Be very pumped: further thoughts on a big Fringe opening night

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Ten: The Show. The Little Red Ball Company. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Tonight’s the night: the biggest opening night in town, by a considerable margin. Come 8 p.m. Destination Fringe, with its 164 shows on 27 venues (artfully scaled down from the gargantuan 2019 edition) is up and playing. The great thing about the Fringe is that you can devise a logistically sound, viable plan to see shows (without roller-skates, I need hardly add), sure, or you can improvise.

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Don’t be overwhelmed; be pumped. 12thnight.ca has already posted a selection of promising prospects for your consideration. Have a peek here. And a further cluster of shows I’ve enjoyed at previous Fringes, or even in the season. Have a look here.  

Here are some further thoughts for finding yourself a route to your Destination Fringe. 

The Fringe’s only … circus show. That would be Ten: The Circus Show, the work of Calgary-based The Little Red Ball Company. Kate Ryan (not the Edmonton Kate Ryan we know, the artistic director of the Plain Jane Theatre Company) explains that, in a reverse of the usual migration of theatre onto film, the show is the stage premiere of an award-winning 35-minute digital film. 

The rigging in the Westbury Theatre (Stage 1) is up, with its 4,000 pounds of weights, for a cast of six performers with impossible  virtuoso skills. “We challenge ourselves,” says Ryan, who’s worked with Edmonton’s Firefly Circus Theatre before now and regards Annie Dugan as a mentor. 

The show is a way, she says, to channel “the pain and negativity of (the last two years) into an opportunity for growth and creativity…. We’ve all been suffering through some kind of grief.” 

Ah yes, grief. In March of 2020 The Little Red Ball Company went from doing 250 shows a year to … two. “I didn’t experience it in seven stage, but 10.” Hence the name of the show. Ryan gave each of her ensemble a word, with the challenge “make something, create something, put it out there…. Move through it; play with it. And they did, beautiful pieces.” They are, she says, “a tribute to human resilience…. The audience leaves feeling empowered.” 

Each performer has two acts. Ryan herself opens and closes the show. Ryan herself, a specialist with hula hoops: she has somehow mastered the rarefied skill of balancing a hula hoop on her face while other performers dive through it.  

The Fringe’s only … controversial very tough-minded solo polemical play. My Name Is Rachel Corrie is fashioned from the diaries and emails of the astonishingly committed young idealist activist killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003. Emma Ryan, a theatre veteran who’s just graduated from U of A theatre school, stars. 

Fags in Space, Low Hanging Fruits. Photo supplied.

The Fringe’s only … hybrid of sci-fi and gay rom-com. That would be Liam Salmon’s Fags in Space. The workings of intergalactic romance are as yet mysterious. 

Ghouls Ghouls Ghouls, Send in the Girls Burlesque/ House of Hush. Photo supplied.

The Fringe’s only … marriage of burlesque and ghost stories, Ghouls Ghouls Ghouls by Send In The Girls Burlesque and House of Hush. Like so many shows how can that even work? Guess you have to be there to find out. 

Rebecca Merkley in Jesus Teaches us Things, Play The Fool Festival. Photo supplied

The Fringe’s only … opportunity to actually see Jesus, substitute-teaching a Sunday School class. Jesus Teaches Us Things is the inspiration of Rebecca Merkley, the winner of this year’s Gerald Osborn playwriting award. It started out as a short entry in the Play The Fool physical comedy festival. Now it’s a full show. 

 

      

   

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Be a patron, please support theatre coverage!

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Hello theatre friends!

Did we just imagine the last two years? Suddenly, magically, it’s the opening day of the Fringe. Edmonton’s mighty summer theatre festival, the oldest on the continent, is back — not epic in size but BIG. 

 And with it, the unmistakeable sign that the live theatre experience, with live audiences, in person — hey, a concept with legs! — is happening. It’s the right moment to thank you, dear readers of 12thnight.ca, for your support and encouragement, for sticking with me through a time of devastation, the toughest of challenges for the performing arts. It’s been inspiring to see the ingenuity and persistence our valiant theatre artists in this exciting theatre town have brought to meeting them. And it’s been my joy and privilege to write about it.

Covering theatre, independently, outside the vagaries of the mainstream media, is what 12thnight.ca is for. I hope you’ve been enjoying the content which has been, so far, free. And I’m hoping that you’ll be up for chipping in a monthly amount to my Patreon campaign to enable 12thnight.ca coverage of Edmonton exciting theatre scene to continue. That support from readers is, solely, what makes it possible. Here’s the link (www.patreon.com/12thnight). Spread the word. 

If you’re already signed on as a 12thnight.ca patron, I’m so grateful. 12thnight can’t continue without it. 

Meanwhile, we’re off to the Fringe, in the place where that name became a verb. We’ll see each other, in person, in a theatre soon. 

gratefully, Liz 

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‘A space of possibility’: The Péhonán Series at the Fringe

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Dallas Arcand Jr. in the Fringe’s péhonán series. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The TeePee: there it stands, a striking 16-footer right in the heart of the Fringe, a tangible symbol of Indigenous presence at our summer festival of artists.

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Péhonán (Cree for gathering place, waiting place), last year’s initiative in dedicating a venue to Indigenous programming, was a grand success, says Josh Languedoc, the Fringe’s director of Indigenous Strategic Planning. For this year’s 41st annual edition of the Fringe, péhonán expands its reach outdoors, and weaves its way through the festival. It’s an eight-show series with performances on the ATB Outdoor Stage, the péhonán TeePee, the KidsFringe stage — all featuring local Treaty 6 artists.

Josh Languedoc in Rocko and Nakota: Tales From The Land. Photo supplied.

For Languedoc, an Anishinaabe playwright/ performer whose own hit Rocko and Nakota: Tales From The Land arrives back at the Fringe (Stage 16) from dates across the country, péhonán “is a space of possibility.” He thinks of it as “an incubator” for Indigenous artists, “a showcase to highlight them and let try out their ideas.”  

That’s what happened last year, in the series of one-off performances at the Roxy on Gateway (this year, the Gateway Theatre). Bear Grease, for example, a 10-actor Indigenous adaptation of the famous musical, “was an immediate sell-out, every performance,” says Languedoc. And the show has since played to sold-out houses on both sides of the border. “And now he’s taken the next step,” says Languedoc. A new solo play from its creator MC RedCloud, Evandalism, inspired by his own story — “he’s a charismatic, natural storyteller,” says Languedoc — will premiere in the upcoming Fringe Theatre season of curated productions.

Poet Naomi McIlwraith’s part in The Sash-Maker, with Rebecca Sadowski, at péhonán in 2021,  “has taken on a life of its own, too,” says Languedoc. This time the poet brings a performance of her own, The Language of Silence, a poetry collection which touches on reconciliation and is as current as the Pope’s recent visit, is at ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ Aug. 19 at 9 p.m. 

The series opens Friday on the ATB Outdoor Stage with a performance by Chubby Cree, a four-member family drumming group, followed by singer-songwriter Kaeley Jade and her band. Sampler Cafe has “a drop-in jam” at the TeePee Saturday afternoon, with a concert in the evening on the ATB Outdoor Stage. 

Omisimawiw by Shyanne Duquette, Péhonán Series, Fringe 2022. Poster image supplied.

Shyanne Duqette’s Omisimawiw (Cree for elder sister), which got a staged reading at Nextfest in June, gathers an audience to hear the second draft ( River Lot Aug. 19). Her play about Indigenous identity tells the remarkable true-life story of how she met her sister for the first time — in a chance encounter on the LRT. 

The series also includes a matinee performance Aug. 20 on the Kids’ Stage by Dallas Arcand Jr., a world-champion hoop dancer and musician who has just produced a kids’ album. And the grand finale Aug. 20 is a 12-performer spectacular from Indig-Hauz of Beaver Hills, an Indigi-queer collective of 2Spirit and drag performance artists, featuring  Indigenous “kings, queens, and everything in between.”

Seelee Matreese, a member of Indigi-Hauz of Beaver Hills, Péhonán Series at the Fringe. Photo supplied.

Each Friday and Saturday of the Fringe (6 p.m.) there’s a gathering at the TeePee, with smudging, bannock, and a sharing circle. “We’ll gather,” says Languedoc, “and travel together to the (evening’s) performances. 

All péhonán performances are pay-what-you-will, with gifts welcome in lieu of financial contributions. “It’s more about an exchange between audience and artists,” as Languedoc puts it. “It’s a softening” of the Fringe free-enterprise marketplace. “No, a kind-ening.” 

More information about the péhonán series, and a full schedule: fringetheatre.ca.  “Tatawaw. Welcome. There is room.” 

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Where do new musicals come from? Meet the creators of The Erlking and Conjoined at the Fringe

Posted on August 10, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Seth Gilfillan and Josh Travnik in Conjoined: A New Musical. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Where do new musicals come from anyhow? The 2022 Fringe has a surprising number. What sort of theatre  artists are moved to complicate their lives immeasurably by channelling their storytelling through music and lyrics?

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12thnight caught up with a couple of them this month, agile, innovative, multi-faceted young musical theatre talents — triple threats both (book, music, lyrics)  — to ask. 

Chris Scott’s The Erlking is his own original, expansive departure from the European tale, best known in its Goethe incarnation, of the malevolent elf who lures children on adventures that involve them being dead. He’s written it for a cast of 12 (one of the largest at the Fringe). In Conjoined, Straight Edge Theatre’s Stephen Allred, who co-writes with partner Seth Gilfillan, has given a new musical a dauntingly intricate small-scale challenge: a cast of two in which the characters struggling for the upper hand (and other body parts) are conjoined brothers. 

The journey that has brought The Erlking to the stage in a Scona Alumni Theatre Co. production, has a strange time-lapse story of its own. “I wrote the original at 17,” says Scott, a student at the time in Linette Smith’s theatre classes at Scona High. “And we put it on at a one-act play festival. A very angst-y show.” He and his smartie friends (“into shocking humour at the time — you know, teenage boys in Alberta!”) “made a short animation to show the class.” 

That was 12 years ago. And The Erlking slumbered away as Scott went east, got his BFA in musical theatre at Berklee College of Music in Boston, moved to New York and “auditioned like mad,” then arrived in Toronto for an ill-fated contract. Until Edmonton and the pandemic. “The melodies of two of the best songs, the catchiest, are the same from the original version,” says Scott. “I completely re-wrote the ending of (one of them) last night in time for  rehearsal.”

“I’ve learned a lot since then,” Scott says, musing on the origins of the musical a lifetime ago. And his story of a town at the edge of a metropolis where the regime is oppressive, the social structure is punishingly hierarchical, and the Elf King’s legend has been blackened by ruling classes and priests, has gained in nuance, he thinks. “And it grew over the course of the pandemic, and working several part-time jobs I hated, and experiencing the adult world (laughter).…”

“Classism, old culture vs. new … that’s in it. But at its core it’s still about power and the balance of power and power structures, the abuse of power.” 

Was Scott the kid who grew up playing in garage rock bands? “I was never that kid!” he says cheerfully. In Boston he threw himself into the craft of acting. “I wanted to be on Broadway; I wanted to be in The Book of Mormon.” He was in the cast of his first musical The Killing Jar, “a cyber-punk electronica type of musical” as he describes, which played the Fringe in 2019. “I wanted to do something wild and interesting…. The story was fine; the plot I didn’t execute properly.” 

Scott thinks big — big cast, big song-list (19 or 20), big sound. It’s film-type music that attracts him now, the lure of digital composition and its alluring possibilities in creating lush, textured orchestral sound. “I had to learn to mix and master,” he says of his pandemic self-education. 

“My hope,” he says of The Erlking (which landed a six-month workshop at Berklee this past year), “is to submit it to larger theatre companies…. I think it has a lot to say, light-hearted but serious, a lot of exciting and touching moments.” 

The provenance of Conjoined couldn’t be more different. For one thing Allred falls into the very exclusive, possibly unique, subset of musical theatre creators with a day job as a dentist. A 2015 dental school graduate who toyed briefly with a career in theatre, he’s been in ELOPE and Foote in the Door Productions. He and director Bethany Hughes, the founders of the indie troupe Straight Edge Theatre, have been doing musicals since 2014. Most recently Imaginary Friend played the 2019 Fringe; Daniel Belland composed the music. With Conjoined, says Allred breezily (as if this were the easiest, most natural progression in the world0, “we thought why not try to write the music ourselves?” 

“Our shows seem to always have five or six, seven or eight people. What if we did something smaller? Something we could maybe tour, and pay the actors more?” 

Allred, who credits the concept of Conjoined to Gilfillan, does concede that a two-hander where the characters are joined does up the ante on both storytelling and stagecraft. “It restricts what you can do; we had to be more creative,” not least because of Straight Edge’s preference for theatre that shows instead of tells: “something active and happening onstage,” not mere narrative reportage of what’s happened offstage.

The Straight Edge muse runs to dark comedy, especially the kind that skews towards camp — witness an archive that began with Bat Boy and includes Adam Gwon’s Ordinary Days and Evil Dead: The Musical. Their original musical Cult Cycle, says Allred, had its inspiration in “is walking out of a spin cycle class thinking ‘what if it were a cult that murders people for not fitting in?’” The concept of Conjoined — two fractious joined-together brothers, one of whom resents, possibly homicidally, getting dominated by the other — has that vibe, too.

“When you don’t have other characters to create the action … that was a challenge as well,” says Allred. “How do you build a story arc? How do you have a villain and a hero within the story when there’s only two people there?” 

So, who’s the protagonist? Good question, says Allred. The audience perspective on “who to root for” changes in the musical’s weave of solos and duets. Each brother gets a journey, he says. The struggle to be an individual gets pretty intense when “one brother is speaking in the other’s ear the whole time…. Every decision is a group decision.”

And as for the music Allred and Gilfillan have written (which gets played by a live three-piece band), the former describes it as “a combination of classic musical theatre music and, as the plot develops, more of a rock/grunge influence, and jazzier vibes…. It’s a rock musical.”

Conjoined runs Thursday through Aug. 20 at La Cité francophone (stage 13). The Erlking runs at Strathcona High School (stage 23) Friday through Aug. 20. Tickets and full performance schedule: fringetheatre.ca 

 

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The marriage of drag and theatre: Guys in Disguise celebrates 35 years at the Fringe

Posted on August 9, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Trevor Schmidt, Jake Tkaczyk, Jason Hardwick in Crack in the Mirror, Guys in Disguise. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“You do know this is a theatre festival, right? You can’t just do a drag show….” 

Words that would have a major impact on the civic culture and the theatre scene in this town. It was Fringe time in 1987. And the in-house troupe of drag queens at the long-defunct gay club Flashback got it into their heads to take a show to the festival that was drawing massive crowds to Old Strathcona.

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“I’d never been to the Fringe before; we were downtown girls,” laughs playwright/ director/ actor/ composer/ sound designer/ gay activist and historian Darrin Hagen, possessor of the statuesque queen alter-ego Gloria at the time. “Whyte Avenue? That was a whole town away!” 

They christened themselves Guys in Disguise for the occasion (a name borrowed from a gay senior citizen polka band). And Hagen and his drag colleague Twiggy found themselves writing a play, under the tutelage of the then-Northern Light Theatre artistic director Jace van der Veen. Delusions of Grandeur, with its cast of eight, was half an hour long, “basically squeezed between the two acts of a drag show,” recalls Hagen. The production, which ran at Ming’s, an ex-Chinese restaurant, upstairs where Chapters used to be, lasted two and half hours. Curtain time: midnight. Fringe  audiences staggered out at 2:30 a.m. 

Darrin Hagen in the 1987 Fringe Parade. Photo supplied .

At the Fringe 35 years ago, a company was born that would marry theatre and drag in a way this theatre town had never seen before. Of the 60 productions Guys in Disguise has done in the three and a half decades since, 50 were at the festival, says Hagen, usually two per Fringe and sometimes three.

This year there’s a pair. One’s a comedy (Crack in the Mirror, the third of Hagen and Trevor Schmidt’s Orchard Crescent trilogy). The other, The Pansy Cabaret, is a re-creation devised by Hagen of the songs, monologues, comedy routines of the pansy bars that were all the rage in the New York of the ‘20s.

In 1996 The Edmonton Queen, spun for the stage from his own story — the small-town Alberta kid who arrived in the big city and found his new family in the showbiz drag world — marked a turning point for Hagen. Till then, “I’d lurked in the background of theatre,” he says, composing music and doing the odd drop-in drag gig. “It was the start for me as a writer … the first time drag and theatre came together for me,” says Hagen. He told his partner Kevin “I’m going try this ‘play thing’.”

The very next Fringe, sequins and stilettos gave way.  Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Park Women, inspired by his own boyhood, was “so scary for me,” says Hagen, who played formidable Mrs. Dotty Parsons, queen of Tupperware, with strong views on loaf tins. “Not glam. Rural-based. There I was onstage in my gardening shoes and a denim skirt.”

Since then, occasionally the Guys have dipped into the existing theatre repertoire (Michel Tremblay’s Damnée Manon Sacrée Sandra and La Duchesse de Langeais, for example). Mostly, though, they’ve created their own. And a continuing pursuit through this distinctive catalogue has been satirizing gender roles, Hagen thinks. “Drag is such a powerful political and social tool … and the way women respond has been fascinating.” 

Brian Dooley, Trevor Schmidt, Darrin Hagen in Flora and Fawna Have Beaver Fever & Fawna Have Beaver Fever (and so does Fleurette), Guys in Disguise. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

“Flora and Fawna does that,” he says of women’s reactions to a series led by the earnest 10-year-old founders (played by co-authors Hagen and Schmidt) of the NaturElles, a girl collective devoted to progressive ideas, cultural diversity and inclusiveness (with one significant exception: No Mean Girls).

Trevor Schmidt and Darrin Hagen in Don’t Frown At The Gown, Guys in Disguise. Photo by Epic Photography

The Orchard Crescent trilogy takes us to the same American suburb in three different decades. Prepare For The Worst (2016), set in the ‘50s, has the ladies addressing a sadly neglected aspect of nuclear apocalypse preparedness: hostess snacks. Don’t  Frown At The Gown (2019) takes us into the ‘60s wedding vortex. Now, Crack in the Mirror revisits the ‘70s feminist idea of ‘putting women in touch with their sexuality.” Hagen calls it “a precursor to The Vagina Monologues.”

“It explores the changing role of women…. Every decade women have come up against a new set of (social) expectations,” says Hagen of the trilogy. “Inch by inch they discover individuality, empowerment, a bit of freedom from the patriarchy…. Some characters are more reluctant than others to explore!” 

Bert Savoy, 1929, The Pansy Cabaret, Guys in Disguise. Photo supplied.

For Hagen, an indefatigable queer history researcher, The Pansy Cabaret, starring Zachary Parsons-Lozinski and Daniel Belland, showcases a mind-blowing discovery. “It was an entire world I hadn’t heard of before. So rich!”

While he was writing a (yet to be produced) play about Mae West — her showbiz persona, including the signature walk, the sassy attitude, and many of her famous aphorisms — he uncovered the history of a bona fide showbiz craze in New York. It was the flowering of queer and drag culture in “pansy bars,” in Broadway shows, in vaudeville, featuring some of highest paid entertainers in showbiz of the day, a century ago during the Prohibition years.

“It just goes to show how effectively institutionalized homophobia can completely erase a culture in a decade…. When Prohibition ended, you couldn’t get a licence if you had an ‘unruly’ establishment (if you had homosexual performers).” Says Hagen, ‘they were chased off Broadway…. Careers ended; it was shockingly sad.”  

Karyl Norman, “the Creole Fashion Plate.” Photo supplied.

“In our 45-minute cabaret we bring some of their material back to life — comedy routines, monologues, funny songs by huge stars of 100 years ago who died in obscurity, erased by homophobia.” The material is “so ahead of its time in many ways.” Hagen predicts we’ll find it “amazingly new-sounding…. You’d swear The Lavender Song (first line: “we’re not afraid to be queer and different”), for example, was written last month…. I was blown away by their courage — in a world where they were illegal.”

Crack in the Mirror runs at the Varscona (Stage 11) Friday through Aug. 20. The Pansy Cabaret is at the Nancy Power Theatre in Theatre Network’s Roxy (Stage 27) Friday through Aug. 21. Tickets and full schedule: fringetheatre.ca. 

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Turning life experience into theatre: Ellie Heath goes solo at the Fringe in Fake n’ Bake

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Ellie Heath, creator and star of Fake n’ Bake, Fringe 2022. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Five years ago, Ellie Heath’s life changed, dramatically. Who changed it? Ellie Heath. 

“It was the moment I took charge of my life,” declares the engaging  actor/ playwright/ sketch comedian and the creator of the Fringe show Fake n’ Bake. Clutter be gone; enter a new buoyancy. “l quit smoking, a great thing. I went into therapy. I quit my (server) job. I quit my dependency on pain killers….”

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And here’s something else. Was it simply cosmic coincidence that this was also the moment that Heath and two of her best long-time pals Alyson Dicey and Caley Suliak, theatre artists all three, started moulding their playful shared sense of humour into stage sketches? Girl Brain, the popular sketch trio that’s gone from success to success in the last five years, was born. Heck, Anxiety and Depression are two of Girl Brain’s favourite recurring characters. Heath plays the character they interrupt at the most inopportune moments, like job interviews or doctor’s offices, or weddings.  

The taking charge and the overcoming of addictions have given Heath a new confidence, she says. Which is why she’s bringing to Fringe 2022 a multi-character solo play about exactly that, the re-wiring of a life. Billed as “a coming-of-age story,” Fake n’ Bake is the “first time I’m performing alone in a solo show I’ve written on my own…. This is my chance!” That it premieres at the Roxy, Theatre Network’s beautiful new theatre on 124th Street, is a particular bonus. 

As every fringer knows, the Fringe has always been a playground for theatre soloists, in shows of their own device. There’s no shortage of examples in the 2022 Fringe program.  Occupying the stage alone is a test of theatrical chutzpah and ingenuity if ever there was one. Transmuting the personal into something sharable and theatrical is a tricky thing; the more personal the story, the more stressful the relationship between art and life. Heath’s source material was her own story, her own struggles with mental health issues, as recorded in “40 pages of essays.” 

It’s a story, she says, of the personal experience of making positive change. “And it makes sense to share what happened to me; maybe it can make a difference to other people too…. I feel a little more confident.”

Fake n’ Bake by and starring Ellie, Fringe 2022. Graphic supplied

Fake n’ Bake isn’t the first play the Grant MacEwan musical theatre grad has created. She and Dicey took their original co-written kids’ play Tree Hugger to the Fringe in 2013. Four years Heath and Sarah Sharkey’s Cadaver, “about a medical student working on a dead body that comes to life, a bit of a thriller,” was at the Fringe. 

With Fake n’ Bake the Heaths en famille stepped up with encouragement. Her dad is a singer-songwriter. “My grandmother, a writer and creative person, loves going to the Fringe, and specifically to one-woman shows: ‘you have to do it. And I am!”  

“The subject matter of Fake n’ Bake, says Heath cheerfully, “could definitely stray to the dark side.” But in the course of honing the play with director/ dramaturge Kristi Hansen through six iterations, a play that’s “rooted in my reality” is “a more light-hearted, more celebratory, more playful show. More authentic to my artistic vision.” With original songs. And a lot more characters. 

“I play a ton of them,” says Heath. “It is, I think, one of my strengths,” as the Girl Brain archive will attest. Among the gallery, Heath laughs, are “my parents and my psychologist; I got consent from all concerned.” 

And so Heath, like her Girl Brain cohorts, is bravely sallying forth to new challenges this summer. Dicey is the director of the KidsFringe. Suliak is starring in The Paladin, an intricate new intergalactic solo comedy written and directed by playwright Kenneth Brown. 

Rising to the Fringe challenge has stepped up her producing and marketing skills, Heath thinks. The Fringe has discouraged handbills this year. Heath had T-shirts made with the show image on the front and a QR code on the back, “so people can scan me.” She’s written songs for the show; one will be on Spotify.  

“It’s a celebrity journey to self-acceptance,” says Heath of Fake n’ Bake. As she puts it, it encourages people “to give themselves some love.” The voices of negativity are everywhere. “This is about learning to talk back to the voices…. Moments, oh gosh, give me embarrassment shivers. But I think there’s dramatic value in that!” 

Fake n’ Bake runs in the Lorne Cardinal Theatre at the Roxy Aug. 12 through 21 (Stage 28). Tickets and show schedule: fringtheatre.ca.

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Getting intrigued: further thoughts on what to see at Destination Fringe

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Geoffrey Simon Brown and Émanuel Dubbeldam in Re:Construct, RISER 2022. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Every life coach (and no travel agent) will tell you it’s not the destination but the journey. But it’s also the Destination, since that’s the moniker of this year’s Fringe. 

The exploration is yours, my friends. That’s the whole point (and since we’re immersed in the Destination metaphor, we all know the risks of Trip Advisor). But, to get yourself started, did you have a peek at 12thnight’s selection of intriguing prospects here? And there’s this: in the 164-show lineup at Destination Fringe, there are shows I’ve seen before and enjoyed — during the season, or at previous Fringes. They may well be adjusted, re-worked, re-drafted by now; artists are congenital tinkerers with their own work. Really, it’s what they do, and art never stands still. But here’s a sample of half a dozen shows for your consideration.

Geoffrey Simon Brown and Émanuel Dubbeldam in Re:Construct, RISER Edmonton 2022. Photo by bb collective.

Re:Construct. This fun, insightful, theatrically inspired two-hander created by playwright/designer Even Gilchrist, is a celebration of Self (with cake!). It’s a diary of sorts, funny and poignant, in which a trans man revisits and embraces his youthful self in the company of an idealized cis alter-ego. It also embraces the audience. It premiered in April, as part of RISER Edmonton’s 2022 series. Check out the 12thnight review here. 

The Disney Delusion. A winning combination of stand-up and theatre propels this very funny solo show by and starring Leif Oleson-Cormack. The rueful, knowing, older Leif reviews a disastrous adventure by the naive younger Leif, designed with the blatant ulterior motive of landing the man of his dreams and quickly devolving into chaos. A repository of wince-laughs. It was at last summer’s Together We Fringe. My review is here.

Mi Habana Querida, Cuban Movements Dance Academy. Photo supplied.

Mi Habana Querida. An explosion of colour, costumes, irresistible music, sexy  moves in this cultural survey of Cuba in a dance musical through a Romeo and Juliet lens (the star-cross’d lovers are an American and a Cuban divided by the Revolution). Cuban Movements Dance Academy brought it to the 2021 Fringe. The 12thnight review is here.

Juliet: A Revenge Comedy. A mostly new cast this time for the Monster Theatre production of a clever, witty play in which Juliet pries herself from the Shakespeare tragedy where she has to die at 13 for love of a guy she met oh, you know, a couple of days before at a party. She and a couple of other of the Bard’s doomed heroines confront their maker. It was at the Fringe, with co-playwrights Ryan Gladstone and Pippa Mackie in the cast, in 2019. The 12thnight review is here.  

Candice Roberts in LARRY. Photo by Kristine Cofsky

Larry. Candice Roberts is fearless in this very funny solo show, a satire of old-school macho dude-ism. The title dude has gotten wind of a new thing, self-improvement. And this show is his entry point into the artsy foreign world of … showbiz. It was at the Fringe in 2019. Check out the 12thnight review here. 

Are you loving’ it?. Perfectly bonkers. I didn’t see this kooky quintessentially Fringe-y show from Osaka’s Theatre Group GUMBO in 2019. But 12thnight guest reviewer Alan Kellogg appreciated its barrage of theatrical weirdness. Check out his review here. 

  

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‘A post-pandemic brain scrubber’: what to see at Destination Fringe

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Epidermis Circus, SNAFU. Photo by Jam Hamidi

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Your Destination is on the right (also on the left and straight ahead). And this late-pandemic world seems … possible and ready to be lively. Yes, the Fringe is back, starting Thursday, in the town where the continent’s fringe phenom began.

“A post-pandemic brain scrubber!” says SNAFU’s Ingrid Hansen, the co-creator and star of Epidermis Circus. She was talking about surreal art, of which her new and weird puppet show (see below) is an example. But she might have been talking about the Fringe itself with its 164-show universe to play in, at the 41st annual edition of the continent’s first and still biggest fringe.

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So, what looks promising? It’s a brain-expanding question since there’s no wrong way to fringe (except not see shows). Artists have experimented; so should you. 

But just for starters, here’s a selection of show possibilities that caught my eye (for the playwright, the play, the company, the director, the cast, or maybe just their irresistible weirdness). I haven’t seen them yet either; we’ll be exploring together. (Stand by for a  12thnight.ca post soon about productions I’ve caught before, or at other festivals, or during the season). 

Mathew Hulshof, The Margin of the Sky, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Ryan Parker.

The Margin of the Sky. This Fringe revival of Stewart Lemoine’s 2003 elusive and moving comedy about the act of creation is an historic occasion. It’s the last time you’ll see Teatro La Quindicina at the Fringe.

How come? Born at the very first Fringe in 1982 as a venture (All These Heels) by a little group of friends led by their then-unknown resident playwright, Teatro grew up with the festival, bringing original Lemoine comedies year after year to full houses. And since 2008 (when they returned to the Fringe after an absence of five years), Teatro’s Fringe appearance has been part of their four-show summer subscription seasons. But “as an Equity company producing a Fringe show (with Fringe ticket prices) as part of a full Equity contract for casts and crew,” as Lemoine explains, the costs can’t be covered. ‘And it means other shows in the season have to pay for that.”

The challenge of producing shows back to back without a break in a summer season has been “exhilarating but exhausting.” After 14 years, the company plans to produce seasons that are “more spread out” (November to July). 

So at age 40, Teatro bids farewell to its birthplace with “my only play that includes a character who’s a Canadian playwright,” says Lemoine. As in so many Lemoines, from Pith! to The Exquisite Hour, Happy Toes to The Glittering Heart, Leo is imagining a fantastical world from which he takes something important. And music, Schoenberg to be specific, is his entry point. 

Ingrid Hansen, Epidermis Circus, SNAFU. Photo by Jam Hamidi.

Epidermis Circus: In this new “spicy puppet cabaret” from Victoria’s SNAFU (Kit & Jane, Little Orange Man, The Merkin Sisters), part live animation, part physical comedy, Ingrid Hansen creates a variety show of characters using “freaky body parts,” her hands, mirrors, found objects: “there’s nothing in this show anyone would identify as ‘a puppet’.” She creates “little worlds and illusions” live at a table, and “they’re projected huge behind me livestream. So you’re seeing the movie and you’re seeing me make the movie.”

“It’s a dark comedy and a celebration of the human body, a post-pandemic healing ceremony.” Find out more about Hansen and SNAFU in a 12thnight post soon.

The Hunchback Variations, Northern Light Theatre. Poster photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

The Hunchback Variations. This intriguingly absurdist comedy by the Chicago playwright Mickle Maher is the production that Edmonton audiences almost got to see in the Northern Light Theatre season just past (another COVID cancellation). It’s a multi-scene panel discussion on sound between two of history’s most famous deaf artists, Beethoven and Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of Notre Dame. These unlikely collaborators are working to re-create the mysterious sound effect specified by Chekhov’s famously elusive stage direction in The Cherry Orchard. Check out 12thnight’s interview with director Davina Stewart from this past January here.

Plays By Bots. Photo by bots.

Plays By Bots. The future of theatre collaboration is here, and it’s wild (and a bit scary). The scripts are actually written by bots; Rapid Fire Theatre performers act them out, and then improvise the endings. Even this graphic for the show was created by a bot. What? “I honestly don’t understand it myself,” says RFT artistic director Matt Schuurman. “Every bit of it sounds like a fictional premise for a Fringe show, but it’s 100% real.”

Dreamers Cantata – A New Revue. A new revue by musical theatre specialists Plain Jane Theatre, who have combed the repertoire to focus on ground-breaking women and non-gender conforming artists. “Tougher songs than we’ve ever worked on,” says artistic director Kate Ryan of a list of musical theatre songwriters that includes Elizabeth Swados of Runaways and Rap Master Ronnie fame, Hadestown creator Anaïs Mitchell (who’s at the Folk Fest this weekend), Sara Bareilles (Waitress), Georgia Stitt, Micki Grant, Shaina Taub (Suffs, new this spring) and Edmonton jazz artist Mallory Chipman. Ryan directs a cast of five; the script is by playwright Ellen Chorley. 

Seth Gilfillan and Josh Travnik in Conjoined: A New Musical. Photo supplied.

Conjoined: A New Musical. Straight Edge Theatre, creators of Cult Cycle and Imaginary Friend, returns to the Fringe with an original rock(ish) musical. Sibling rivalry and the universal struggle to resist domination and find your own individual self get a palpable jolt from the fact that the two brothers are conjoined twins — and one’s fondest wish is to see the other dead. Amazingly, this is the second new musical of the season involving conjoined siblings (NLT’s Two-Headed Half-Hearted ran in April). Josh Travnik and Seth Gilfillan star, with a live three-piece band. (Meet Straight Edge’s Stephen Allred and The Erlking’s Chris Scott. see below, in an upcoming 12thnight post). 

Happy as Larry. OK, I’ll bite. What happened to Friar Lawrence after that fiasco in Romeo and Juliet? The guy has a lot to answer for, as both a herbalist and life coach, not to mention strategist. This solo show by the U.K. performer Richard Curnow proposes to follow up.

Fags in Space, Low Hanging Fruits. Photo supplied.

Fags in Space. A new play by Liam Salmon (Local Diva, Archangel, Silence of the Machine), an insightful and witty writer whose archive of work reveals a fascination with sci-fi/horror, the mysterious, the unknown . This one, which leans into reclaiming the old gay slur, is a queer rom-com, which suggests — can it be? — the possibility of happiness. It’s generated from the classic couples question: so how did you two meet?. Their story takes them through the cosmos.

(Thunder)CATS. As a survivor of watching WAY too many productions of Cats in way too many cities, I can’t possibly not see a satire of the Lloyd Webber con-cat-enation. It’s by the forces — Grindstone Theatre’s Byron Martin and resident composer Simon Abbott — that unleashed Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer on a suspecting world this past season. Seeing it is kind of a moral and cultural obligation. 

(Thunder)CATS, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

“It takes the piss” (out of the Broadway musical), “using characters from the ‘80s cartoon Thundercats,” Martin explains. “It’s a series of character songs with no real plot, full of dancing, singing and humping…. The music is all original. And every song is directly a deep original cut into Cats, literally scene by scene, song by song…. It takes its job pretty seriously!” (laughter). Originally improvised in 2018 as part of a theme night at The 11 O’Clock Number, it comes with an entire cat-alogue of performers: nine actors wearing a lot of Lycra, and a live three-piece band led by the very accomplished Abbott. 

(Thunder)CATS got a mentorship boost at the Banff Centre from Bob Martin and Lisa Lambert (of the Fringe-turned-Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone). “They loved it; they said ‘you have to do it!’” and Lambert came to see the 2019 Fringe incarnation. COVID thwarted plans for a 2020 tour that would have included Edinburgh. 

How did Martin, Abbott et al get hooked to an obscure 80s cartoon? At Grindstone “we play cartoons on the TV behind the bar.” 

The Erlking, Scona Alumni Theatre Co. Photo supplied

The Erlking: a new musical. “If Midsommar and The Book of Mormon had a baby.” That, intriguingly, is how writer/composer/lyricist Chris Scott describes his new musical, fresh from a six-month workshop at Berklee College in Boston. He wrote The Erlking at 17, as a theatre student at Scona High; then “it went to bed for 12 years.” Meanwhile,  Scott got his BFA in musical theatre in Boston, and moved to New York with dreams of Broadway in his head. 

It’s on an un-Fringe-y scale, with a cast of 12, “a big, textured, lush orchestral score … musical theatre meets film score,” and 19 or 20 songs. And Scott’s Erlking isn’t the malign child-luring elf of Euro-lore, taken up by Goethe. “They’re a benevolent (gender-neutral) figure whose name has been smudged by the ruling classes.… It’s all about balance of power, abuse of power, faith, perspective.”

Jon Paterson, How I Met My Mother. Photo supplied.

How I Met My Mother. The versatile theatre artist Jon Paterson has been on the Fringe circuit for 25 years, in all kinds of roles in all kinds of shows. He’s toured with RibbitRepublic and Monster Theatre. He’s co-created with fellow Fringe artists (Inescapable, with Martin Dockery). He’s commanded the stage solo before now, memorably explosive in Daniel MacIvor’s House. How I Met My Mother is Paterson’s first solo-written Fringe show. It’s his own “bad-ass to caregiver story” as billed, of a man who leaves behind his raucous and wayward teen years to take care of his ailing mom. It’s been getting big buzz on the circuit.  

Crack in the Mirror. in honour of Guys in Disguise’s 35th anniversary at the Fringe, this third of the Orchard Crescent trilogy by Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt takes the women of the ladies’ auxiliary  into the ‘70s. Find more in an upcoming 12thnight post about the groundbreaking company that marries theatre and drag and changed the course of gay history in this town.  

Cheryl Jameson, Michelle Todd, Kristin Johnston in Destination Vegas. Photo by Justin Gambin.

Damn, it’s happened again. This list of possibilities has gotten out of hand, and I haven’t even mentioned Fake n’ Bake, a new solo play, the first she’s written by herself, by Girl Brain’s Ellie Heath (more about her in an upcoming 12thnight post). Or Destination Vegas, a sequel to Trevor Schmidt’s riotous Destination Wedding. Or The Big Sad, a new Jessy Ardern play about grief for kids by the inventive indie Fox Den Collective (Queen Lear Is Dead, S.I.S.T.E.R). It’s not in the program but has four performances (Stage 3) in the daytime slots formerly occupied by Undiscovered Country. And how about Pressure by up-and-comer Amanda Samuelson, Nextfest’s first official foray into the Fringe as a producer? 

And this: on a risk-enhancement agenda, there’s White Guy on Stage Talking. For one thing it’s by the playwriting team of Jake Tkaczyk and Brandon the Moustache. For another, its warning list, second to none, taps into modern anxiety pretty comprehensively. “Violence, cartoonish violence, nudity, sexual content, death, suicide, Adult language/content, eating disorder/body image, mental illness/disorders, drugs/alcohol, religious content, political content, strobe lights, gunshots, smoke/fog.” Yup, I’m intrigued.

Enough of list-making already. It’s time to start fringing. (Tickets, schedule, and show information: fringetheatre.ca.)

 

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We are approaching our Destination: Fringe tickets go on sale today at noon

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s been a long pandemical journey — uphill, full of stops and re-starts and detours, on a bumpy road, with skimpy signage, in the dark. Sometimes it seemed as if we’d never get there; sometimes we wondered if we’d only dreamed it all.  

But now, fellow travellers, our festive Destination is finally at hand. We’re nearly there; yes, there is a ‘there’ there. Tickets for Destination Fringe, the 41st annual edition of Edmonton’s mighty summer theatre extravaganza (live, Aug. 11 to 21 ), still the continent’s biggest and oldest, go on sale today at noon. And there’s more than one route to tickets.

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You can order them online (fringetheatre.ca). You can call (780-409-1910). You can show up in person at the Fringe’s central Arts Barns box office (10330 84 Ave.) or TIX on the Square in Churchill Square downtown. When the festivities begin, you can visit any of the five satellite box offices, including the Garneau Theatre, La Cité francophone, the Roxy Theatre on 124th St., by the Fringe entrance (83rd Ave. and 104 St.), and on 85th Ave. between 104th and Gateway Blvd. This year’s time-saver innovation: e-tickets. 

The top ticket price has remained the same for years. Fringe artists set the price, to a $13 maximum, theirs to take home. And Fringers pay the festival a $3 service fee on top of that. So you’ll be shelling out $16 tops for a show ticket. This year the ticket prices, listed online and in the glossy 12-buck 146-page Fringe program, are inclusive.  

Most artists opt for the max (and after the couple of drought years they’ve had, no wonder), as you’ll discover touring the guide or the website. But there are exceptions I discovered leafing through the program: Charade, a stage version of the murder caper, is $13; so is My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a solo drama culled from a real-life diary. The YEG Youth Poetry Jam is $9; St. Kilda is $15, and so is the Fringe’s own ever-riotous Late-Night Cabaret…. 

The sweetest deal for Fringe travellers? the Frequent Fringer Pass ($120 for 10 tickets) and the Double Fringer Pass ($240 for 20 tickets) — two tickets per show per pass holder, subject to availability. But there are precious few, and historically they sell out in a flash. 

There are discounts for students and seniors at many shows. And, in the spirit of spontaneity built into fringing, there are artist-instigated daily discounts, recorded online and at all box offices, designed to amplify the audience. 

And so, my friends, we’re poised to return to fringing, in the place where that verb was invented. True, Destination Fringe isn’t on the gargantuan scale of the rampaging Where The Wild Things Fringe in pre-pandemic 2019, with its 260 shows in 50-plus venues. But it’s more than double the 64-show lineup of last year’s creatively trimmed edition Together We Fringe. The program isn’t the thickest ever, but it’s hefty, full of possibilities, and still a great upper-body toner when carried in a backpack on a jog between venues. 

“Re-growth” is the operative word, says Fringe director Murray Utas of this year’s edition. As the audience returns to live performance in these late-pandemic times, the question, for him, is “what is the experience you’re creating? Experience vs. size…. How big do we need to be?”

There are 164 indoor shows at Destination Fringe, in 27 venues. Eight of these (a reduction in number from the usual 11) ) are “official,” programmed by lottery. The rest are BYOVs, acquired and outfitted by artists themselves, most (but not all) in or near Old Strathcona.

Some are bona fide theatres like the Varscona or L’UniThéâtre or the theatre at College St.-Jean. An assortment have other lives — as churches or community halls, clubs, a cabaret, a community hall, a university auditorium…. The four BYOVs in the French Quarter at La Cité francophone and the College St.-Jean across the street, have 29 shows among them (not counting the long-running hit poutine at Café Bicyclette). The Grindstone Comedy Theatre curates 25 shows at four venues of varying sizes. And here’s a first for 2022: Theatre Network’s two theatres at the spiffy new Roxy on 124th Street are Fringe BYOVs, each running four shows.

Pêhonân (Cree for gathering place), last year’s sold-out initiative in dedicating one venue to Indigenous artists, has expanded its reach outdoors. Josh Languedoc, the Fringe’s director of Indigenous strategic planning and a playwright/performer himself (Rocko and Nakota: Tales From The Land), has assembled an eight-show series featuring local Treaty 6 artists for the ATB Outdoor Stage, ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ (the Indigenous Art Park in Queen Elizabeth Park, the KidsFringe stage, the pêhonân teepee (between the Backstage Theatre and the Strathcona Performing Arts Centre). The teepee is where you’ll find a sharing circle, bannock, smudging and more each Friday and Saturday at 6 p.m.  

After a two-year pandemical hiatus, the KidsFringe returns to Light Horse Park (daily 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.), free, with a line-up of shows and activities (all arranged by Girl Brain’s Alyson Dicey).

And at Destination Fringe a bona fide Fringe tradition (interruptus) is restored. After a hiatus of, oh, a couple of decades, there’s a welcoming all-ages Fringe Street Dance on Fringe Eve, Aug. 10 (6:30 onward), with bands that includes the Halluci Nation, Sudan Archives, Sampler Cafe, and  tzadeka & the Murder Hornets. The first-ever Fringe Street Dance was in 1984; an up-and-comer named k.d. lang played to a crowd of 3,500.

Which brings us to the fringer’s alluring question: what to see in the 164-show world of Destination Fringe. And that’s something 12thnight.ca can help with. Don’t let an intriguing question be a daunting one: stay tuned to this very site for encouragement, suggestions, features, reviews. 

It’s a theatre town, fellow travellers. And we have the Destination to prove it. I’m hoping you’re finding the theatre coverage on  12thnight.ca, my free independent online site, entertaining and worthwhile. And I’m hoping, too, that you’ll be able to chip in to my Patreon campaign, with a monthly amount to support its continuation. Click here. 

And let’s set forth.  

     

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Was it Professor Plum, in the library, with the …? The lead-pipe cinch fun of Clue at the Citadel, a review

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Rachel Bowron, Christina Nguyen, Alexander Ariate, John Ullyatt, Darla Biccum, Rochelle Laplante, Julien Arnold in Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Let the game begin.”

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What fun. A high-style midsummer comedy whodunnit with all the trimmings, and a larky air of high camp about it. 

That’s Clue, currently dropping clues, suspicions, weapons, suspects, and dead bodies through a mysterious manor house on the Citadel’s Shoctor stage — and scattering throwaway quips as they land. It need hardly be said that it’s a dark and stormy night, the power is very apt to go out, and the telephone lines are in a shockingly precarious state. 

When the suave butler with the plummy accent (John Ullyatt) speaks of the game as being “afoot,” he’s not kidding. The game is on its feet, and the players are in constant motion.  

Sandy Ruskin’s stage adaptation of the star-stocked 1985 movie (inspired by the classic board game you’ve always played at the cottage) is set in the 50s, the era of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, just outside Washington. “A climate of fear and suspicion” says the voice from the TV. 

Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

The play introduces the characters at the outset, all with murky D.C. connections. And in Nancy McAlear’s production, they arrive, invitations in hand, with a flourish at the front door of Boddy Manor. They’re introduced by Wadsworth, a figure of Jeeves-like aplomb and inscrutability in Ullyatt’s performance, who specifies that as per their invitations, pseudonyms are de rigueur. And, costumed amusingly by designer Leona Brausen in ’50s regalia, they’re played to riotous cartoon proportions by the cast.  

The representative of the military is Colonel Mustard (Julien Arnold in a very funny performance as dim blusterer with malaprop tendencies, invariably a perfect half-beat behind the conversation). Rachel Bowron is the icy Mrs. White, a Washington socialite and serial widow. The tentative, accident-prone Mr. Green (Alexander Ariate) is a gay, which is to say closeted, Republican with a State Department desk job. Mrs Peacock (Darla Biccum) is a shrill church-y Senator’s wife with a mickey in her purse. Professor Plum (Doug Mertz) is a self-assured de-licensed doctor (“it’s a pleasure for you to meet me”) who now “does research” for WHO. The va-va-voom Miss Scarlet (Rochelle Laplante) is a business person with a clientele that’s exclusively male. 

Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

They all have guilty secrets, and they’re all being blackmailed. And as Wadsworth informs them, they’re about to meet the blackmailer who’s also their host. Mr. Boddy (Steven Greenfield) carries a briefcase of evidence, and distributes gift bags each containing a weapon (yup, the candlestick, the wrench, the lead pipe …). The power goes out. And when the lights come on lo and behold Mr. Boddy is dead, and the police will soon arrive.

He will not be the evening’s only corpse. And the suspects, including the pert French maid Yvette (Christina Nguyen) and the psychotic cook (Maya Baker), scramble to identify a killer on the loose who may be one of them. Or not.

Indispensable to the fun is Scott Reid’s set. Like the characters it is in constant motion; actually, on many occasions it’s the cast running on the spot (or dropping dead) and the set moving —  in ingenious ways from the kitchen to the conservatory, the drawing room to the lounge, the dining room to the library, back to the hall. The six closed doors are just the start of it. In this the set is assisted, with great pizzaz, by Patrick Beagan’s lighting, and lack thereof. Michael Holland’s quirky, allusive murder mystery music (supplemented by sound designer Allison Lynch) is fun, too. 

This is all very silly, at a level of silliness only achievable by theatrical resourcefulness and impeccable timing. It escalates in speed and intensity, and panic sets in. There are spectacular pratfalls, inspired physical comedy from all participants, danse macabres with stiffs, re-spooling in reverse of scenes but with different outcomes, and in one case a very funny virtuoso re-play of the entire play by one character . Shamelessly entertaining. Shameless, and entertaining.

REVIEW

Clue

Theatre: Citadel

Written by: Sandy Rustin, with additional materials by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, based on Paramount Pictures 1985 movie with screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, based on Hasbro board game

Directed by: Nancy McAlear

Starring: Alexander Ariate, Julien Arnold, Maya Baker, Darla Biccum, Rachel Bowron, Steven Greenfield, Rochelle Laplante, Doug Mertz, Christina Nguyen, John Ullyatt

Running: through Aug. 7

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820

 

 

 

 

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