The fun of not one but two redemption stories. Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical at the Orange Hub, a review

Posted on December 20, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Nothing says Christmas like a villain redemption story, I think we can all agree. Die Harsh: The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre’s very funny contribution to seasonal cheer, has two.

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And, in this original creation by the Grindstone team of Byron Martin and Simon Abbott (Hot Boy Summer), the two narrative strands are wrapped around each other, in a double spiral that’s bonkers, yup, but will make you laugh out loud with the ingenious way it works.  After a list of warnings (loud noises, fog, violence, “several words in German”) it occurs to you that Die Harsh is actually parodying Die Hard and A Christmas Carol together. At the same time.

So, a quintessential action thriller and the quintessential Dickens ghost story: together at last. And in the kind of detail that makes cognoscenti and ultra-nerds, of both types, laugh. Not only that, Die Harsh is a musical — and one that exudes a playfully irreverent knowledge of musical theatre, crammed with allusions to Sweeney Todd, Les Miz, Annie, The Rocky Horror Show … not to mention assorted pop culture styles, including rap. Who would think of doing this?

Die Harsh, which started three Christmases ago in Grindstone’s tiny comedy theatre and played the Varscona last December, has moved to the big house, the 350-seat Orange Hub mainstage. And though tarted up a bit for a big stage that’s reportedly as wide as the Jube’s, it hasn’t lost a certain sassy low-budget ingenuity that’s built into its comic charm.

Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Mhairi Berg in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

Camille Paris’s multi-level set is dominated by a centerstage elevator. That’s how Christmas ghosts arrive in L.A. skyscrapers (expect the first when the elevator goes ding). The live three-piece band, led by composer Abbott (a formidable pianist) on keyboards, is perched up top. And when the NYPD cop John McWayne (Evan Dowling), seeking out his estranged wife, Holly (Mhairi Berg), hides in Origami Tower during the corporate Christmas party, he appears in a tin vent. Scott Peters’s lighting, a driver of the thriller action, is visual comedy in itself.

When Hans Schmuber (David Findlay), the leader of an international gang of German terrorists  — they take hostages on Christmas Eve; he’s that bad — goes on a tour of his current evil-ness with the rapping Ghost of Christmas Present (Hal Wesley Rogers), it’s in a cardboard limo. The Abbott song Let’s Take A Ride is a highlight.

As for the Dickens, if you don’t know even the gist of the Christmas Carol story — the flinty Ebenezer, the ghostly interventionists, Tiny Tim, etc. — well, I just don’t know what to do with you. Are there no holiday productions? Are there no night schools? If you do — and I know you do — there’s the fun of recognizing the young Schmuber (Rain Matkin), the hardening of his moral arteries, the loss of his one true love, the origins of his hatred of Christmas.

Abbott has devised a score that ripples with references, from the opening number, a perfect James Bond pastiche with a German accent (“he just von’t … die harsh”). There are power ballads at the points in the musical where power ballads always happen in musicals. McWayne and Holly have one, in an amusing near-reconciliation scene. There are jaunty patter songs, like the Cole Porter-esque Another Year Another Heist by Schmuber’s much put-upon henchmen, who definitely don’t get overtime on stats. Schmuber himself leads a big Dr. Frank-N-Furter-esque song-and-dance number, “ich bin ein sexy German terrorist.” I found the sound a bit too cranked and shouty to hear the lyrics (by Martin and Abbott) at times — too bad since they’re pretty funny.

Lanky Findlay, an expert dancer and singer, turns in an ace performance. The rest of Sarah Dowling’s very busy go-for-the-gusto six-member cast change characters, costume pieces, and a serial assortment of kooky wigs (designer: Beverly Destroys) in a non-stop scramble. The pace is lunatic.

Mhairi Berg and Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

Along with the rest of the audience, I loved the big ballet number between McWayne and Holly, with the latter en pointe as a dying swan. Dowling, who has unerring deadpan comic timing as McWayne (along with an accent that’s a cross between New Yaaahk and Elmer Fudd), is consistently funny. And Berg, whose command of every sort of musical comedy trope is on the money, brings down the house when she joins Mark Sinongco in an FBI tap number (you know, as per FBI protocol). Tap makes every show more festive (holiday axiom #10).

“It doesn’t weally feel like Kwismuss,” laments McWayne by way of understatement as bodies pile up and the thriller plot advances. And then, by golly, it weally does

REVIEW

Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone

Created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Sarah Dowling

Starring: David Findlay, Evan Dowling, Mhairi Berg, Hal Wesley Rogers, Mark Sinongco, Rain Matkin

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: through Dec. 29

Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca 

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A holiday show update! There’s more, if you get your act together

Posted on December 18, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Davina Stewart, Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald in It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol, at the Varscona. Photo by Ryan Parker.

White Christmas, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Release your inner elf, part two. An update! More holiday shows are opening this week. You’ve got a big choice on Edmonton stages, and your time, like Scrooge’s, is running low.

•It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol returns for the holiday season Sunday (through the 24th), and for the first time to the stage of the Varscona Theatre, for three performances.  This light-hearted live radio play/panto mash-up — “hilarious, haunting, sometimes superfluously silly” as billed — is a retelling of Dickens’ celebrated take of last-minute ghostly intervention and redemption. And the production stars Edmonton faves Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald, and Davina Stewart. Tickets: varsconatheatre.com.

•At the Capitol Theatre, Fort Edmonton, Dec. 19 to 23 and 27 to 29 is a festive holiday musical, 70 years old — with a great score by Irving Berlin. White Christmas and its celebrated title song come to the vintage stage at the Fort in a NUOVA Vocal Arts production. Tickets: eventbrite.ca.

Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

•The great Canadian theatre artist Ronnie Burkett has brought the magic of his company of marionette actors — and the virtuosity that makes them live and breathe — to Theatre Network. In Little Dickens the cast of the Daisy Theatre, a marionette cabaret with a recurring ensemble of 56 (!) exquisitely crafted characters dressed to the nines, does their own version of A Christmas Carol. It’s a clever, raucous, playfully bawdy affair, semi-improvised by the playwright/ actor/marionettiste/  director/ designer (with assistance from a few game volunteers from the audience). Little Dickens is, quite simply, a riot and a spirit-raiser. And you should on no account miss it. It runs through Sunday. Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

Have a peek at the 12thnight REVIEW here (and an interview with the perpetrator here).

The cast of a Christmas Carol, 2023, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

•At the Citadel, where the tradition of A Christmas Carol on the mainstage is 25 years strong, Lianna Makuch’s lavish production of the repertoire’s most famous ghost story continues through Dec. 24. The adaptation by playwright David van Belle, set in 1949, finds the frozen-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge (John Ullyatt) as the proprietor of Marley’s department store, implacably rooted to the bottom line. The entire run is dedicated to Julien Arnold, whose unexpected death during a preview performance of the show, while in the role of the joyful Christmas party host Mr. Fezziwig, has shocked and saddened the valiant director and cast of the production. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

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

•Rapid Fire Theatre’s original holiday musical The Blank Who Stole Christmas has returned for a third holly jolly season,. Partly scripted, partly improvised, the production features a different guest villain every performance, who plays a character of their choice, a mystery to the cast of improvisers until they step onstage. By report, the Blanks have included Tiny Tim, which tells you something about the improv expertise of the Rapid Fire cast. There are three versions of the show, calibrated for age, sensibility, and susceptibility to the F-bomb. These details, as well as tickets, are available at rapidfiretheatre.com. Through Dec. 22 at RFT’s Exchange Theatre.

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

•Returning for a third figgy pudding season is Grindstone Theatre’s festive holiday tradition, Die Harsh the Christmas Musical. This is what happens when the musical-writing team that gave the world Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCats — Byron Martin and Simon Abbott — intertwines their favourite Christmas movie Die Hard (really!) to A Christmas Carol. This year it’s at the Orange Hub (10045 156 St.) through Dec. 29. Read all about it in his 12thnight PREVIEW interview with Martin here. Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca.

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

•Ah yes, the festive Yuletide season, a favourite for connoisseurs of family dysfunction. Krampus: A New Musical, by the musical comedy team of Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan (Conjoined), cuts through the eggnog. Let’s just say their indie theatre company isn’t called Straight Edge Theatre for nothing. Krampus premiered at the summer Fringe in 2022, which kinda gets at its insurrectionist spirit. The production, enhanced for the mainstage, is part of the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway Theatre (8529 84 Ave.). It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: workshopwest.org. Have a peek at the 12thnight REVIEW. And meet the co-creators in this PREVIEW.

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

•And if sight of falling snow has lost its lustre for you (even more than the sound of Mariah Carey) you can go on holiday, and hang out pool-side at a Mexican all-inclusive, with Girl Brain. Weekend at Girlies is the holiday offering from Edmonton’s favourite female sketch comedy trio, at Theatre Network’s Roxy. No sunscreen required. It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.  Check out the 12thnight PREVIEW here.

•An intrepid snow-transcendent offering for the festive season, Andrew Ritchie’s Cycle, a Thou Art Here Theatre production, is all about movement, bicycles, the joy of cycling in every season, and what it means to live in a city. It runs through Dec. 22 at Mile Zero Dance, 9931 78 Ave. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca. See the 12thnight REVIEW here.

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A holly jolly “Christmas horror musical” at Workshop West: Krampus, a review

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Damon Pitcher, Seth Gilfillan, Victoria Suen in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If you’ve cracked your sweet tooth on the hard candied nut of family togetherness, or you’re blinded by the glare from your neighbour’s seasonal light display, there’s gruesome fun waiting for you at Workshop West.

Straight Edge Theatre’s “Christmas horror musical,” that premiered (on purpose) in the middle of the summer at the 2023 Fringe, is back, in the WWPT season. This time Krampus: A New Musical is fancied up, by golly, and expanded into two acts, on a mainstage in the middle of winter.

In Krampus, Straight Edge’s naughty resident musical comedy writers Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, who seem to have an unerring eye for the macabre, don’t have to unwrap the heartwarming Christmas tradition package: sharing, hospitality, family bonding, etc. They see right through it. And they re-gift it, so to speak — but with a twist, and the insight that the heart of the season is the cutthroat spirit of competition.

The wonky angles of C.M. Zuby’s cut-out red-and-green storybook design, an enhancement from the Fringe setup, set the tone. In the opening number of Allred’s grand guignol production, the “perfectly perfect family” assembles in their seasonal finery, an exceptional collection of Christmas sweaters and other festive costume pieces by Trevor Schmidt). They’re an eye-full. And they’re lit melodramatically (the footlight effect) like human puppets by designer Ami Farrow.

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

They’re led by their fierce ‘choreographer’, puppet-master, and enforcer Rhonette, aka Mom (“after everything I’ve sacrificed for this family…”). She’s played in stratospherically heightened high style (and high heels) by Amanda Neufeld as the Genghis Khan of the holiday season. You could slice turkey with the edges of her helmet hairdo.

The family one-upmanship is a veritable campaign. There’s more liquor in their ‘nog, they sing. More data on their phones. The Jesus in their Nativity is hotter. Their board games have cash prizes. The lyrics, as with all the songs, are multi-syllabic and clever, and they rhyme unexpectedly, or in cheeky serial fashion: bad, sad, glad.…

Dad is a compliant nerd, captured to a wincing degree by Jacob Holloway, who looks like he’s made of Lego. His parental catechism: “listen to your mother, don’t talk back to your mother.” My favourite line, which made me laugh in the summer of 2023 and made me laugh again last week, is “if your mother says Grandma is a judgmental bitch, Grandma is a judgmental bitch.”

The kids have an amusing sibling jostle to them. Billy (Damon Pitcher) has a fledgling insurrectionist streak; his song Just Lie is an ode to getting out of misdemeanour raps. Tilly (Victoria Suen) is a wide-eyed dimbulb, always a beat or two behind, waiting for a chance to show off her number for the impending Winter Pageant competition. “It’s not my fault I’m so cute.”

She only got second place last year, as Rhonette keeps reminding her. Rehearsal is important if you want to trounce the competition. After all, you don’t want to end up in “bad roles or supporting roles.”

Victoria Suen, Damon Pitcher, Amanda Neufeld, Jacob Holloway and Nicole English in Krampus, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Tilly and Billy’s ex-nanny Nanny Verla (Nicole English), who looks like the hell version of Mary Poppins, arrives unexpectedly, with a spooky mittel-euro accent, and a “dire warning.” There are dark secrets to this perfectly perfect family. Lies! And something sinister is happening on Christmas Eve. That’s not the Amazon Prime guy knocking at the door. And what is that at the window? Will Rhonette have the ultimate Christmas crisis: stains on the carpet?

The expert live musical accompaniment, led and arranged by Michael Clark, is by the three-piece Edmonton Pops Orchestra. This is a show with a French horn joke and an actual French horn. There’s something like opera on acid about the way musical theatre escalates in Krampus. Act II opens with a  recitative of sorts, the kind that’s usually in a foreign language. And I hadn’t remembered the weird, jagged operatic musical escalation late in Act II, Götterdämmerung with ‘nog.

True, there’s a downside to the expansion in length for this new Krampus incarnation. The fun of the inflated acting style in Allred’s production, from its first moments, has a time limit, in truth. And the brevity/impact equation is pushing its luck with macabre clowning in two acts. But it ends just in the nick of time to remain funny. Is this another Christmas redemption story? Ha! Krampus is your personal seasonal antidote to enforced jollity.

REVIEW

Krampus: a new musical

Theatre: Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

Created by: Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred (book and music), Michael Clark (orchestrations)

Directed by: Stephen Allred

Starring: Damon Pitcher, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld, Jacob Holloway, Nicole English, Seth Gilfillan

Music by: Edmonton Pops Orchestra

Where: Gateway Theatre, 8529 Gateway Blvd.

Running: through Dec. 22

Tickets: workshopwest.org (all tickets pay-what-you-will).

 

 

  

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Fascinating, and nerve-wracking: Cycle pedals a provocation. A review

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Andrew Ritchie in Cycle, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There is something valiant, energizing, and scary as hell, about the show that’s currently spinning its wheels faster and faster at Mile Zero Dance.

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

The man we meet in Cycle does something we all know how to do. He rides a bicycle. But here’s the thing:  Andrew Ritchie, the intrepid creator and star of this Thou Art Here Theatre production, rides his bicycle everywhere, in every season, to work, on holiday, in cities, on mountain tops in Bolivia, in theatres.…

And in this fascinating and nerve-wracking solo show — part-memoir, part-documentary, part activist drama on wheels — in a city where ‘bike lane’ is a conversational gambit that could singe your eyebrows, the cyclist stakes a claim. A claim for safe urban space.

Cycle spins under the flag (now tainted by whack-jobs) of “freedom” — of space and movement. And in his appealingly low-key, self-deprecating way, Ritchie challenges the notion, so engrained it’s become an assumption over time, that car and truck drivers are the natural proprietors of the city and its streets. By now we recognize the value of diversity of all sorts in our communities. So why not in modes of transportation?

Who owns a city anyhow? What should the urban ecology be, in this polluted, traffic-clogged world? Cycle asks the questions. And the stakes are high.

Andrew Ritchie in Cycle, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

Kristi Hansen’s production is an original fusion of inventive physical movement (choreographer: Ainsley Hillyard); projections, live video, vintage footage (designer: T. Erin Gruber); amplified and altered sound effects to alter Ritchie’s voice as other characters (designer: Liv McRobbie). And in the course of the show Cycle makes its case. In the mortal combat between bikes and cars there’s greater safety for both in a more inclusive urban environment.

With its history of “site-sympathetic” Shakespeare shows, The Thou Art Here archive attests to an attraction to non-conventional theatre spaces. As this show opens, Ritchie, atop a bicycle himself, has assembled a bicycle “gang” of half a dozen audience volunteers, also up on bikes onstage. “You could actually fall off,” he warns his cohorts amiably, as they pedal together.

And he consults with the audience directly on how they learned to ride a bike, the most scared they’ve been, and the happiest, on a bicycle. Ah, and whether they wear a helmet. In Amsterdam, probably the world’s most bike-friendly city, most people don’t wear helmets, and there are way fewer fatalities. It’s largely, Ritchie argues, because of the critical mass of cyclists and more cautious behaviour by car drivers.

He’s genuinely curious, and un-judgmental, about what he hears from audience members. And he has a casual free-wheeling performance style that’s in sync with the script and its free-associative vibe. There’s really no reason to resist joining in if you get a chance.

The land acknowledgment isn’t an add-on. The bicycle, after all, is all about a direct connection between rider and the land, the particularities of place — the Edmonton street, the exact intersection, the six-lane chaos of 109th St., the accident-magnet traffic circle at 142 St. and 107 Ave. The sense of the here and now is pretty much built into cycling. Witness the graphic live image of Ritchie, cycling furiously in the centre of a lane of traffic, with the headlights of an F-150 behind him. It lingers. The car and the truck are bound to win in close encounters, and the faster they’re going the more lethal the impact.

I’m getting nervous just thinking about it. And his recounting of a winter nightmare in his time as a bike food courier in Toronto will stick in your mind too, next time you’re figuring out your Uber Eats tip.

Cycle, in short, doesn’t skimp on the dangers of cycling. Truthfully they seem a bit more explicit to this car driver than the subtler joys of “the wind in your hair” on a winter’s evening in snow-bound Edmonton.

“I think about crashing all the time,” Ritchie tells us. But there’s joy to be had, he insists, in a more immediate relationship with the world outside. And there’s a larger principle of fairness, of the livability of cities, to consider. “Bike Lanes are political.” Something to think about that the next time you’re stuck in gridlock on the Whitemud.

REVIEW

Cycle

Theatre: Thou Art Here

Created by and starring: Andrew Ritchie

Directed by: Kristi Hansen

Where: Mile Zero Dance Warehouse (9931 78 Ave.)

Running: through Dec. 22

Tickets: fringetheatre.ca

 

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Embrace your inner elf and get festive, at a holiday show this weekend

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

I know, you’re holding out on the festive. And you don’t want to peak too soon. But pick that holly out of your clenched teeth, release your inner elf, succumb to the seasonal jollity, and find yourself a holiday show this weekend. There’s a big choice on Edmonton stages.

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

Schnitzel as Tiny Tim, Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network. Photo supplied

•The great Canadian theatre artist Ronnie Burkett has brought the magic of his company of marionette actors — and the virtuosity that makes them live and breathe — to Theatre Network. In Little Dickens the cast of the Daisy Theatre, a marionette cabaret with a recurring ensemble of 56 (!) exquisitely crafted characters dressed to the nines, do their own version of A Christmas Carol. It’s a clever, raucous, playfully bawdy affair, semi-improvised by the playwright/ actor/marionettist/  director/ designer (with assistance from a few game volunteers from the audience). Little Dickens is, quite simply, a riot and a spirit-raiser. And you should on no account miss it. It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca. Have a peek at the 12thnight review here (and a preview interview with the perpetrator and string-puller here.

A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. 2023 photo by Nanc Price.

•At the Citadel, where the tradition of A Christmas Carol on the mainstage is 25 years old,  Lianna Makuch’s lavish production of the repertoire’s most famous ghost story continues through Dec. 24. The adaptation by playwright David van Belle, set in 1949, finds the frozen-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge (John Ullyatt) as the proprietor of Marley’s department store, implacably rooted to the bottom line. Beautiful costumes, a cunning set, lots of music from the secular post-war repertoire, a live onstage band: it’s deluxe. The entire run is dedicated to Julien Arnold, whose unexpected death during a preview performance of the show, while in the role of the joyful Christmas party host Mr. Fezziwig, has shocked and saddened the valiant director and cast of the production. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

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

•Rapid Fire Theatre’s original holiday musical The Blank Who Stole Christmas has returned for a third holly jolly season,. Partly scripted, partly improvised, the production features a different guest villain every performance, who plays a character of their choice, a mystery to the cast of improvisers until they step onstage. By report, the Blanks have included Tiny Tim, which tells you something about the improv expertise of the Rapid Fire cast. There are three versions of the show, calibrated for age, sensibility, and susceptibility to the F-bomb. These details, as well as tickets, are available at rapidfiretheatre.com. Through Dec. 22 at RFT’s Exchange Theatre.

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

•Returning this very weekend, for a third figgy pudding season is Grindstone Theatre’s festive holiday tradition, Die Harsh the Christmas Musical. This is what happens when the musical comedy-writing team that gave the world Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCats — Byron Martin and Simon Abbott — intertwine their favourite Christmas movie to A Christmas Carol. It’s at the Orange Hub (10045 156 St.) through Dec. 29. Read all about it this 12thnight PREVIEW interview with Martin, here. Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca.

Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by David Son.

•Ah yes, the festive Yuletide season, a favourite for connoisseurs of family dysfunction. Krampus: A New Musical, by the musical comedy team of Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan (Conjoined), cuts through the eggnog. Let’s just say their indie theatre company isn’t called Straight Edge Theatre for nothing. Krampus premiered at the summer Fringe in 2022, which kinda gets at its insurrectionist spirit. The production, enhanced for the mainstage, is part of the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway Theatre (8529 84 Ave.). It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: workshopwest.org. Have a peek at the 12thnight PREVIEW.

The Best Little Newfoundland Christmas Pageant Ever, Whizgiggling Productions. 2022 photo supplied.

•Welcome to the Rock. Whizgiggling Productions, the indie theatre named after the irresistible Newfoundland lingo for acting silly — it’s not a disclaimer, it’s a proud mantra — returns this weekend with the 15th annual edition of their signature holiday show. The Best Little Newfoundland Pageant … Ever (adapted from the much-loved Barbara Robinson novel) takes us behind the scenes of the high-stress world of amateur theatricals.

The replacement director of the annual Christmas pageant is dismayed to find that the dread Herdmans, “the worst kids in school,” show up for the auditions and claim all the best parts. Can disaster be averted? It’s at the Backstage Theatre Friday through Sunday. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

•And if sight of falling snow has lost its lustre for you (even more than the sound of Mariah Carey) you can go on holiday, and hang out pool-side at a Mexican all-inclusive, with Girl Brain. Weekend at Girlies is the holiday offering from Edmonton’s favourite female sketch comedy trio, at Theatre Network’s Roxy. No sunscreen required. It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.com.

Cycle, by and starring Andrew Ritchie, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

•An intrepid snow transcendent offering for the festive season, Andrew Ritchie’s Cycle, a Thou Art Here Theatre production, is all about movement, bicycles, the joy of cycling in every season, and what it means to live in a city. It runs through Dec. 22 at Mile Zero Dance, 9931 78 Ave. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

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Goin’ on holiday with Girl Brain: Weekend at Girlies, at Theatre Network

Posted on December 11, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If the view from the collective snowbank is getting you down, your moment to escape is at hand.

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In their new holiday show Weekend at Girlies, opening Thursday in Theatre Network’s Phoenix Series, the hit sketch comedy trio Girl Brain proposes to take you away, to a Mexican all-inclusive.

“Yup, Girl Brain is going to Mexico for the holidays!” says Caley Suliak, post-rehearsal at the Roxy where she and her Girl Brain cohorts (and best friends) are busy cutting out cardboard palm trees for the set. “We all want to go on vacation. But we’re poor artists and we can’t afford to,” says Alyson Dicey. “So we decided to dream up a vacation of our own — onstage.” Says Ellie Heath, “for people who don’t get the opportunity to go, we’ll being the south to you!”

Remember those friends’ trips? Those shared hotels and Airbnbs? Those guys being jackasses in the pool? Girl Brain does. “The friends’ trip is a pretty familiar trope,” says Suliak, to sounds of knowing laughter from under the cardboard palm fronds.  “Some of this draws on real-life experience,” says Dicey. “The way Caley’s suitcase just explodes in hotel rooms, piles of stuff everywhere, for example!”

Since their gig of origin, at Grindstone Comedy Theatre in 2018, the three Girl Brain-iacs have travelled together a lot, to destinations in which comedy festivals (Toronto, Philadelphia, Athabasca, Fairview AB. among them) figure prominently. Cities some distance north from Mexican all-inclusives, in short. But they have actually been south together, to the Orlando Sketch Festival in Florida. “An interesting experience,” says Heath, to general laughter. “We had the most fun by the pool.” And they’ve had first-hand input from the fourth member of the Girl Brain trio, Candice Stollery (their stage manager, “and also lighting designer, technical and moral support,” who’s just back from a Mexi-holiday in Cabot.

The Weekend at Girlies poster (Girl Brain photography, always funny, is by Brianne Jang) is a capture of Heath, Dicey and Suliak in guys-on-spring-break mode. The poster getting spoofed, explains Dicey, is Weekend at Bernie’s, a dumb 1989 flick with “one joke that carries through one whole movie and the sequel.” Old rich guy dies, and his corpse gets puppeted around by two young guys” on the make for his dough.

In the course of Weekend at Girlies, “we all play ourselves. Loosely,” says Heath. But there are also dude portraits, without which no all-inclusive resort experience would be complete. Suliak plays Bernie, “one of the boys who might get to hang out with Girl Brain,” says Dicey.  “He’s one of those quintessential guys who are ‘hey I’m goin’ to Mexico, man; I have four brain cells and three of them are on vacation too’,” as Suliak describes.

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

“I’ve just been dumped,” says Heath of one of her show characters. “And Alyson is Wingman Tracker who’s trying to find me a potential guy replacement to rebound with.” Ah yes, for their sketches Girl Brain has often tapped into a rich comic vein of dating-gone-wrong stories. “We are drawing from our vast life experience,” Heath laughs. “And we all love playing guys … dude characters that feel stereotypical, but ….” Suliak adds, “but still have some heart.”

Since all three are theatre artists by trade and training, they’re at pains, unsurprisingly,  to find a through-line and arc for their sketch shows. Characters recur; situations are followed up scene to scene. “This the most complete through-line we’ve had,” says Heath. “The different characters who pass through the resort” are a natural reservoir of possibilities. Rapid Fire Theatre star Paul Blinov, a sketch writer himself of note, “has helped punch up the script,” sussing out “where the humour landed, and where it didn’t.”

“So it’s a whole show. But it’s also good for people with a short attention span,” laughs Dicey. “Each scene is only a minute or two long. There’s always that call-back, and you feel you already know those characters, and you feel smart!”

As usual with their shows, which have been at the Roxy since 2019, Weekend at Girlies includes “lots of singing; we love song parodies.” They plunder the ‘80s especially, since the  show builds to a big New Year’s Eve 80s theme party. Says Heath, “hair metal, Madonna, power ballads. All very epic and theatrical!”

And, hey, the show concept gives Girl Brain the chance to showcase special guest stars as ‘resort entertainment’. Accordionist Tiff Hall is one, along with burlesque artist Vira Von Velvet, and drag artist Stretcher Hymen. Each Friday and Saturday of the run there are ‘Readings by Roro” tarot card readings (by donation) in the lobby. And the audience is invited to bring menstrual products to support No Period Without.

PREVIEW

Weekend At Girlies

Comedy troupe: Girl Brain

Written and performed by: Ellie Heath, Alyson Dicey, Caley Suliak

Where: Theatre Network at the Roxy, 10708 124 St.

Running: Thursday through Dec. 22

Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca

 

 

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‘The perfectly perfect family’ does Christmas: Krampus: A New Musical at Workshop West, a preview

Posted on December 10, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by David Son.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s beginning to look a lot…. Two original, bona fide homegrown holiday musicals return this week to the stage — both unconventional, both expanded and enhanced from their 2023 editions — to deck the halls. Well, two different halls, and for that matter two different definitions of deck.

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

[Grindstone’s Die Harsh, opening Friday at the Orange Hub, isn’t exactly a case of donning now our gay apparel. Artistic director and co-creator (with Simon Abbott) Byron Martin talks to 12thnight.ca about the musical comedy merger of action thriller and A Christmas Carol here.]

Straight Edge Theatre’s Krampus: A New Musical might have the oddest Yuletide provenance of all. For one thing, the macabre Christmas musical comedy by Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan premiered during a midsummer heat wave, at the Fringe. I remember seeing it at noon on a sultry August day, when it would have been possible to dream of a white Christmas as a purely speculative activity.

Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by David Son.

“Actually I thought it was perfect for Fringe,” laughs Gilfillan. “We’ve been doing shows that are progressively more crazy and kooky anyhow.” Says Allred, “and you’re not facing much competition from other Christmas shows in August.” The Straight Edge production directed by Allred returns Friday, this time in “fuller form,” as part of the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway (it’s WWPT’s first Christmas show).

And with it, a dark and funny take on those old Christmas heartwarmers about family, and being home for Christmas, and togetherness and goodwill and all that. Yup, for this the season of family dysfunction, a beady-eyed musical that sees behind the twinkling facade. We meet Rhonette (Amanda Neufeld), the fiercely competitive matriarch, whose Christmas decor cannot be bested. We meet cowed, mild-mannered dad (Jacob Holloway) and the offspring Billy and Tilly. Something dark and sinister is lurking. What could it be? (hey, this is a preview; you have to see Krampus to find out).   

Allred and Gilfillan, partners in life and in theatre, belong to an exclusive subset of busy musical-writing teams. The former is a dentist (he graduated in 2015); the latter is a pharmacist. If you want to talk to them, try 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. And they “crossed paths” nine years ago, not over a prescription (or, god forbid, a root canal), but when Gilfillan was watching an Allred Fringe show.    

Allred and his Straight Edge co-founder Bethany Hughes have been doing shows under that banner since 2014, with a history that starts with Bat Boy and includes (Adam Gwon’s) Ordinary Days and Evil Dead The Musical, before the Straight Edge originals began. That was with Cult Cycle in 2018 — by Allred, Hughes and Gilfillan, with music by Daniel Belland — which uncovers a murderous cult waiting for resisters to fat-burning fitness culture.

Allred grew up singing in church choirs, at school, in bands, in theatre. His creative muse always involves musical theatre, he says. “As a performer myself, I’m drawn to the vocal aspect of it.” Gilfillan says, modestly, “I like writing stories; I write music; I had no performing training.” He grew up in Grande Prairie, with three brothers “who were into hunting and football…. I sang in the shower when no one was home.”

During COVID, “we wrote and wrote and wrote,” says Gilfillan. Amazingly, his first time onstage was in their 2022 musical comedy Conjoined, which took sibling rivalry to a new and lethal level. The proposition is hilariously dark, with tricky stagecraft for a musical: a pair of conjoined twins, one of whom seethes with murderous resentment over his smug, bossy over-achiever other half.

Together, as you will glean, Allred and Gilfillan gravitate toward dark comedy and camp. “Kooky and irreverent” are their bywords. In trips to see Broadway musicals, they single out shows like Beetlejuice or The Book of Mormon.

It was during the run of Conjoined at the Fringe that the inspiration for Krampus occurred. Allred credits Gilfillan with the what-if? idea. “We had a burst, and wrote the entire play and some of the music,” all at one go.

And now, as Straight Edge’s production joins the Workshop West mainstage season, the pair has revisited the piece. The same cast, the same musical forces (the Edmonton Pops Orchestra led by Michael Clark) return for the remount. “It’s still a quick show,” says Allred. “But it’s two acts now, a bit fuller, we’ve managed to have some of our favourite songs…. It was a chance to (amplify) an idea, a thought, or a character trait we hadn’t fully explored. And they’ve turned out to be some of the most exciting moments.”

“We thought about what the show needed — a few plot points or character traits that hadn’t been fully realized, or even just beats within the arc.” Says Gilfillan “we didn’t want to just add for the sake of adding stuff. But there are two new songs (one for the formidable mom in Act I) , and a reprise.”

Under these Krampus circumstances, I know you’re wondering how Allred and Gilfillan feel about Christmas themselves. Surprise! They love it. “We like to make Christmas a long as possible,” says Allred cheerfully. First one Christmas, then another; we travel between the households of our two families…. And we always create Advent calendars for each other.”

PREVIEW

Krampus: a new musical

Theatre: Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

Created by: Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred (book and music), Michael Clark (orchestrations)

Directed by: Stephen Allred

Starring: Damon Pitcher, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld, Jacob Holloway, Nicole English, Seth Gilfillan

Music by: Edmonton Pops Orchestra

Where: Gateway Theatre, 8529 Gateway Blvd.

Running: Friday through Dec. 22

Tickets: workshopwest.org (all tickets pay-what-you-will).

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Die Harsh the Christmas Musical, a festive holiday tradition from Grindstone, goes bigger at the Orange Hub

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Mhairi Berg in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

This is the week that two original bona fide homegrown holiday musicals return to the stage — both unconventional, both expanded and enhanced from their 2023 editions — to deck the hall (well, two different halls).

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

Friday’s a big festive opening night in this theatre town. Grindstone Theatre’s Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical launches a run at the Orange Hub, and Straight Edge Theatre’s Krampus: A New Musical opens in Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway. Both musicals sit, with give-‘er comic gusto, outside the Christmas tradition mould. Both musical-writing teams are soaked in musical theatre.

First, Die Harsh, Grindstone’s contribution to the villain redemption season. (Stay tuned for 12thnight.ca interview with the Krampus creators Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan).

It was the inspiration of Byron Martin and Simon Abbott, Grindstone artistic director and composer/ resident music director, respectively, to marry their “absolute favourite Christmas movie ever,” the action thriller Die Hard, to everyone’s absolute favourite Christmas tale ever (you know, the one by Charles Dickens, Esq.), in a seasonal double-helix. Who would even think of doing this? Short answer: the team that brought the world Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCATS.

Mhairi Berg and Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

“A Frankenstein of an idea!” Martin declares cheerfully. “Out of our short list of ideas for a Christmas musical, Die Hard had the most legs,” he says. “If it’s a Christmas movie, how Christmas can it be? There ’s a lot of comedy in turning up the volume on the Christmas part.”

David Findlay channelling Alan Rickman in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

It started small. The first incarnation of Die Harsh, in 2022, was at Grindstone’s little home theatre, and instantly sold out every performance, two shows a night. An action movie with an extremely busy cast of five playing at least five characters apiece and the squeezing a live action thriller onto a teeny stage, is the very definition of low-budget ingenuity (or a housing crisis depending on your point of view). “No set at all, no room,” laughs Martin, who directed the premiere. “It felt very improv…. You get away with anything if you’re imagining every location. You know you’re in an elevator because everyone’s standing close together. The actors shouldn’t quite have their costumes on when they’re coming onstage.”

Last year, Die Harsh expanded. The 2023 incarnation of Martin’s production moved to the 200-seat Varscona Theatre, with two-acts, a full set — OK, cardboard and tinfoil figured prominently — a lighting design, a couple more characters, a four-piece band led by composer Abbott. And the tickets again flew out of the box office.

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

In the interim Grindstone, a veritable magic bean of a company, has grown. For its new mainstage season the adrenalized little indie company has taken over the Orange Hub in the west end, with its 350-seat John L. Haar Theatre. And come Friday that’s where you’ll find the German terrorist Hans Schmuber, the Bruce Willis cop character John McWayne and his estranged wife Holly (Mhairi Berg), the rapping Ghost of Christmas Present (Hal Wesley Rogers), the tap-dancing FBI, et al.

The five-member cast is now six; Rain Matkin is the new ensemble member who plays “a bunch of characters.” And the stage manager will get to be … the stage manager. “Before, our stage manager called the show from offstage, took off her headset, (rushed) onstage and played the Teddy Bear and the death puppet and a security guard,” says Martin, with a rueful laugh. “We’re moving toward a new level of professional theatre.”

Mark Sinongco in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

Because of his expanded producer duties Martin has given over his director’s gig to Sarah Dowling. He and co-creator Abbott, brothers in satire, parody and pastiche, have done “a couple of little rewrites here and there. We’re trying not to rip it apart too much; the danger is you pull out a couple of threads and you have to sew it together again…. It’s all about balancing the clarity of the storytelling with the sketch of the theme or the joke you’re satirizing, I guess….”

“The Book of Mormon is the gold standard of what we shoot for,” says Martin, a musical theatre graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. “Not just telling the story but also taking the piss out of an existing musical. When we’re writing Die Harsh we’re not just doing the confrontation scene, we’re (referencing) the confrontation from Les Miz. The death moment riffs off Hamilton…. We’re putting Die Hard on top of Christmas Carol on top of Les Miz. Or (pause) maybe it’s the other way around.”

“We love musicals. And we like making fun of musicals.”

That spirit, which Martin and Abbott share, infuses Grindstone’s weekly show The 11 O’Clock Number, which by now has a history of more than 1,000 improvised musicals. That show was Abbott’s introduction to Grindstone. Soon he was playing for the theatre’s Shmoozy Boozy Singy Thingy, a musical theatre karaoke show. And now, as Martin says in appreciation of his musical satire partner,“Simon is Edmonton’s go-to musical director! He works non-stop, an insane amount of work. And I’m honoured he prioritizes Grindstone projects. I couldn’t do these shows without him.”

Abbott, as Martin describes, is the kind of collaborator who “says he’s going to update some of the music. And all of a sudden, there are new arrangements, re-worked vocal parts for different voices and all the harmonies…. Incredible!”

Simon Abbott and Byron Martin, co-creators of Die Harsh the Christmas musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

The Orange Hub venture is a new stage in Grindstone’s development. “It means a lot to take over that space,” says Martin, who reports that of an inventory of 7,000 tickets 3,500 people came out to see the mainstage opener The Rocky Horror Show. “That’s the scale we want to be producing and creating on. Multiple scales,” he amends. “I really like the way the Citadel operates different streams of programming on different stages.”

At the Orange Hub Grindstone can produce on the 350-seat mainstage or the black box theatre downstairs, plus the little Strathcona comedy theatre and bistro where Die Harsh began.

“It’s a fun project,” says Martin of Die Harsh 2024. “The cast is slightly bigger, the set design is being expanded to fit that stage … and it’s such a funny show! ,

PREVIEW

Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone

Created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Sarah Dowling

Starring: David Findlay, Evan Dowling, Mhairi Berg, Hal Wesley Rogers, Mark Sinongco, Rain Matkin

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: Friday through Dec. 29

Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca 

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Two off-centre homegrown holiday musicals return, bigger and fancier, this week! First, Grindstone’s Die Harsh. A preview

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Evan Dowling, David Findlay, Mhairi Berg in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

This is the week that two original bona fide homegrown holiday musicals return to the stage — both unconventional, both expanded and enhanced from their 2023 editions — to deck the hall (well, two different halls).  

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

Friday’s a big festive opening night. Grindstone Theatre’s Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical launches a run at the Orange Hub, and Straight Edge Theatre’s Krampus: A New Musical opens in Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway. Both musicals sit, with give-‘er comic gusto, outside the Christmas tradition mould. Both musical-writing teams are soaked in musical theatre.

First, Die Harsh, Grindstone’s contribution to the villain redemption season (stay tuned for 12thnight.ca interview with the Krampus creators Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan).

It was the inspiration of Byron Martin and Simon Abbott, Grindstone artistic director and composer/ resident music director, respectively, to marry their “absolute favourite Christmas movie ever,” the action thriller Die Hard, to everyone’s absolute favourite Christmas tale (you know the one by Charles Dickens, Esq.) in a seasonal double-helix. Who would even think of doing this? Short answer: the team that brought the world Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCATS.

Mhairi Berg and Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau

“A Frankenstein of an idea!” Martin declares cheerfully. “Out of our short list of ideas for a Christmas musical, Die Hard had the most legs,” he says. “If it’s a Christmas movie, how Christmas can it be? There ’s a lot of comedy in turning up the volume on the Christmas part.”

It started small. The first incarnation of Die Harsh, in 2022, was at Grindstone’s little comedy theatre, and instantly sold out every performance, two shows a night. An action movie with an extremely busy cast of five playing at least five characters apiece and the live squeezing an action thriller onto a teeny stage, is the very definition of low-budget ingenuity, or a housing crisis depending on your point of view. “No set at all, no room,” laughs Martin, who directed the premiere. “It felt very improv…. You get away with anything if you’re imagining every location. You know you’re in an elevator because everyone’s standing close together. The actors shouldn’t quite have their costumes on when they’re coming onstage.”

Last year, Die Harsh expanded for the season. The 2023 incarnation of Martin’s production moved to the 200-seat Varscona Theatre, with two-acts, a full set — OK, cardboard and tinfoil figured prominently — a lighting design, a couple more characters, a four-piece band led by composer Abbott. And the tickets again flew out of the box office.

In the interim Grindstone, a veritable magic bean of a company, has grown. For its new mainstage season the adrenalized little indie company has taken over the Orange Hub in the west end, with its 350-seat John L. Haar Theatre. And come Friday that’s where you’ll find the German terrorist Hans Schmuber (David Findlay), the Bruce Willis cop character John McWayne (Evan Dowling) and his estranged wife Holly (Mhairi Berg), the rapping Ghost of Christmas Present, the tap-dancing FBI, et al.

The five-member cast is now six (Rain Matkin is the new ensemble member who plays “a bunch of characters”). And the stage manager will get to be … the stage manager. “Before, the stage manager called the show from offstage, took off her headset, and went onstage and played the Teddy Bear and the death puppet and a security guard,” says Martin, with a rueful laugh. “We’re moving toward a new level of professional theatre.”

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

Because of his expanded producer duties Martin has given over his director’s gig to Sarah Dowling for this show. He and co-creator Abbott, brothers in satire, parody and pastiche, have done “a couple of little rewrites here and there. We’re trying not to rip it apart too much; the danger is you pull out a couple of threads and you have to sew it together again….  It’s all about balancing the clarity of the storytelling with the sketch of the theme or the joke you’re satirizing, I guess….” The real focus this time is enhancing the production values to fit big stage.

“The Book of Mormon is the gold standard of what we shoot for,” says Martin, a musical theatre graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. “Not just telling the story but also taking the piss out of an existing musical. When we’re writing Die Harsh we’re not just doing the confrontation scene, we’re (referencing) the confrontation from Les Miz. Or the death moment that riffs off Hamilton…. We’re putting Die Hard on top of Christmas Carol on top of Les Miz. Or (pause) maybe it’s the other way around.”

“We love musicals. And we like making fun of musicals.”

That spirit, which Martin and Abbott share, infuses Grindstone’s weekly show The 11 O’Clock Number, which by now has a history of more than 1,000 improvised musicals. That show was Abbott’s introduction to Grindstone. Soon he was at the keyboard playing for the theatre’s Shmoozy Boozy Singy Thingy, a musical theatre karaoke show. And, as Martin says in appreciation of his musical satire partner, “now Simon is Edmonton’s go-to musical director! He works non-stop, everywhere, an insane amount of work. And I’m honoured he prioritizes Grindstone projects. I couldn’t do these shows without him.”

Abbott is the kind of collaborator, as Martin describes, who “says he’s going to update some of the music. And all of a sudden, there are new arrangements, re-worked vocal parts for different voices and all the harmonies…. Incredible!”

The Orange Hub venture is a new stage in Grindstone’s development. “It means a lot to take over that space,” says Martin, who reports that of an inventory of 7,000 tickets 3,500 people came out to see the mainstage opener The Rocky Horror Show. “That’s the scale we want to be producing and creating on. Multiple scales, actually,” he amends. “I really like the way the Citadel operates different streams of programming on different stages.”

At the Orange Hub Grindstone can produce on the 350-seat mainstage or the black box theatre downstairs, plus the company’s home base, the little Strathcona comedy theatre and bistro where Die Harsh began.

“It’s a fun project,” says Martin of Die Harsh 2024. “The cast is slightly bigger, the set design is being expanded to fit that stage…. And it’s such a funny show!

PREVIEW

Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone

Created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Sarah Dowling

Starring: David Findlay, Evan Dowling, Mhairi Berg, Hal Wesley Rogers, Mark Singongco, Rain Matkin

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: Friday through Dec. 29

Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca

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There’s magic in those high-strung puppets: Little Dickens, the Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network, a review

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Schnitzel as Tiny Tim in Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

As Bah Humbug!s encircle the globe at this time of year, know this: There is nothing in the world like Ronnie Burkett’s riotous adults-only Little Dickens, in which the high-strung marionette artistes of the Daisy Theatre, who know a hit story when they see it, present their own version.

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

It’s wayward, larky, irreverent, playfully raunchy … the particular genius of the string-puller/ playwright/ designer/ director/ improviser extraordinaire.

The Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes has returned to Theatre Network for the fa-la-la-la-la season, with a company of 56 Daisy puppets waiting in costume backstage for their cue — and Burkett’s own improv expertise if not the story — to single them out. Burkett talks to us from atop the red velvet-curtained puppet theatre planted on the Roxy stage. And his mouthy marionettes talk to each other, sometimes to us, sometimes to audience recruits, in this bawdy, and hilarious, semi-improvised cabaret.

There are dramatic scenes, yes, and also musical interludes, singalongs, cameo appearances by Daisy cast members blithely unrelated to the story. There are improvised asides by Burkett, famously quick on the uptake; there’s chat with game audience “volunteers” dazed into complicity by the good-sport clause. The repertoire’s classic tale of sin and redemption takes it right on the tinsel. Little Dickens is both satirical and spoofy in spirit, about sin, redemption, sentiment, and showbiz.

But, lo and behold, that tale somehow survives, in its own original, and even heart-warming, way. And it’s largely through the charm of Burkett’s most-loved character, the charismatic little non-binary fairy Schnitzel, who plays Tiny Tim, complete with theatre’s most famous prop (after the skull of poor Yorick), the Tiny Tim crutch.

Esmé Massengill as Scrooge in Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

At the centre of it all, in the starring role as the frozen-hearted Scrooge is Esmé Massengill, the aging, foul-mouthed diva, narcissist, and — as she tells us, unequalled — dramatic actor. Pronouns: “me/myself/I.” Esmé takes to the stage in her “authentic biblical showgirl costume.” And she is incredulous and much displeased to discover that her show has been cancelled just because it’s Christmas Eve. What, no audience?

Dolly Wiggler (and Schnitzel) in Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network. Photo supplied

None of this can happen, of course, before the traditional Daisy Theatre striptease opener. In a feat of Burkett’s unsurpassed marionette virtuosity, the well-endowed Dolly Wiggler doffs her sparkly duds to that X-rated Yuletide classic Santa Claus Got Stuck In My Chimney. I leave you to imagine the choreography.

Esmé’s timid much put-upon manager/agent Bob Cratchit has the temerity to want the night off, and gets an earful. So does her singer-songwriter nephew Indy Frets, who summons the seasonal chutzpah to invite Auntie Esmé to Christmas dinner (“cmon, we’re having Tofurkey!”). And, in an inspired scene, the Lunkheads, the elderly brother-and-sister theatrical duo who’ve been touring school gymnasiums and Legion Halls for seven decades, bravely ask the star for a donation to the Actors Benevolent Fund to support out-of-work thespians. They get a snarly scroogian answer. “Are there no dinner theatres? Are there no touring children’s productions?”

Esmé is warned by her old frenemy Rosemary Focaccia, back from Vegas and the dead, of impending visits from three spirits. “Gin, vodka, and brandy,” says Esmé, unperturbed. There are surprise ghosts from backstage (my lips are sealed). And so Esmé is led by the Ghost of Christmas Past (you’ll laugh out loud to see him) into a review of her own career as she claws (and sleeps) her way to stardom.

Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

You know you’re in Edmonton, in a good way, when plump Mrs. Edna Rural, the“silly old biddy in a housedress” from Turnip Corners, AB., shows up onstage to a big, loud, sustained cheer from the crowd. Plot shmot, the Daisy Theatre hangs loose about that. Edna is an audience fave, the character C. Dickens somehow forgot to write (that guy coulda been big). She’s there to share holiday recipes, and lead a singalong, assisted on opening night by Kevin, a good-natured volunteer from the audience.

John Alcorn’s clever score, elsewhere full of lyrical smoky jazz arrangements of Christmas songs — including a dreamy What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve sung by a louche lounge singer in a white dinner jacket — makes room for a rudimentary Casio organ track, in an affectionate wink at every church hall Christmas group-sing ever.     

There are puppet jokes, of course. No Burkett production comes without them. Some are fleeting: there’s a lunatic brilliance to the Daisy Theatre duo of paunchy ventriloquist Meyer Lemon and his big-mouth dummy Little Woody Linden. Some linger, cheeky about the larger theme of Dickens’ tale of ghostly intervention. Can mankind  change? The answer is Sure. Esmé as Scrooge demonstrates by changing … into her fabulous “redemption gown” on Christmas morning.

The marionettes themselves are exquisitely designed and sculpted by Burkett, and dressed by Kim Crossley, in impossibly miniaturized detail. The tiny beaded headdress of Esmé’s 20s biblical showgirl outfit, Edna’s Naturalizers, the perfect red uniform of the star of the wacky bellhop films, the red leather boots of matinee idol Dicky Long….

Esmé Massengill and Schnitzel in Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

And, as you’ll know if you’ve ever seen a  Burkett production, the diminutive actors move onstage with breathtaking virtuosity. To see Esmé fling herself onto her own personal casting couch, limbs akimbo, is to watch a master at work. The diva is an expert at shoulder acting, and every shrug and gesture, down to her fingertips, is expressive.

There’s magic in it. And there’s magic, too, in the sense that marionettes only live, come to life, by imaginative bonding with the audience. That’s what little Schnitzel is all about, paying tribute to the way puppets might travel in the dark in crates, but find their family in the light with us, the audience.

Be prepared to be tickled.

REVIEW

Little Dickens: The Daisy Theatre presents A Christmas Carol

Theatre: Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes at Theatre Network

Created and performed by: Ronnie Burkett

Music by: John Alcorn

Where: Roxy Theatre, 10708 124 St.

Running: through Dec. 22

Tickets (for adults, +16 only): theatrenetwork.ca

  

  

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