don’t be flattened, be pumped. Take your cue from the deluxe improvisers in this theatre town, and say Yes to experimenting.

Did you have a peek at 12thnight.ca‘s selection of a dozen intriguing shows to get you started? It’s here. And here are some further thoughts about the strange and wonderful world at hand.

playwright Moemen Gaafar, author of Genesis , Fringe 2025. Photo suppliede

A new play by an emerging playwright: Nobody’s Fringe is complete without one. And Genesis, a first play by Egyptian-born computer science whiz Moemen Gaafar (the 2025 recipient of the Fringe’s Mowat Diversity Award), has a particularly enticing premise: playwright Adam, struggling with writer’s block, tries to dislodge his creative impasse by changing places with his character Eve.

Read the Fringe’s own interview with the playwright here:  https://tinyurl.com/2ay53py

Shakespeare shows up: He’s a stand-up Fringe collaborator; no playwright is more resilient. There are two versions of Macbeth at the Fringe (maybe the theme of ambition is irresistible). One’s a new opera, Macbeth, performed by the New Era Group (12 musicians, eight singers), music by J. A. Creaghan. The other, Out Damned, Spot is a 45-minute punk rock musical which sees the world of Macbeth through Lady M’s eyes.

Jon Paterson and Rod Peter in Iago vs Hamlet, RibbitRePublic. Photo supplied

Houston-based  comedian Patrick Hercamp is evidently a specialist in ripping through entire Shakespeare plays in 30 minutes. Fakespeare promises a condensation of “some of Shakespeare’s best loved tragedies, characters, and iconic dramatic moments.” In Tragedy or Triumph: An Improvised Shakespearean Epic, Vancouver’s Spontaneous Shakespeare Company makes up an entire Shakespeare play on the spot, the one he somehow forgot to write, from audience cues. Andrew Hamilton’s Kaliban wonders what happens to Prospero’s unruly servant, the son of a sea witch (with a viable land claim), at the end of The Tempest. In Jason McDonald’s Iago vs Hamlet, two of Shakespeare’s heavy-hitters go at it over … life? mortality? No, a double-booked rehearsal space.

Larissa Poho in Moonshine, Edmonton Fringe 2025. Photo supplied.

Scaling up, not down!, for the Fringe. When I saw it at Nextfest in 2018, Moonshine was a highly unusual one-woman show — performance art for want of a better descriptive — in which Larissa Poho celebrated her Ukrainian roots in story, song (and trays of vodka shots). As of its Fringe premiere this week,  Moonshine, “a Ukrainian kitchen party in a fried chicken restaurant,” is re-born as “a five-member actor-musician ensemble show,” she says. It defies the Fringe drift to smaller, more condensed, in a striking way.

The bilingual Poho is the possessor of a remarkably expansive artist skill set: actor, playwright (Before The River), singer, composer, lighting designer, visual artist, musical director and arranger. She plays the violin, and a veritable band full of instruments including the accordian, the dulcimer, the guitar, an assortment of exotic Ukrainian instruments. She’s a tattoo artist, too.

For Moonshine, as she describes, Poho “leads the storytelling” (in two languages), supported by Billy Brown, Scott Shpeley, local singer-songwriter Marissa K, Saskatoon’s Jordan Welbourne. “Yes, there is new and even more music!” she says. And it comes in a eclectic whirl of styles, “folk, pop, klezmer, punk, instrumental and a capella. And many more instruments. Whereas previously I played the show solely on my violin, we’ve added guitars, mandolin, ukulele, tsymbaly, accordion and more.” Bonus: Moonshine happens in a (licensed) BYOV where you’ve never before seen a Fringe show, Waffle Bird (Stage 35) in the heart of Fringe Land.

Assassins, Uniform Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2025. Graphic supplied

Topicality, renewed: Stephen Sondheim’s 1990 musical Assassins returns to the Fringe after a decade in all its dark, weird, subversive brilliance. And it’s armed (so to speak) with a new and lustrous topicality in our Moment. The characters are men and women who assassinated presidents of the United States, or at least gave it a shot. Even if that American Dream mantra that any kid can grow up to be president is a big fat lie, any kid can grow up to kill one. The 10-actor Uniform Theatre production happens at a first-time Fringe BYOV, ArtsHub Ortona in the river valley.   

Homecoming: The Fringe is a playground, and brave new world, for young and emerging artists, yes. But the Edmonton Fringe’s enduring success is also built on its appeal, however intermittent, for seasoned professionals, like director Jim Guedo (back at the Fringe after 35 years to direct Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things). The last time actor/director James MacDonald did a Fringe show was Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me in 2003. Since then, a lot has happened in a career that’s taken him to the Citadel and across the country, and to the artistic directorship at Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops, a job he’s recently left. He returns to Edmonton and the Fringe as an actor, in the cast of the dark political comedy Bomb. The appeal, as he describes, was three-fold. One was the “excellent production of First Métis Man of Odesa” that played WCT under his watch. “I was so struck by the beautiful artistry and daring creativity” of director Lianna Makuch and star Mariya Khomutova. And they’re the artistic engine of Bomb. Meaningfully, MacDonald is in the role (of the doctor) that was to have been occupied by the late great Julien Arnold. “I am so pleased to to it, both to work with some innovative artists on a unique and topical play, and also as a tribute to my great friend and his incredible legacy in Edmonton.”

Broken Toys Theatre, the company created by husband-and-wife team Elena Porter and Clinton Carew, has brought Edmonton audiences powerful contemporary productions of the masters (Chekhov’s The Three Sisters, Pinter’s Betrayal) along with such large-scale originals as Star Killing Machine. It’s been six years since a Broken Toys production has been at the Fringe (The Trophy Hunt). Till now. And for the first time, something as “small, personal, and intimate” as a cabaret, as Porter says. A musical theatre veteran she stars in her first cabaret, I‘ll Be Here: A Musical Cabaret. with Steven Greenfield, directed by Carew. She’s always loved the form, and its juxtaposition of  known, and little known, songs,  gathered to reflect on “the joy and pain of the past decade.”

Michelle Todd and Cheryl Jameson in Paloma & Joy, Whizgiggling Productions. Photo supplied

Busiest artist at the Fringe: Hands down, playwright/ director/ actor Trevor Schmidt, artistic director of Northern Light Theatre (who also wrote a play, Monstress, for NLT this past season). Q: why doesn’t Schmidt have a Red Bull sponsorship? He has written no fewer than three new comedies for the Fringe and co-written a fourth. He has directed and designed all four. And he’s in the cast of two of them. Whizgiggling Productions (Black Widow Gun Club, Destination Wedding) premieres Schmidt’s comedy Paloma & Joy (which re-assembles the fave trio of Michelle Todd, Kristin Johnston and Cheryl Jameson, and an unusual guest star, “a rare and exotic white tiger”). The comedy Carole of the Belles is for the collective 100% More Girls, and he joins the Whizgiggling trio onstage along with Jason Hardwick and Jake Tkaczyk. Co-written with Darrin Hagen, Flora & Fawna Face Their Fears, with Schmidt as Flora, is a Guys in Disguise production that returns to the characters, earnestly helpful pre-teen girls, we met in Flora & Fawna’s Field Trip. Schmidt has also written a comedy, Lousy Parents, for the Novus Actors lawyers’ collective (all proceeds benefit the Varscona Theatre).   

Accidental Beach: A Previously Improvised Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

Sequels and a prequel: There are sequels at the Fringe, !SNAFU’s Sexy Puppet Show (Epidermis Circus 2) among them, a follow-up to Ingrid Hansen and Britt Small’s ingenious physical puppet show, all done with fingers and other body parts, mirrors and a camera. The Fringe has become self-referential for its returning audiences. Prequels, thought, are rare upon the ground, as rare as rhymes for Saskatchewan River. GUMS: An Accidental Beach Prequel couldn’t be more local. The new Grindstone musical by the stellar theatre composer/musical director Simon Abbott with Dallas Friesen, Abby Vandenberghe and Malachi Wilkins rolls back time, back before last summer’s Accidental Beach: A Previously Improvised Musical — a goofball affair with clever songs — back to the moment that a dangerous, shifting new river beach emerges, along with a scary giant sturgeon. Where’s a heroic lifeguard when you need one?

Tell us a story, do (the loneliness of the long-distance storyteller): The Fringe circuit is a repository for storytellers (not least because it’s a portable solo art form and generally designers need not apply). Fringe Full of Stars has three of the best.

Martin Dockery in 1 Small Lie, Edmonton Fringe 2025. Photo supplied.

One is the charismatic Anishinaabe playwright/storyteller Josh Languedoc of Indigenized Indigenous Theatre (one of my favourite company names). The protagonist of his puckishly titled Elon Muskrat has put his new casino up for sale. Martin Dockery’s particular kind of low-key bemusement lends itself to the unspooling shaggy-dog kind of comedy, made incrementally plausible. It seems tailor-made for a possibly-true crime premise like 1 Small Lie, in which, as billed, “a family man robs a thief of a ton of money.” Paul Strickland, a Kentucky storyteller of great charm and comic chops, is a specialist in the particularly deadpan comedy of tall tales somehow made plausible. And they come with music. Last year he brought us Once Upon A Lie; this year 100% UnTrueBadour.

New musical theatre at the Fringe: Launching a new musical anywhere, much less at the Fringe, takes impressive (crazy labour-intensive) creative energy. But, hey, they have proliferated in a startling way at the festival. There are genre spoofs (Final Girl), live cartoons (Popeye The Musical), dramatic period pieces (The  Spotlight’s Shadow). There’s even a solo musical (Zombies, Inc.).

Tickets, show descriptions and schedules: fringetheatre.ca.

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Are you lost in the stars? What to see at Fringe Full Of Stars: a little survey to get you started

Posted on August 7, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things, Thought Train. Photo by Evan Makewecki

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Starting Thursday, Edmonton’s best idea ever is back in action to screw up your bedtime, and make life more exciting. The 44th annual edition of our 11 day-and-night theatre bash, the biggest and oldest Fringe on the continent, and the place where the phenom started on this side of the pond, is an invitation to experiment, take a chance, make a discovery.

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

The starry 223-show Fringe galaxy is yours to explore Aug. 14 to 24. So what looks promising? intriguing? Just for starters, here’s a preliminary survey of a dozen shows that caught my eye — for the play, the premise, the artists, the weirdness and/or the likelihood you’ve never seen anything like it. (I haven’t seen them yet either, so we’re in this together). Stay tuned for companion pieces, and more suggestions, coming up on 12thnight.ca.

Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk in Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things. Photo by Evan Makowecki

Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things. This cleverly macabre homage to Victorian bedtime storytelling, and the irresistible lure of getting scared, is an original by actor/playwrights Beth Graham and Nathan Cuckow. It premiered nearly 15 years ago at the Fringe here and in New York. It’s back, with a pair of this theatre town’s hottest young actors, Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk, and marks the return the of star director Jim Guedo to the Fringe — after 35 years. “It would take a lot to lure me back,” says Guedo of his return to the Fringe after lo these many years. Last time was as an actor: Leave It To Jane’s 1990 production of Charles Ludlum’s Medea, with Maralyn Ryan, directed by Tim Ryan.

The appeal for Guedo was double-barrelled. One was the actors. “Rain and Eli asked me, I happen to think they’re both fabulous,” Guedo says of the pair of recent MacEwan Theatre Arts grads who starred together in Northern Light’s Radiant Vermin this past season. “This will be our fourth show working together,” Guedo says of a history that includes MacEwan’s production of Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George (Matkin and Yaschuk were Dot and George). “Two: the script. Beth and Nathan’s script is a bang-up beautiful piece of writing. It’s marvellous, twisted, dark, funny, and is a dense rollercoaster to navigate…. We’ve had a blast working on it.”

Bomb, starring Mariya Khomutova. Pyretic Productions. Poster by Amelia Scott.

Bomb. Pyretic Productions, a local indie with a national profile, has a history with our Fringe they can trace back to Matthew MacKenzie’s The Particulars in 2008. And an archive of originals that leans into bold and inflammatory (Bears, Alina, Michael Mysterious, Barvinok …). With this Canadian premiere of Bomb, a (very) black absurdist comedy by Natalia Blok billed as “explosively funny” (with a bomb to back up that claim), Pyretic introduces us to contemporary Ukrainian theatre. And director Lianna Makuch has assembled an all-star cast of heavy-hitters for the occasion: Mariya Khomutova, James MacDonald, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Anna Kuman. More about this play in a 12thnight companion piece coming soon.

The Peter Pan Cometh. If you were surprised (and who wasn’t?) by Who’s Afraid of Winnie the Pooh? at last summer’s Fringe, you already know something about the playful audacity at work in Clevername Theater of Minnesota. Somehow, impossibly, they pulled off a funny and very moving capture of Edward Albee’s celebrated barb-slinging marital bloodbath with the AA Milne characters from the Hundred Acre Wood. You can’t help but be curious about this latest from playwright Alexander Gerchak, in which the illusion-soaked barflies of Eugene O’Neill’s monumentally bleak The Iceman Cometh, are visited by The Boy Who Refuses To Grow Up et al. Sounds even more impossible.

Cadaver Synod by Sebastian Ley, Vault Theatre. Poster image supplied

Cadaver Synod. Sebastian Ley’s 638 Ways To Kill Castro, a smart satire with a zest for the absurdist potential of … reality, was our introduction at last summer’s Fringe to the accomplished work of this theatrically savvy young actor/playwright. His first play, it was a hit. Ley is back with another equally outlandish premise from actual history: an obsessed medieval emperor with, as Ley puts it dryly, “a high level of inability to let things go,” orders the body of a long-dead pope who’s offended him to be dug up. In 897, the corpse is put on trial. Kathleen Weiss, a director with experimental cred, returns, to direct a starry cast that includes Samuel Bronson, David Ley, and Michael Watt. More about the playwright and his new play in an upcoming 12thnight post.

Zombies, Inc, Live & In Color. Poster image supplied

ZOMBIES, INC. The intriguing proposition at the heart of this new solo musical comedy is alluringly off-centre: “what if you were already living like the undead before the zombie apocalypse? Satirical barbs aimed at “corporate culture, capitalism, existential dread … through the lens a zombie apocalypse” as director Devanand Janki describes? OK, I’m in. The show was developed by Live & In Color, the New York company started by the Edmonton born and raised New Yorker Janki to champion the work of under-represented and BIPOC artists. His musical adaptation (with Tommy Newman) of Darrin Hagen’s Yuletide comedy With Bells On premiered at Theatre Network in 2023. Janki directs this new musical created by the Bolivian-American artist Marcus Perkins Bejarano and Korean-Mongolian Kim Jinhyoung and starring Edmonton’s Damon Pitcher, “a local gem and a star in the making” as Janki describes. “A true tour-de-force performance” by “a fellow South Asian artist…. Directing Damon has been a deeply personal joy.” Janki says. OK, I’m in.

The Alberta Hospital For The Insane by Calla Wright. Photo supplied.

The Alberta Hospital for the Insane. They’ve included puppets in their Fringe casts before now (The Wright Sisters Present: The Wright Brothers , e.g.) In May I saw a workshop production of Calla Wright’s Binding, a witty, highly original one-human many-puppet character play at the RISER New Works Festival. And here’s a Wright Punch and Judy-style puppet show, Wright’s first with an all-puppet cast, directed by the adventurous theatre artist Meegan Sweet. The puppets have the intriguing challenge of stepping up to thorny, complex subject matter … the relationship between queer and trans identities, gender roles, the social weaponizing of the mental illness label. It’s set in dustbowl Alberta in the 1930s at the notorious Alberta Hospital in Ponoka. Why puppets? “A lot of the play is about perception, and the cognitive dissonance between how you feel within and how you’re perceived by others,” Wright says. “And puppets help us play with this reality/unreality truth/mask theme.”

Rat Academy 2: Gnaw and Order. Three years ago, Fringe audiences were smitten by the fractious dynamic between a couple of rats, marginalized outsiders up against it in a rat-free province. Rat Academy, the imaginative and playful work of clown artists Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner, went on to tour theatres and festivals across the country, a bona fide hit and Edmonton Fringe success story. Fingers (Hoffmann), the exasperated street-wise one, and Shrimp (Yoner), a former lab rat and the more naive and impulsive one, are back, with a free-standing ‘sequel’. This time, as their creators said in a 12thnight interview for their Nextfest run, the rodent duo, quick on the uptake with their audiences, have been evicted from their alley and are exploring the notion of home, what it means to be at home. Have a peek at the 12thnight interview with Hoffmann and Yoner in June, here.

Christine Lesiak and Louise Casemore in Lost Sock Rescue Society, Small Matters Productions. Photo supplied.

Lost Sock Rescue Society. The prospect of a new show from Small Matters Productions, purveyors of such clownly comic delights as For Science! and The Spinsters, is no small matter at all. In this one you get to support the vital activism of a society with a mission to recover, rehabilitate, and re-home lost, unwanted, and abandoned socks. Not only that, you can apply to adopt. The production introduces as new stage partnership, and the kooky fun potential is high: Christine Lesiak (Hey Science!) and Louise Casemore (OCD, Gemini), the latter fresh from a sold-out premiere run of Lucky Charm at the Found Festival, and both experts at making audience interaction actually fun! (a gift to be prized). Unlike Lesiak Casemore isn’t known as a clown artist per se. “But aesthetically and philosophically, we’re on the same page!” as Lesiak puts it. There’s a guest “international sock technician” at every performance.

Final Girl: A New Musical. A new musical comedy by the Straight Edge Theatre team of Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, the musical theatre-soaked duo who brought us Conjoined and Krampus, is an enticing prospect. Billed as “Scream meets Mean Girls,” their new show is named for the teen horror flick trope of, you know, cheery serial slasher deaths.

Dave Clarke and John Ullyatt in ShipShow, Photo supplied.

ShipShow! Together again. Even the thought of Dave Clarke and John Ullyatt, two of this town’s most adventurous theatre artists, as a musical cabaret duo in nautical mode, taking on the curse of the Flying Dutchman, is pretty well irresistible. Eileen Sproule directs. (Memories do linger of their Dr. Grot and Moon shows of yore: Clarke as a demented self-help guru and Ullyatt as a slightly rancid eager-beaver boy scout acolyte. Once seen never forgotten).

Trevor Schmidt and Jake Takaczyk in Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears, Guys in Disguise. Photo supplied

Flora & Fawna Face Their Fears. The NaturElles, the all-inclusive non-binary pre-teen collective (founded by two earnest 10-year-old girls as a haven for bullied outsiders: ‘no mean girls!’), were born at the Fringe a decade ago. They’re the comedy inspiration of Guys in Disguise’s Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt, who co-starred (with Brian Dooley) in the inaugural Flora & Fawna’s Field Trip (With Fleurette), a NaturElles recruitment seminar, a decade ago. “Trevor and I came up with the character names when we were up north in 2013 in the Yukon researching Klondykes,” says Hagen. “One of us said ohmygod there’s so much flora and fauna up here. And the other said those would be great character names.” Flora & Fawna Have Beaver Fever (And So Does Fleurette) followed. I can’t not see the latest show: Schmidt as Fawna, Jake Tkaczyk as Flora, and Jason Hardwick as the NaturElles new secretary.

Jezec Sanders in Where Foxes Lie, Nextfest and Ready Go Theatre. Photo supplied.

Where Foxes Lie. Fringe audiences found out about playwright Jezec Sanders with his impressively accomplished and witty thriller The Cabin on Bald Dune in 2023. This new solo show, is similarly intricate (I saw a workshop version a year ago at Nextfest, a co-producer at the Fringe premiere with Ready Go Theatre), and just as challenging, since the dark unstoppable course of a rumour in a community is chronicled onstage by one actor. Sanders himself stars; Erik Richards directs.

Before this gets any longer, I leave you, just temporarily, with some enticing premises: A Kind of Electra, a clown version of the violent Greek myth by L.A.’s The Clown School Company. The Empire of Sand, a new show, would you call it “performance poetry”?,  featuring the verbal gymnastics of Steve Pirot. Riot! something new from the ingenious theatrical smarties of Vancouver’s Monster Theatre. It involves an actual 1849 theatre riot in NYC. 

Tickets, show descriptions and schedules: fringetheatre.ca.  Did you check out our “tickets on sale” post. It’s here. 

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Fringe Full Of Stars, the 44th annual edition of our big summer theatre bash. Tickets go on sale today

Posted on August 6, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

A Fringe Full Of Stars artwork by Yu-Chen (Tseng) Beliveau, Edmonton Fringe 2025.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Your star has risen, fellow Fringe travellers. It’s August, and Fringe Full Of Stars is yours for the exploring.

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

Tickets and passes go on sale today at 10 a.m. (in person) and noon (online) for the 44th annual edition of Edmonton’s international summer theatre Big Bang, the continent’s biggest and oldest Fringe (Aug.14 to 24).

Along with the course you chart through the 223-indoor show galaxy, you can get your tickets in multiple ways. You can order them online at fringetheatre.ca (and get e-tix in your inbox). You can call 780-409-1910. You can show up live and in-person at the central festival box office at Fringe HQ (Fringe Theatre Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.) or downtown at the Edmonton Arts Council’s Shop/Services (9930 102 Ave.). And when fringing (there’s a quintessentially Edmonton verb) starts on the 14th, there are other in-person ticket options, too: the box office at 83 Ave and 104th St. next to ATB (aka Gazebo) Park and the one at La Cité francophone (8627 91 St.) in the French Quarter.

Times being what they are for the arts — i.e. extremely tough, witness rocketing production costs, the freezing of grants, the dwindling of sponsorship money — the top ticket price for a Fringe show went up a couple of bucks to $20 last summer. And it’s holding there for Fringe Full of Stars. Fringe artists set their own ticket price, to a $15 max, and take home 100 per cent of that. The Fringe tops that up with a $5 service charge. What you see in the program, online or in the glossy $15 152-page guide, is an all-in price. For tickets set at less than the max price by artists, that service charge is reduced accordingly.

A glance at the program either online or 3-D reveals that most artists (understandably) opt for the max. But as always there are exceptions (and many shows offer discounts for seniors and students). Tickets for 4% Rye, an “autobiographical show” by and starring Rye Fournier, are $10, for example. Pushy Productions’ You’ve Been Served, from San Francisco, is a $15 ticket (students and seniors $10), Free Pony from Portland  $12. And hey, you get a free pony, which has got to be the bargain of the Fringe, right? OK, there are a couple of provisos, including sitting through “exciting investment opportunities to obtain pony” and “pony subject to rules.” In Out, Damned Spot from Vancouver’s Mouthy B Productions, you can see, as billed, an entire “punk rock Macbeth” for 12 bucks. The Fringe’s own Late Night Cabaret, a midnight collaboration with Rapid Fire Theatre curated by Jake Tkaczyk and Audrey Ochoa at the Granite Curling Club where it moved last year (Stage 9) is $17 a ticket.

The best deal for the star-struck Fringe traveller, as always, is the coveted Frequent Fringer Pass ($170 for 10 tickets) and the Double Fringer Pass ($340 for 20 tickets). They are gone in a twinkling, so get on it ASAP.

You’ll be launching into the starry 223-show firmament in some 40 venues (an expansion, in an incremental way, from last year’s 216 shows in 38 venues). Ten of these, representing about 90 shows, are official Fringe “theatres” — which is to say acquired, outfitted and staffed for theatrical action, by the Fringe itself at a cost of about $15,000 apiece, and programmed by lottery.

The other 133 shows are to be found in BYOVs, bring-your-own-venues, acquired and equipped by artists themselves. Most are in Old Strathcona and environs. But not all. There are two BYOVs at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre on 124 St., for example. In the river valley, ArtsHub Ortona, a first-time Fringe BYOV, is where Uniform Theatre is producing Sondheim’s Assassins. There’s even an outlier BYOV in the Alberta Avenue ‘hood, at Plaza Bowling.

The four curated venues in the French Quarter — three inside La Cité francophone, one across the street at Campus Saint-Jean — have 32 shows between them. Grindstone Theatre curates a Fringe roster of 26 shows in its four venues — including its tiny comedy theatre home base on 81 Ave., the Lutheran Centre across the street, the venue under the Mill Creek Cafe on Whyte, and Mile Zero Dance Stage. Strathcona’s arts-oriented Holy Trinity Church has 14 shows in its three BYOV venues.

You can find Fringe shows in actual bona fide theatres, like the Varscona, the Gateway, the Fringe’s Westbury and Backstage Theatres, Walterdale, Rapid Fire’s Exchange Theatre, Theatre Network’s Nancy Power. But many of the venues have other lives — as bars, dance clubs, community centres, church halls, art galleries — and in the case of Waffle Bird, Stage 35, a chicken-and-waffle joint.

And there are even two BYOVs, stages 39 and 40, with outdoor orientation addresses. Mere steps away from Fringe headquarters, find Checkpoint Cassandra, “an interactive mystery experience” (with clues and puzzles scattered through the Fringe site) and The Nix, “a site-specific storytelling walk into Edmonton’s history.”

For the youngest fringers, KidsFringe, curated by Alyson Dicey of Girl Brain, is back, and free!, in Light Horse Park (10325 85 Ave.), daily starting Friday August 15. Kids 12 and under and their grownup companions will experience theatre, storytelling, music, crafts, activities of all kinds. It counts as a bona fide Fringe hit: last year it attracted an audience of 14,000 to Dicey’s inventive programming.

Pêhonân (nêhiyawêwin for “meeting place”) is a celebration of Indigenous voices, history, and culture that happens throughout the Fringe site and on every stage — in performances, installations, storytelling gatherings, workshops, initiated and assembled by the festival’s Indigenous Director MJ Belcourt Moses.

There’s a nightly music series on the ATB Stage; there are outdoor performances of every description (with a schedule in the Fringe guide). There are buskers and food vendors. And of course there are beer tents (did you doubt it?) in which the bevies are led by locally brewed Sea Change, “the exclusive beer provider of the Edmonton Fringe.”

Which brings us to the question of the year: what to see at Fringe Full of Stars, now just a week away. 12thnight.ca is here to help you with that. Stay tuned to this site for encouragement, suggestions, previews, features, and reviews.

And speaking as we are of encouragement, if you’ve been enjoying the theatre coverage on my free (so far!) and independent site — supported entirely by readers — I really really hope you’ll consider chipping in to my ongoing Patreon campaign — with a monthly contribution that will support the continuation of 12thnight.ca. Click here!   

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A new season, and a new artistic director, for Teatro Live! Farren Timoteo brings his blue-chip Teatro cred home

Posted on July 29, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Farren Timoteo, incoming artistic director at Teatro Live! Photo by Curtis Comeau

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Teatro Live! has a new season — and, starting Sept. 1,  a new artistic director.

“Comedy is powerful…. That’s my place in the universe!” declares Farren Timoteo, looking delighted (his at-rest expression) after a day auditioning actors for the season-opening Teatro Live! production of the virtuoso Hitchcockian comedy thriller The 39 Steps he’ll direct this fall (Nov. 13 to 30).

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Speaking of steps, he’s following in those of his great friend and frequent stage collaborator Andrew MacDonald-Smith, who’s leaving the Teatro Live! artistic directorship this summer to pursue his busy acting career.

Not only does Timoteo, an award-winning actor/ playwright/ director/ lyricist, and veteran artistic director, bring that unusual skill set to his new gig at Teatro, he brings blue-chip Teatro cred too. His 20-year history with the 44-season-old comedy company includes acting, directing, writing musicals (not to mention a particular fondness for the phrase “the Teatro spirit”). And it goes back beyond his first Teatro role, in the Stewart Lemoine/Jocelyn Ahlf comedy A Momentary Lapse in 2005, to the very first Fringe show he ever saw, at age 18.

It was Lemoine’s Cocktails at Pam’s, which returns as the finale of the upcoming season July 9 to 26, directed by the playwright, with Timoteo in the cast. Lemoine’s 1986 Fringe hit, with its real-time declension into chaos, became a signature Teatro favourite, revived at regular intervals. And for the teenage Timoteo, about to start the musical theatre program at MacEwan along with MacDonald-Smith, it was a life-changer.

“I had never seen anything like it. I had no idea Edmonton could have something so special. It was so funny, so stylish. The writing was so smart, so cheeky…. What IS going on? Every time thing you figure it out, it switches modes and does something else…. When I left Pam’s place I was not the same person!”

The upcoming season programmed by MacDonald-Smith in collaboration with Timoteo also includes a new Lemoine as yet untitled (Feb. 19 to March 8, 2026) and Becky Mode’s Fully Committed June 4 to 21). The latter is a solo 40-character tour-de-force set in an elite Manhattan restaurant where an out-of-work actor is negotiating the chaos of the reservation line. MacDonald-Smith stars; Timoteo directs.

Timoteo arrives in his new job from 19 seasons as the artistic head, muse, and resident playwright/director of another theatre that leans into comedy. Alberta Musical Theatre Company is a purveyor to kid audiences of smart, irreverent, sassy original musicals spun from fairy tales, most recently this season’s 200-date tour of Rapunzel.

Timoteo didn’t write that one (it’s by Camille Pavlenko, music by VISSIA, “a magical pairing”). “I thought we could use a fresh voice,” he says. But the idea for “a 60s pop-rock musical Rapunzel” was his (“Hair is a musical from the ‘60s; Rapunzel is about hair …” he jokes). And he put the creative team together, as well as the cast of three “fast, funny, kind emerging artists…. It felt both fresh and energized. And I feel so happy to be leaving (the company) on that note.”

Citadel Theatre, graphic supplied

Timoteo’s own season, which has included opera (a role in Edmonton Opera’s Die Fledermaus), began in Vancouver … in pneumatic brocade bloomers. He was a show-stopping King Louis, in the funniest performance of Daryl Cloran’s Citadel/ Arts Club co-production of The Three Musketeers. And it’s been a season, too, of multiple runs across the country of Timoteo’s funny and poignant many-character solo hit Made In Italy — first at Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon and then under the Mirvish Productions banner in Toronto.

That held-over run at Mirvish in May and June was especially meaningful for a son of Italian immigrants. Not least because multicultural Toronto has the largest Italian population of any city outside Italy. “I can hardly find the words to express how special that felt, to take it to the biggest commercial theatre in the country,” he says, and find such an appreciation of “every cultural nuance and texture” of his play.

Farren Timoteo in Made In Italy, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Set in 1970s Jasper and inspired by Timoteo’s own Italian family history, Made In Italy premiered in 2016 in a tiny space at Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops where the Citadel’s Daryl Cloran was artistic director at the time. An Edmonton premiere in the Citadel’s intimate Rice Theatre followed in 2017. And it’s travelled the country ever since, including a return run to Edmonton in 2024, this time on the Citadel mainstage, where Timoteo has starred in such productions as Peter and the Starcatcher (in fine comic fettle as Captain Hook) and Jersey Boys (as Frankie Valli). And Made in Italy continues; it’s slated to launch the upcoming Theatre Calgary season next month.

Jason Sakaki, Kale Penny, Farren Timoteo (front), Devon Brayne in Jersey Boys, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

“I barely remember the debut Kamloops run, because I was terrified!” Timoteo says cheerfully. “Two hours of singing and dancing … and memorization.” Ah, and wondering in advance if audiences would care about an Italian teenager’s coming-of-age crisis. That was before he’d discovered “a few doorways” into the Made In Italy story: “the immigrant experience” in this country of immigrants, “or maybe you’re an outsider, or maybe you have a complex relationship with your parents….”

In a way, he thinks, Made In Italy had some parallels to the “rules of kids theatre” in the fairy tale musicals he’d written with Jeff Unger. “Fast, comedy-forward, single actor playing multiple characters…. And my number one concern, even before (Italian) cultural pride, was the audience not being bored!” That’s a mantra he lives by, he says.

Although it’s physically all out (“my fear-based fitness program”), nine years of Made In Italy haven’t dimmed his pleasure in performing it, he says. “I feel lucky I get to look people in the eye and and see them smile and laugh…. I don’t take laughter for granted.”

Which is a thought Timoteo takes into his appreciation of Teatro Live! and the comedies of the company’s resident playwright Stewart Lemoine. They figure prominently in his own story. “Technically, my first time onstage in a Teatro show was Poki Talks,” a play fashioned around the jaunty comic Mittel-Euro character created by Jeff Haslam. Along with Brianna Buckmaster and Amber Bissonette, he was part of a fictional Eurovision pop band. They popped up to sing at Teatro holiday specials and fund-raisers after that.

In his first official Lemoine, A Momentary Lapse (co-authored by Jocelyn Ahlf) he was in an orange offender’s jumpsuit, doing “community service” alongside Teatro veteran Sheri Somerville, in the role of a smart, rebellious young man specially created for him by the playwright. “I was extremely intimidated, and had a great time. What a gift for a young artist. razor-sharp writing, intelligent comedy….”

Farren Timoteo, A Grand Time in the Rapids, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Since then, Timoteo’s list of Teatro credits includes The Scent of Compulsion, A Rocky Night For His Nibs, Mother of the Year, Marvellous Pilgrims, A Grand Time in the Rapids, and the concert show Far Away and Long A-Gogo.  And as director and lyricist he was part of the quartet of young Teatro artists — along with Ahlf, MacDonald-Smith and Ryan Sigurdson — commissioned in 2009 by Teatro. Their mandate? to create a New York-style book musical, “with catchy tunes, comedy, and set in Edmonton.” The result was Everybody Goes To Mitzi’s, set in the E-town supper club scene of the ‘50s. And the four followed that up two seasons later with The Infinite Shiver, also set in Edmonton.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith in yellow shoes (left) and Farren Timoteo (right), in The Scent of Compulsion, Teatro La Quindicina. Costume designer Leona Brausen. Photo supplied.

What is the defining “Teatro spirit” that Timoteo wants to preserve as the new artistic director? “Stylish. Intelligent. Hilarious, I choose that word deliberately. And it’s ensemble-based,” as he says. From the start, at the very first Fringe, Teatro La Quindicina has always been “a troupe,” he points out. And it’s a troupe with a relationship to the audience. His analogy is “walking into an Italian restaurant in rural Italy and Nonna is in the kitchen….” You walk in to the Varscona, Teatro’s home base, “and Garett Ross is scanning your ticket, Jenny McKillop is behind the bar, both ensemble members,” and Lemoine might be selling the obligatory red licorice. “It’s a sense of ‘we’re all in this together’.”

“It’s more than just the show and the quality of the performances. It’s a theatrical experience…. That’s something worth preserving,” Timoteo says. And so is the “long-standing Teatro tradition of supporting the emerging (artist) community.” It’s part of Timoteo’s own early career start, and the mentoring that went with it. It’s built into Alberta Musical Theatre Company history, too, and the Edmonton cultural landscape.

Timoteo is committed, as well, to a central Lemoine presence, as a leader and a playwright, in Teatro’s upcoming seasons. “His scripts demand and encourage exceptional comedic performances!”

Timoteo sighs happily. “I do love the sound of laughter!” We part, on a wave if that very sound.

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Keeping it Canuck: a summer theatre trip east, this side of the border

Posted on July 27, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

From left: Jesse Gervais as Gossip 4, Julie Lumsden as Gossip 5, Jenna-Lee Hyde as Gossip 2, Christopher Allen as Gossip 1 and Celia Aloma as Gossip 3 in Sense and Sensibility. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A funny thing happened on the way to NYC, and a 12thnight summer working holiday tradition in that great theatre city. Actually, not funny at all. A country came unravelled in unthinkable ways, the whole world suffered terrible setbacks. And suddenly curtain times across the border …  well let’s just say they’ve lost their lustre for now. 

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So, I want to tell you about a Canadian excursion east, with quick stops at the theatre festivals in Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake.

There’s something magical, to be sure, about wandering through a beautiful park, and nodding to a swan or two, en route to the 18th century — and the Stratford Festival mainstage for a matinee. But what’s fun about Jane Austen, and the bright, playful stage adaptation of her 1790s novel Sense and Sensibility (the first of her six) as directed by the Citadel’s Daryl Cloran, is just how bracingly contemporary it all feels.

Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane as Marianne Dashwood with members of the company in Sense and Sensibility. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

The Dashwoods are up against it — the two high-contrast sisters of the title, their little sister and their mama, bustling through their small-town Regency world in reduced circumstances. Austen’s wit and sharp-eyed comic sense are sharpened against such hard surfaces as money and class, and the compelling need for a suitable match — income, real estate, annuities, inherited wealth, wills, entailments…. Where’s dad? For openers, a reverberating thud, on the stage: the corpse of Mr. Dashwood, now the late Mr. Dashwood, smacks down from above, and the family fortunes are in peril.

Members of the company in Sense and Sensibility. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.s

The chief theatrical framing device of the adaptation, by the American actor/playwright Kate Hamill, is a sort of Greek chorus of five Gossips. Cloran’s production has a great time with these gleeful, malicious, upward-mobility vigilantes, judges of propriety and arbiters of the minutiae of income (Jesse Gervais among them). And the basis of Dana Osborne’s design, used by Cloran with great comic pizzaz, is an assortment of hanging frames of every size and shape, empty till a character’s head pops through, in a world of genteel surveillance, stage managed by the overheard and overseen.

At the Citadel in 2023, we saw another Austen adaptation by Hamill, Pride and Prejudice as a rom-com that turned into an out-and-out farce, with goofy cross-dressing jokes and relentlessly clown-ish drive.

Jessica B. Hill as Elinor Dashwood (left) and Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane as Marianne Dashwood, Sense and Sensibility. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: Ted Belton\.

Cloran’s Sense and Sensibility is a different kind of fun, with theatrical ingenuity, Austen smarts, and a beating romantic heart. Elinor (Jessica B. Hill) is the “sensible” sister, who advises caution and discretion in romantic entanglements. Marianne (Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane) is her opposite, impulsive, histrionic, plunging into the life of passion without reserve. The actors are excellent; they have sibling chemistry.

And their cast-mates, who include Andrew Chown as the dashing Willoughby, Thomas Duplessie as the paralyzingly awkward  Edward, and the great Seanna McKenna as the marital arranger Mrs. Jennings, are all top-notch. And Jade V. Robinson is a riot in her double-assignment as sulky, perpetually aggrieved little Dashwood sister, and the malicious schemer Lucy.

The furniture gets reconfigured by the cast, in motion. The mimed meals, a visual capture of the artifices of the world, are apt and funny. Cloran’s production, full of theatrical invention and comic vigour, propels a complicated story along at a lively clip. Highly enjoyable.

Members of the company in Macbeth. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

At the Avon Theatre, Stratford’s small “downtown” proscenium house, men on motorcycles roar on and off a dark stage in Robert Lepage’s production of Macbeth. The director/designer locates the nightmare declension into chaos of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy in the world of Quebec biker gangs of the 1990s.

And the effects devised by set designer Ariane Sauvé and lighting wizard Kimberly Purtell are stunning: the seedy motel, where the Macbeths preside, the gas pumps that explode and become barbecues, the barrels where the witches, with their tattered hooker garb and weird amplified voices, hang out … there’s no end to the imaginative theatrical resources and high tech of Lepage’s production in service of the concept.

And as for the potential artifice, built into that concept, of biker characters speaking iambic pentameter, it disappears as Stratford stars  — including Tom McCamus and Lucy Peacock as Macbeth, Graham Abbey as Banquo, Tom Rooney as Macduff, André Sills as Ross — own the language in an easeful way. It’s no mean achievement.

Lucy Peacock as Lady Macbeth and Tom McCamus as Macbeth in Macbeth. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

What seems less clear in the production, despite the charisma of McCamus as a cordial and apparently hospitable member of the gang till he’s not, is the seductive hierarchy and the homicidal mania that drives Macbeth onward and upward (well, downward), to despair and moral doom. Who is King Duncan (David Collins) in this world? He’s hard to pick out. And, despite Peacock’s performance as the biker chick consort, there’s not much room for Lady M to have an impact in the chronic macho violence of this theatrical world, or on her blood-raddled hubby. That, in itself, is meaningful in the toxic male landscape set forth in the production.

Tom Rooney as Macduff (left) and André Sills as Ross in Macbeth. Stratford Festival 2025. Photo: David Hou.

Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, imagined as heard and seen on earphones and screen by the motel security guard and housekeeper, has a memorable desolation about it. It is perhaps revealing, though, that the scene in which Rooney’s Macduff learns the terrible fate of his wife and kids at Macbeth’s hands is the most lingering human moment of the production.

The drive from Stratford to Niagara-on-the-Lake as the early morning mist lifts at the horizon of the greenest of green fields is one of the great pleasures of summer in southern Ontario. And then as you enter the kingdom of Niagara, you’re reminded that the Okanagan isn’t the only immersive fruit and wine immersion in this country. The main street of Niagara-on-the-Lake is crammed with flowers and tourists. And at the musty Royal George Theatre, slated for a much-needed (!) re-do after the season, calm is the enemy in the Brit farce of the Shaw Festival season.

Tons of Money, a Jazz Age offering by Will Evans and ‘Valentine’ directed by Eda Holmes, has a wonderfully agile, rubber-faced lead in the person of Mike Nadajewski. He plays the upper-class rich kid wastrel, perpetually broke, who sets about conniving a way to nail down a big fat inheritance while avoiding his legion of creditors.

More and more the architecture of Aubrey’s lies, outrageous disguises, preposterous impersonations, improvised to vertiginous heights, threatens to topple at every moment. It is the bright idea of his partner in crime, wife Louise (Julia Course), that he fake his own death, and assume the identity of a long-gone relative who has disappeared in Mexico. Ingenuity is called for. And the ante gets upped, in the farce way, by competing sub-plots initiated by characters who have agendas of their own. Judith Bowden’s costumes, flamboyant and funny, are indispensable.

The lead couple, who fling themselves into, out of, and off their elegant furniture like a couple of kids at a playground (the set is by Bowden), are highly watchable. The rest of the cast, who do have their moments, aren’t really up to that standard. But it’s a fun way to spend a summer afternoon.

The only George Bernard Shaw play at the Shaw Festival this season is Major Barbara.

So … a substantial and particularly timely (when is it not?) classic full of provocations and combustible arguments, and directed by the great Peter Hinton-Davis: that’s the alluring prospect. But despite its many attractions, including a riveting and witty performance by Patrick Galligan as the charming, persuasive arms manufacturer Undershaft, it’s a bit of a slog. And largely the reason is an inert performance in the title role, the mis-cast Gabriella Sundar-Singh.

The play is poised at the intersection of the socio/political and the domestic. Barbara is the daughter of an aristocratic family led, in the absence of patriarch Undershaft, by Lady Britomart (Fiona Byrne). The rebellious Barbara has joined the Salvation Army. And when the family needs his financial help and he returns to discover this career path, Undershaft offers to visit her on location — provided she visit in return his weapons factory in the countryside.

The stimulating thing about Major Barbara is the way the playwright defies moral complacency. Undershaft, as he points out, does deal in destruction. But he offers his workers something real — a decent wage, a house, etc. — instead of the Sally Ann trade-off, blackmail Undershaft calls it, of free meals for ‘conversion’.

When Barbara isn’t actually engaging with other characters in speech, the character pretty much ceases to exist in the performance onstage. You don’t see her understanding, much less rising to, the challenges presented by Undershaft — much less adjusting her world view. Should the Salvation Army keep its doors open by accepting cash donations from arms manufacture? Should the moral rightness of sponsors be investigated? The applications in the current culture are everywhere.

Barbara’s prickly chemistry with Greek scholar Adophus (beautifully played by André Morin), who arms himself with a wholly different line of reasoning against Undershaft, never takes hold either.

I got bogged down, in short. The bold design choices (by Gillian Gallow, lighted by Bonnie Beecher), and the beautifully sun musical accoutrements (period hymns and anthems), offered by the production are intriguing, though. It happens in a sort of blue-lined cube, with outsized steps down to a playing floor. That all the exits happen with characters extending themselves on the stairs that are a stretch seems meaningful. Once you’re embroiled in an argument about the end justifying the means, there’s no easy way out. Discussion pretty much has to follow.

We have our own festivals here, of course, and a big and influential one coming up (three guesses…). But hey, summer theatre at Stratford and Shaw, and a chance to explore a delightful part of the country, are part of the venerable Canadian arts tradition. Aren’t we lucky to have such theatrical riches this side of the border? No passports required.

    

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Summer theatre choices, including three in their last week: a little 12thnight survey

Posted on July 23, 2025 by Liz Nicholls
The Lion King, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The Lion King, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Joan Marcus

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Wakey wakey! It’s your last chance this week to catch …

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•The Lion King. Julie Taymor’s 1997 musical, a non-pareil triumph in conjuring an imaginary world, has been here a couple of times before under the Broadway Across Canada banner, but not for a decade. It magically transforms the 1994 hit Disney Corp movie animation into a stage musical with exclusively animal characters. The music is an original amalgam of African chants from composer Lebo M and others with ballads from the Elton John pop rack. The stagecraft is magical: rod puppets, stunningly inventive headgear and appendage extensions that transform human actors into animals. They come to life in a powerful Shakespearean coming-of-age story of usurpation, dispossession, exile, restoration — the Circle of Life. It runs on the Jube stage till Sunday. Tickets: ticketmaster.ca.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

•The Odd Couple. Neil Simon’s 1965 comedy classic gets deluxe treatment from a perfect cast at Teatro Live! The friction of mismatched, and sparring, roommates comes to life in performances from Alexander Ariate as the irredeemable slob Oscar and Andrew MacDonald-Smith as the uptight neurotic neat-freak Felix. And the supporting characters, the poker boys and the Pigeon sisters, are a riot. Have a peek at the 12thnight review here. It runs through Sunday at the Varscona. Tickets: teatrolive.com.

Louise Casemore in Lucky Charm, Defiance Theatre at Found Festival 2025. Photo by Brianne Jang

•Lucky Charm. Louise Casemore’s fascinating and clever invitation to a séance (and a great story) at Mrs. Houdini’s home has ended its entirely sold-out live run at “a secret residential location in the Hazeldean neighbourhood.” Now through Sunday, you can catch the show, directed by Theatre Yes’s Max Rubin, onscreen. The widow of the world’s greatest magician and escape artist has been enjoined (chained, one might say) by her late husband’s specific request, to try to summon his spirit from beyond the grave. I was lucky enough to have the experience live, and there’s a 12thnight review of the Defiance Theatre production here. Streaming specs and tickets: commongroundarts.ca or theatreyes.com.

Kelsey Verzotti in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

•And continuing at the Citadel, a rosy comedy prospect: Legally Blonde, the fizzy pink-powered Broadway musical that started as a novel before it became a hit movie. There’s a big whack of girl empowerment and self-belief involved in the story of Elle, the California sorority queen who goes to Harvard Law School in pursuit of her callow boyfriend, followed by her own personal Greek chorus. But it’s light of touch, with a lot of great dancing, and a funny hairdresser. Stephanie Graham’s Citadel/ Theatre Calgary co-production is fun fun fun. The 12thnight review is here. It runs through Aug. 3. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

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Lifting the veil between the living and the dead: Lucky Charm, a little review of a very cool show

Posted on July 19, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Louise Casemore in Lucky Charm, Defiance Theatre at Found Festival 2025. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

I’m coming very late to this (a week away in the east is to blame, more about this later). But I went a séance Friday night.

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It was in an unexpected place, a bungalow on a placid neighbourhood street. Life lesson #14 (also applicable to art and in particular the Found Festival): you never can tell. The séance happened downstairs, in a dim, atmospherically cluttered chamber — with trimmings: red velvet drapery, incense, tiny glowing Tiffany-style lamps, a gramophone, all manner of memorabilia … gilt-framed photos, old cigar boxes, tea trays, books. Ah, and a table.

That’s where a New York showgirl in a beautiful frock stepped out of the 1920s (in high heels), to have a go at summoning the spirit of her late husband. That the dearly departed, gone these 10 years, was the most famous magician and escape artiste in the world, Harry Houdini, was one surprise. And so was the widow’s tone: jaded, skeptical, worldly amusement. That’s how we met Bess, Mrs. Houdini, the presiding muse of Louise Casemore’s Lucky Chance.

Louise Casemore in Lucky Charm, Defiance Theatre at Found Festival 2025. Photo supplied

Without fail for the last decade, in accordance with her late husband’s express instructions — a chain as formidable as the kind from which Harry regularly escaped — Mrs. Houdini has invited people into her home weekly, with a purpose. For 520 Sundays in a row she has attempted to connect with her late husband, looking for the code he proposed embedding in a deck of cards. And it hasn’t happened. By now, Sunday number 521, she’s entitled to her doubts about the whole enterprise, which includes the razzmatazz hucksterism of her barker assistant (Jake Tkaczyk). And she congratulates us for our sense of possibility over plausibility.

That skepticism about spiritualist conjurers, and claims of lifting the veil between the living and the world of the dead, are part of the story, and the dramatic tension, in Casemore’s fascinating and intricate play. The Houdinis were famous spiritualist de-bunkers, and Harry’s agenda in the weekly séances is to explode the fraudulence for once and for all. The irony that glints off Lucky Charm at strange angles is that the widow of the star escape virtuoso is herself his prisoner, enchained from beyond the grave, sealed off from the world — by loyalty, by a sense of loss, by grief. Ah, and by memory.

I don’t want to spoil the surprises and unexpected puzzles of Casemore’s intriguing play, directed by Max Rubin of Theatre Yes and designed by Even Gilchrist. But Bess Houdini does conjuring of her own, by her interactions with the audience and by the memorabilia she collects, both from us and in the room. The storytelling of Lucky Charm is highly original, both in the story itself — which conjures an alluring lost Jazz Age world of entertainment (did you know Houdini made an elephant disappear?) — and in the way a remarkable story gets told, with the audience.

This is theatre up close, eyeball to eyeball (six of the audience of 15 are at the table, surrounded by the rest of us). And Casemore, as you know if you’ve seen OCD and GEMINI, is such a vivid, expressive, attentive performer.

Strange and eerie things happen; this is a production with both a magic consultant (Ron Pearson) and a special effects designer (Ian Walker). There’s a sense, to be sure, in which all live theatre is a conjuring of spirits, both living and dead. But Lucky Chance, irony-infused, is something special. It’s actually about the conjuring (with an alluring story to tell about a legendary escape and illusion artist and the behind-the-scenes assistant to whom he was married). And we the audience share some magic of our own; our memories are the key that unlocks her story. Are we Bess’s lucky charm? More than that I shouldn’t say, but it’s an easeful interaction that counts, theatrically and narratively.

The Common Ground Arts Society/ Theatre Yes production, developed during the playwright/star’s two-year Fresh AiR Residency at Found Fest, sold out its entire run in advance. Lucky Chance is now in its last weekend live (and unless you do have a lucky charm or connections beyond the grave, you should consider the streaming option of this very cool show July 23 through 27). Details at commongroundarts.ca.

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A vintage ’60s comedy done up deluxe(ly) at Teatro: The Odd Couple, a review

Posted on July 18, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The sound of an audience laughing out loud is something to be cherished — especially if it’s live, and you’re there among the people. One of the classics of old-school American comedy returns, in style, to the stage here, after an absence of two decades. And with Teatro Live!’s revival of The Odd Couple, Neil Simon’s 1965 comedy, his most produced and popular, you too can have that experience.

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The great (and oft under-valued) skill of playwright Simon is to turn a remarkable supply of zingy one-liners into full-fledged characters. Especially a challenge, perhaps, when those characters are as definitive in the culture as Felix and Oscar, the mismatched newly single roommates of The Odd Couple. It’s a challenge to which Belinda Cornish’s production, beautifully cast and with bench strength beyond the stars, rises in a hilarious way.   

We hear of Felix Unger (Andrew MacDonald-Smith) and Oscar Madison (Alexander Ariate) before we actually see them — the neatnik neurotic and the easy-going slob, respectively — from their  poker-playing buddies.

The Friday night game location is the latter’s eight-room Upper West Side apartment, reduced by the born-again bachelor to an epic mess of empties, strewn towels, laundry, chip bags (set design: Lieke den Bakker). The refreshments are suspect; Oscar’s fridge has been broken for two weeks. “There’s milk standing up that isn’t even in the bottle,” says one of the guys. Oscar’s game night “buffet” consists of a green or brown sandwiches (“either very new cheese or very old meat”). When Felix brings the food, by contrast, it’s “cream cheese and pimiento on date-nut bread.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Oscar the slovenly sportswriter is broke (he’s strapped for rent and behind on alimony); Felix, the uptight, obsessively fastidious television news writer whose wife has just left him, needs a place to live. Does this entirely incompatible pair have a hope in hell of successful co-habitation? The odds-against quotient is, of course, the comic ground zero of The Odd Couple. The new room-mates drive each other crazy. And the architecture of the story is built on the the way the frictions of this shotgun “marriage” bring to the foreground the reasons why each of their wives got fed up and left them. Ariate and MacDonald-Smith, both expert comic actors, are uproarious as Oscar and Felix.

Fresh from a very fine performance as Horse (a horse) in Horseplay at Workshop West, Ariate’s Oscar has a lovable and breezy sense of largesse about him that makes even his most mordant one-liners  seem like his interpretation of cosmic joking around. Oscar, who has never poured a drink he didn’t slop (the audience goes Oooo collectively when he knocks the nut bowl to the floor), is not only impossible to squelch by mere criticism, he rises, albeit off the couch, to it. He is a man energized by exasperation.

His depressive and neurotic room-mate, whom he memorably describes as “the only man in the world with clenched hair,” is, in MacDonald’s performance, a morose and adenoidal master of the passive-aggressive. Tall and lanky (even his pants are uptight), Felix enters the room legs first, shoulders slumped, a veritable sight gag in himself. His hypochondria (“on New Year’s Eve he has a Pepto-Bismal,” says Oscar) is a stitch. Listening to Felix “open” his sinuses made the audience shriek with laughter. Watching MacDonald-Smith try to arrange himself in a low chair is a little comic gem. It’s a performance of great physical dexterity and precision.

Felix rises to happiness only when exercising his homemaker’s skill set: his relationship with the vacuum cleaner and the cord is a veritable pas de deux. It’s exactly the kind of obsessive bustling that reduces the affable Oscar to seething fury. “Leave everything alone! I’m not finished dirtying up for the night.”

Clockwise Oscar Derkx, Bernardo Pacheco, Alexander Ariate, Mat Busby, in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifouc

It’s a mark of Cornish’s production that the supporting roles are occupied so amusingly. The poker guys — kitted out by costume designer Leona Brausen, a ’60s expert —  are individualized in performance: Garett Ross’s sardonic Speed; Mat Busby’s thoughtfully analytical cop;  Oscar Derkx as Vinnie, the naif who consistently fails to read the room; Bernardo Pacheco as Roy the accountant on a short fuse. They make the most of the domestic texture of Simon’s comedy in which we, apparently inadvertently, get to learn telling snippets about all their marriages and kids and jobs.

Kristin Johnston, Jenny McKillop, Alexander Ariate, Andrew MacDonald-Smith in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

And the giggly English Pigeon sisters Gwendolyn and Cecily (“the English Betty Boops,” as Oscar puts it), who arrive for a disastrous double-dinner date, are a hoot in performances by Jenny McKillop and Kristin Johnston. They are an eyeful, as outfitted in 60s flamboyance by Brausen.  Their luminous orange chiffon baby doll peignoirs, the plumage of Brit birds, will make you giddy.

It’s one of those comedies that gets wrapped up pretty abruptly in the interests of a happy ending that seems a bit obligatory. And you do wonder how on earth Oscar and Felix ever became friends in the first place. But that’s on Simon, not this Teatro production. There is great vintage fun to be had, revisiting the sights and sounds of the ’60s in this seminal American comedy, and the period views on marriage and divorce, male camaraderie, friendship that go with them. We all had a blast.

REVIEW

The Odd Couple

Theatre: Teatro Live!

Written by: Neil Simon

Directed by: Belinda Cornish

Starring: Alexander Ariate, Andrew MacDonald-Smith, Mat Busby, Oscar Derkx, Garett Ross, Bernardo Pacheco, Jenny McKillop, Kristin Johnston

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: through July 27

Tickets: teatrolive.com, varsconatheatre.com.

 

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Toasting the season on Edmonton stages: the 37th annual Sterling Awards, led by Brick Shithouse

Posted on July 15, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Brick Shithouse, fenceless theatre, Common Ground Arts Society, Found Festival 2024. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A wave of indie creativity prevailed at the 36th annual Sterling Awards bash Monday night hosted by Luc Tellier and Nadien Chu, as the theatre community put on lipstick and dancing shoes at the Westbury Theatre to toast the season just past on Edmonton stages.

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Alexander Ariate as Horse, Lee Boyes as Jacques in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifousl Set by Beyata Hackborn, lighting by Sarah Karpyshin

The outstanding production Sterling for the season belongs to Horseplay by newcomer Kole Durnford, a highly imaginative two-hander about the best-friendship between a horse and his jockey — that premiered at Workshop West.

Oscar Derkx and Ron Pederson in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

Its counterpart in the best musical category, Grindstone Theatre’s production of the virtuoso Broadway musical A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, the finale of the company’s new mainstage musical season at the Orange Hub, got top honours from the Sterling jury.

But it was a new play, produced with visceral bone-crushing physicality in a warehouse, that proved decisively the top choice of jurors at the celebration, named for theatre pioneer Elizabeth Sterling Haynes. Ashleigh Hicks’ Brick Shithouse, which took us into the world of disaffected 20-something underachievers gravitating to the dangerous illusion of online anonymity, picked up six Sterlings of its eight nominations. In addition to top honours in the indie category, the fenceless theatre production (developed by Common Ground Arts Society at its Found Festival) took away a best director award for Sarah J Culkin, as well as Sterlings for Even Gilchrist’s lighting, Sam Jeffery’s fight direction, and Culkin’s ensemble cast. And it garnered the playwright the top award in the highly competitive best new play category where contenders included Stephen Massicotte, Kole Durnford, Andrew Ritchie and AJ Hrooshkin.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Luc Tellier (centre) as Puck, Citadel Theatre. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.

Of its eight nominations, Daryl Cloran’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical at the Citadel — a re-fitting of Shakespeare’s most popular rom-com with danceable chart-toppers by the likes of Supertramp — took home three Sterlings, one for Oscar Derkx’s supporting performance, one for Deanna Finnman’s amusingly flamboyant ‘70s costumes, one for Ben Elliott’s musical direction.

Cody Porter in Angry Alan, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

The acting awards, divided between musicals and straight plays, were dispersed among large and small companies. For his star performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the Byron Martin’s Grindstone production of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, Zachary Parsons-Lozinski now has a Sterling Award. The Sterling for leading performance in a play went to Cody Porter, for his nuanced, smartly calibrated performance as a men’s movement recruit in Trevor Schmidt’s Northern Light production of Angry Alan.

The supporting role Sterlings went to Alexandra Dawkins for her performance as Madame in the Putrid Brat production of Jean Genet’s play The Maids, and to Oscar Derkx as rustic artisan Flute, coaxed onto rollerskates into the role of Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical at the Citadel.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Joel Schaefer in The Play That Goes Wrong, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

The Citadel’s only other Sterling went to Beyata Hackborn’s ingeniously disintegrating set for last summer’s The Play The Goes Wrong (a co-production with Theatre Calgary and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre). In all, of its 25 nominations in 26 Sterling categories, Edmonton’s largest playhouse came away with but four awards.

Damon Pitcher, Jacob Holloway, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Elsewhere, Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan’s jaunty and macabre holiday musical comedy Krampus, the work of Straight Edge Theatre and Workshop West, picked up the Sterling for outstanding score. Kena León’s intricately cross-hatched sound design for Amanda Goldberg’s Dance Nation at the SkirtsAfire Festival got a Sterling. And T. Erin Gruber’s multi-media design for Thou Art Here’s Cycle, which set Andrew Ritchie in motion atop a bicycle careening through urban streets, was a Sterling winner in a five-nominee category that included such large-scale productions as Disney’s Frozen and Heist at the Citadel (as well as After Mourning – Before Van Gogh and The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, both at Shadow Theatre).

Of the five Fringe categories, four Sterlings went to the new and scoriating Liam Salmon play Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries. The Low Hanging Fruits’ premiere was deemed by the jury both the outstanding new work and the outstanding production amongst offerings at Edmonton’s giant summer theatre festival. It also garnered Sterlings for director Owen Holloway, and for star Zachary Parsons-Lozinski (his second Sterling of the night) in a blistering performance, flamboyant and furious. Luc Tellier’s Fringe production of the Kat Sandler comedy Bright Lights, set in a support group for people who’ve had encounters with aliens, was deemed the best Fringe ensemble.

The theatre for young audiences Sterlings went to Alberta Musical Theatre’s Rapunzel (outstanding production) and the Silver Skate Festival’s (outstanding artistic achievement).

As previously announced, Gina Moe was this year’s recipient of the Margaret Mooney Award for outstanding achievement in administration. The Ross Hill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production went to Nico Van Der Kley. And director/ artistic director Gerry Potter, the founder of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre and more recently Rising Sun Theatre, and altogether a tireless supporter, mentor and promoter of Canadian theatre, was recognized for his Outstanding Contribution to Edmonton theatre.

Congratulations to all the nominees, the Sterling recipients — and, heck!, to everyone who defied the odds-against in a tough year and made theatre happen this season in Edmonton.

And the 2024-2025 Sterling Awards go to …

Outstanding Production of a Play: Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre)

The Timothy Ryan Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Grindstone Theatre)

Outstanding Independent Production: Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding New Play (award to playwright): Ashleigh Hicks, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role (Play): Cody Porter, Angry Alan (Northern Light Theatre)

Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role (musical): Zachary Parsons-Lozinski “Lilith Fair,” Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre )

Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role (play): Alexandra Dawkins The Maids (Putrid Brat)

Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role (musical): Oscar Derkx, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play or Musical: the cast of Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding Director: Sarah J Culkin, Brick Shithouse  (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding Set Design: Beyata Hackborn, The Play That Goes Wrong (The Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre)

Outstanding Lighting Design: Even Gilchrist, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding Costume Design: Deanna Finnman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre)

Outstanding Score of a Play or Musical: Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, Krampus: A New Musical (Straight Edge Theatre and Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre)

Outstanding Sound Design: Kena León, Dance Nation (SkirtsAFire Festival)

Outstanding Musical Direction: Ben Elliott, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre)

Outstanding Choreography, Fight, or Intimacy Direction: Sam Jeffery, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts)

Outstanding Multimedia Design: T. Erin Gruber, Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre)

Outstanding Production for Young Audiences: Rapunzel (Alberta Musical Theatre Company)

Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Theatre for Young Audiences: Even Gilchrist, Tessa Stamp, and Whittyn Jason, The “Away” Project (Silver Skate Festival)

Outstanding Fringe Production: Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits)

Outstanding Fringe New Work (award to playwright): Liam Salmon, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits)

Outstanding Fringe Performance By An Individual: Zachary Parsons-Lozinski, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits)

Outstanding Fringe Performance By An Ensemble: the cast of Bright Lights (Blarney Productions)

Outstanding Fringe Director: Owen Holloway, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits)

Outstanding Individual Achievement in Production: Kat Evans (production manager)

Special Award: achievement in sustainability and community stewardship: Tessa Stamp

Margaret Mooney Award for Outstanding Achievement in Administation: Gina Moe

Ross Hill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production: Nico Van Der Kley

Outstanding Contribution to Edmonton Theatre: Gerry Potter

 

 

 

 

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In the pink: fizzy and fun Legally Blonde at the Citadel, a review

Posted on July 11, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Maya Baker, April Cook, Kelsey Verzotti, Sarah Horsman, Layne Labbe in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Omigod you guys…. This doom-laden summer, the peppy pink Broadway musical singing and dancing across candy-coloured frames on the Citadel mainstage is your invitation to, like, get happier.

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Legally Blonde, which started out as a novel (by Amanda Brown) and became a 2001 movie hit with Reese Witherspoon before it arrived in 3-D on Broadway in 2007, is a daffy but energizing empowerment fable that gives you an enjoyable buzz, and no hangover whatsoever.

The work of Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin (music and lyrics) and Heather Hach (book), it tells the story of pink-clad UCLA sorority girl Elle (Kelsey Verzotti), a super-vivacious fashion merchandising major who goes to Harvard Law School. She does this in pursuit of her callow climber of an ex-boyfriend Warner Huntington III (Kaden Brett Forsberg) who’s dumped her for not being “serious” enough for his upcoming legal career.

At Harvard Law Elle discovers her inner-navy blue suit, so to speak, once she finds her textbooks that is. But in the end, underestimated, she defies everyone’s low expectations, including her snooty “serious” classmates, her ‘ex and his “serious” new girlfriend (Chelsea Woodard), and their intimidating tyrant of a law professor (John Ullyatt). Yup, Elle is a winner by being true to her own blonde rich Malibu girl self (and also because she’s the smartest person in the room).

Kelsey Verzotti and Daniel Fong in Legally Blonde, Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price

Cheeky (and a wee bit subversive): this is a musical that shamelessly has its cake and eats it too, by looting the time-honoured archive of blonde jokes for fun, then turning them on their head. Do not judge a legal mind by her blonde highlights. Paulette (Patricia Zentilli), a sage hairdresser with romantic bruises, doesn’t make that mistake. Neither does the Law 101 teaching assistant Emmett (Daniel Fong), a helpful shlepper of a new friend who lends a hand (and then a heart).

John Ullyatt (right) as Professor Callahan in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

The Citadel/Theatre Calgary co-production directed and choreographed, with non-stop pizzaz, by Stephanie Graham is a veritable explosion of pink-fuelled energy. Beyata Hackborn’s set design is a fantasy arcade of successive proscenium arches in glowing popsicle colours, lighted by Renée Brode. Rebecca Toon’s pink-forward costumes, and there’s a wild profusion of them, are a riot. At the preview performance I was kindly allowed to attend, surrounded by excited pink-frocked people, costume changes were greeted by audience cheers. The “serious” Harvard types look pretty drab by comparison, and, really, where does it get them?

There’s been a touch-up of roots on Legally Blonde for the sensibilities of 2025. Professor Callahan, for example, refers acidly to “Gen Z enthusiasm.” Good humour does prevail, but the slightly queasy courtroom scene, for example, with its argument about the sexuality of a witness — is he gay or European? — now ends with a Pride flag flourish and boyfriend-boyfriend kiss. Elle’s rich papa’s throwaway comment about the ethnicity of the people she’ll meet at Harvard is gone.

Kelsey Verzotti in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

What saves Legally Blonde from earnestness about the sisterhood or female empowerment, is its light application of self-mockery at crucial moments. For one thing Elle has her own brightly pumped  Greek chorus, who enter singing, dancing, and advising up a storm whenever tragedy — like getting dumped, making bad hair decisions, getting outfaced by Warner’s new girlfriend, or being between issues of Cosmo — threatens. They are very amusing as the live in-person personal “essay” that accompanies Elle’s law school application (may I single out Maya Baker for her contagious vigour?). Their song Positive is a highlight: “keep it positive/ as you slap her to the floor. Keep it positive/ as you pull her hair and call her whore….”

Gunho Kwak, Buttercup and Patricia Zentilli, Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price

And Elle has canine back-up, too. She arrives at Harvard Law School with a fluffy purse-sized dog named Bruiser, played with exemplary gravitas by Koko, last seen by Citadel audiences as an understudy in The Garneau Block. He was an audience favourite at the preview I saw. The other scene-stealer is Buttercup in a walk-on walk-off as Paulette’s dog, held hostage by her -ex. Ah, and the sexy UPS guy played with comic pizzaz by Gunho Kwak.

The O’Keefe/Benjamin songs aren’t particularly catchy in melody. But the rhymes will make you smile. Warner’s breaking-up song, Serious, a little gem of crossed wires, is nailed by Forsberg and Verzotti, “if I’m gonna be a senator when I’m thirty, I’m gonna need somebody … Serious. Less of a Marilyn more of a Jackie/ somebody classy and not too tacky … serious.”

Professor Callahan’s review, in song, of the legal profession, Blood in the Water, is a highlight, delivered by Ullyatt with carnivorous aplomb.  “Read your Thomas Hobbs/ Only spineless snobs/ Will quarrel with the morally dubious jobs.” There’s a rhyme to savour.

Daniel Fong, Kelsey Verzotti , Kaden Brett-Forsberg in Legally Blonde. Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price

Elle, in Verzotti’s spirited performance, negotiates the chin-up girly brashness of our heroine without getting too cloying. You want her to succeed (and are secretly relieved she’s opted for law and not, say, neurosurgery). Graham’s cast, including Verzotti and the appealing Fong, are first-rate physical performers and singers.

There’s a certain appealing kookiness about the whole thing. Suddenly there’s a Riverdance spoof, for heaven’s sake, pertaining to Paulette’s taste in dream men. What? And there’s a whole production number devoted to the motivational skills, in action, of gung-ho fitness queen Brooke (Sarah Horsman), whose murder charge requires an Elle intervention. What? The answer is: just for the theatrical fun of it.

This fizzy concoction is not dinner, my friends, nor was meant to be. This is not even champagne (more like bubble tea), but no matter. It’s spiked with some sass, and a sense of humour about itself. There’s a buoyant summer message about verve and self-belief (and wearing pink at all times). A perfect summer drink.   

REVIEW

Legally Blonde

Theatre: Citadel and Theatre Calgary

Written by: Laurence O’Keefe and Nell Benjamin (music and lyrics), Heather Hach (book) based on the Amanda Brown and the MGM motion picture

Directed by: Stephanie Graham

Starring: Kelsey Verzotti, Daniel Fong, Kaden Brett-Forsberg, Sarah Horsman, John Ullyatt, Patricia Zentilli, Gunho Kwak, Maya Baker, Jessica Jones, Layne Labbe, Jameela McNeil, Robyn Ord, Mark Sinongco, Dean Stockdale, Chelsea Woodard, Buttercup, Koko

Running: through August 3

Tickets: 780-425-1820, citadeltheatre.com

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