Spirit of the Season: a new holiday/horror mashup, a one-night one-screen film premiere

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Spirit of the Season, The Debutantes and Lazy Kitten Productions. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Five friends in full flight mode escape to a remote cabin in the woods. That always works, right?

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In Spirit of the Season, the indie holiday/ horror mash-up comedy film getting a one-night premiere screening Wednesday night at the Citadel’s Zeidler Hall, the five are fleeing the Christmas season, in all its stressful demands and enforced jollity — a fateful avoidance move if ever there was one. Will the Christmas spirit find them, and pick them off, one by one, in time-honoured horror fashion?

When it comes to the holiday season, you can run but you cannot hide. 

Produced by the sketch comedy troupe The Debutantes and Lazy Kitten Productions, the movie was shot in and around Edmonton a year ago. last year — “very DIY guerrilla film-making,” as co-director Robyn Slack of The Debutantes explains. Spirit of the Season had pandemic origins: in the absence of live shows, “we shot short silly comedy video sketches of our auditions for Hallmark movies…. And they caught the eye of Katie Cutting,” an indie filmmaker and Slack’s co-director (“the one with all the gear, the smarts, the know-how,” he says) who goaded them to find an expansive form. 

What they needed for their venture, “our first time writing something narrative and cohesive,” was a story to frame it. And the collaborators — Slack, Cutter, The Debutantes, and Azimuth Theatre’s Sue Goberdhan, “everyone’s got their finger in the pie!” — found it by asking themselves a question. “What’s everyone’s relationship to the holiday season,” says Slack. whose experience in film before Spirit of the Season was “mostly indie short-form comedy.”. 

At early meetings “there was a broad range of perspectives,” he reports. “I’m on the most pro-Christmas end of the spectrum; I haven’t had any real trouble or major stress. I like it; I think it’s an enjoyable escape and a fun time of year.” 

Not everyone shared this buoyant view, needless to say. “People who have a complicated history with the holiday and a hard time of it at that time of year, people who’ve lost family members, people who’ve come out as trans or queer…. We tried really hard to capture in the film that this holiday means a lot of different things to different people.” 

“Each character has their unique struggle,” says Slack, “everything  from mild annoyance or being exhausted with the consumerism to something deeply traumatic. It’s not a heavy movie; it’s a light comedy, but we try to broach those themes as best we can.” Then, marrying the horror trope to a Christmas theme was “a fun contrast to play with!”  

Creating a holiday movie is fraught with timing demands at every level. Weather ups the ante. And in the fall of 2021, when shooting was to begin in preparation for the big holiday reveal, Edmonton fell short in the one crucial thing you can usually count on here: snow on the ground. In late October, there wasn’t any. “Last year it took a really long time to get a nice layer of snow on the ground. We could have been ready a full year earlier,” Slack sighs.

The shooting happened in a cabin south of the city, west of Leduc, a generous loan from a personal friend of the Cutting family. “We’d go for two days at a time,” working around everyone’s jobs. “The first thing on the agenda every time we got there was to start a fire — before we could do anything.” It was so cold they had to keep the equipment in the car till the cabin warmed up. 

An adventurous spirit proved de rigueur; the film has a whimsical diary. They shot a chase sequence — one person on foot, pursued by one person on GT Snow Racer — in the dead of night, says Slack. “Very cold but very fun.” For one scene, “we baked hundreds of sugar cookies that got smashed,” in an act of seasonal violence. Another was shot on Halloween. 

There’s a practical reason that Spirit of the Season is a one-night only one-screen only event. It is, to be sure, a little late this year to be marketing a Christmas movie. “Now we have a year lead time to apply for marketing grants and find wider distribution,” says Slack. “But we didn’t want to wait a whole other year to show the movie; we’re pretty excited about it.”   

“If you’re the kind of person who goes all in for it, or the kind of person who struggles with the holidays, this may be just the movie for you!”

PREVIEW

Spirit of the Season

Produced by: The Debutantes and Lazy Kitten Productions

Directed by: Robyn Slack and Katie Cutting

Starring: Michael Vetsch, Laena Anderson, David Rae, Glenna Schowaiter, Sue Goberdhan

Where: Zeidler Hall, Citadel Theatre

When: Wednesday Dec. 21, 8 p.m.

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com 

 

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2022: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 1

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Rebecca Sadowski and Kaeley Jade Wiebe in Two-Headed/ Half-Hearted, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

Kristi Hansen and Sheldon Elter in Sweeney Todd, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

2022: it was a year in theatre that started with a calendar dotted with  hopeful pencilled-in dates. 

After a complicated 2021 of cancellations and postponements (and a late-summer re-Pivot of The Pivot), audiences were, cautiously, ready to be pried away from their screens to venture forth to theatre experienced in 3-D, in person, with other people. We’d had enough of Zoom re-enactments, worthy and ingenious though they’d been; we were hungry to re-discover the excitement of the shared experience. 

It wasn’t a stampede to the theatre in 2022, as it’s turned out (another wrong prediction by yours truly). More of a trickle, then a gradual migration, a drift. And the first official theatre engagement of the new year, Northern Light Theatre’s production of The Hunchback Variations (fascinatingly weird), was postponed till the Fringe, a discouraging COVIDian setback. But still…. we were back in the house seats. 

A beautiful new $12 million theatre arose from the ashes of the old, and on its very footprint (Theatre Network’s Roxy on 124th St.). A venerable theatre acquired it own space (Workshop West moved to Strathcona, into the theatre vacated by Theatre Network in its post-fire exile, and renamed it the Gateway). And a crazily busy improv company, Rapid Fire Theatre, said Yes, as improvisers do, to building a new theatre of their own in the old Telephone Museum in Old Strathcona. It’s in progress. 

Despite the challenges and uncertainties of performance, week to week, whole seasons got announced. And in the spirit of “OK now, where were we?’, long-delayed shows — like the Citadel’s Jane Eyre, Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and Network, Teatro Live’s Evelyn Strange, Shadow’s The Wrong People Have Money, Wild Side’s A Doll’s House Part 2 — finally got their opening nights. The festivals — the mighty Edmonton Fringe, SkirtsAfire, Nextfest among them — returned to live and, in a word, festive, albeit in somewhat carefully incremental dimensions. And the Almost-Fringe as it was dubbed sold more than 95,000 tickets to its 164 shows. 

In the particularly poignant case of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, a brave return to live on a scale, with two big full-cast productions (the perennially popular A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the difficult, rarely produced Measure For Measure), was accompanied by the cloud of the City’s impending closure of Hawrelak Park FOR THREE YEARS — a stunning, and destructive, lack of civic creativity. 

Behind the scenes, rehearsals got more intricate: the versatility of actors in big-cast  productions was tested further as they learned several parts — just in case. In small-cast shows, everyone crossed their fingers.

In the (interminable) late-pandemic of 2022, in show after show theatre artists, unsurprisingly, were drawn to wonder about their place in the world, how art gets created, and why, and whether the rules of engagement that underpin theatre have fundamentally changed forever. The Innocence of Trees, Dora Maar: the wicked one, I Don’t Even Miss You, The Hunchback Variations, The Margin of the Sky, Evandalism (the list goes on…) reflected on it. And at a moment when live human engagement is both longed for and feared, live theatre spoke to that complexity, too.  

It was a year that continued to test the adventurous spirit of  theatre artists and their uncanny ability to speak to the moment. Here’s a small selection, in no particular order, of theatre highlights, to kick-start your own memories.

Emma Ryan and Maralyn Ryan in The Innocence of Trees, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

The Innocence of Trees: Theatre Network officially launched its first full mainstage season in the new Roxy with Eugene Stickland’s light-filled, and enlightening, fantasia on art, and the making of art, and the contradictions that drive the artist. What could be more à propos? The character at its centre is the Saskatchewan-born abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin, troubled in life, whose distinctive signature grid-work canvases hang in major galleries in New York. And she encounters her younger self, chafing at the constraints of her unlovely prairie childhood and the flat lines of her horizons. The play got a richly multi-disciplinary premiere production from Bradley Moss: superb performances from the grandmother/granddaughter pairing of Maralyn Ryan and Emma Ryan, a beautiful Briana Kolybaba design set in motion by Ian Jackson’s projections and Even Gilchrist’s lighting, and evocative live music from cellist Morag Northey. Read the full 12thnight review here.

Elena Belyea, I Don’t Even Miss You, Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Brianne Jang

I Don’t Even Miss You: No other play this year captured our predicament — the sense of the familiar gone strange, a world fundamentally and mysteriously changed — the way Elena Belyea’s multi-disciplinary solo “musical” did. Basil wakes up one morning to discover the world has fundamentally and mysteriously changed, overnight, and they are utterly alone. So Basil (the charismatic Belyea) has to create everything — friendships, family, romance, identity, gender  — from memory and the digital ether. They’re starring in their own life “production,” creating it live, moment to moment, with music, dance, video. Is it a solo? Basil shares the stage with the digital companion they’ve brought into being as a buttress against final aloneness. Funny, insightful, heart-wrenching. Read the 12thnight review here. 

Hailey Gillis and Ivy DeGagné in Jane Eyre, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Jane Eyre: Star Canadian playwright Erin Shields, an expert in re-imaging classics for the theatre through a feminist lens, re-created Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel for the contemporary stage — by shedding narration and imagining the world of its spirited strong-willed orphan heroine up against formidable odds as a haunting. Jane carries with her the vivid ghosts of her past. And the premiere production directed by the Citadel’s Daryl Cloran set that world in motion as a kind of movement piece (devised by choreographer Ainsley Hillyard), in which Jane is pursued by the abusers, confidantes, enforcers, interventionists of her past, as they whirl through scenes that frame Jane’s life scene by scene. Hailey Gillis’s captivating performance happened at the still centre of that motion-filled world. And, in a mysterious achievement, Shields’ language seemed both of the period and the now. Read the full 12thnight review here.

Two-Headed/Half-Hearted: This new musical fable by Trevor Schmidt (book) and Kaeley Jade Wiebe (music) — “a prairie gothic song cycle of mythology and mermaids for conjoined twins” as billed —  speaks eloquently to the classic tension between the safety of belonging and the urge to break free and find your own individual self. In the beautifully designed Northern Light Theatre premiere, Venus and Juno (Wiebe and Rebecca Sadowski) presided from an atmospheric prairie altar (I thought of them as a performance art installation). And, as the year’s special achievement in ensemble playing, the twins accompanied themselves jointly from time to time on one guitar. There’s a piquant sense of humour at work in this beguiling piece, and heartbreak, too.  Read the full 12thnight review here.

Maralyn Ryan and Kristi Hansen, A Doll’s House Part 2, Wild Side Productions. Photo by Jim Guedo.

A Doll’s House Part 2: One of the most intriguing questions in theatre gets answered in this powerful, suspenseful (and funny) 2017 play by the American playwright Lucas Hnath. Eighteen years after Nora Helmer slammed the door on her marriage, her husband, and her children at the end of Henrik Ibsen’s 1878 A Doll’s House — “the door slam heard around the world” — she’s back to face the people she left. Why? And what’s she been doing? In Jim Guedo’s Wild Side production, an expert cast of four, led by Kristi Hansen as Nora and Ian Leung as Torvald, made an absorbing evening of it by giving real gave weight and force to four opposing points of view. Read the full 12thnight review here. 

Celina Dean and Mathew Hulshof in The Margin of the Sky, Teatro La Quindicina, Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

The Margin of the Sky: It’s fitting that Teatro Live’s last-ever appearance at the Fringe where the company was born should be a revival of this multi-hued 2003 ‘comedy’ about the mystery of inspiration and creation. Stewart Lemoine’s elusive play, that starts with the explosive mind-expansion of hearing a lush piece of orchestral music, follows its characters through a day of chance encounters and impulsive adventure in L.A. as a Canadian playwright (Mathew Hulshof in peak form) struggles to pen a screenplay for his soap star brother-in-law (Josh Dean). It’s an unusual combination of madcap caper and meditation on our horizons and the possibilities of expanding them. Larky and moving. Full 12thnight review here.

Weasel, U of A Studio Theatre. Photo supplied.

Weasel: The most disturbing play of the fall season didn’t have anything to do with serial killers or the ghostly undead. It was Beth Graham’s fascinating, unforgettable and, yes, horrifying exploration of the traumatizing world of theatre itself from the inside out, allegedly collaborative and in reality rigidly hierarchical. Commissioned from the notable Canadian playwright, the U of A’s Clifford E Lee playwright-in-residence, for the actors of this year’s graduating class, Weasel (both noun and verb) unravels the mysterious breakdown into panic and stage fright of an actor. It follows Charlie through theatre school, through auditions, encounters with other student actors and pros. It  takes us into rehearsals with pretentious and abusive directors, and on field trips to see other brutes in operation, including artistic directors of several sizes of company.  

The play itself could use a trim and maybe fewer subplots; it wants to flesh out every aspect of theatre for its cast of 14 (including four actors who play Charlie in a clever sort of interlocking past-present portrait). But it has a powerful reverb of lived-in  authenticity about it in Kevin Sutley’s production.

Sweeney Todd: The production by Plain Jane Theatre of Stephen Sondheim’s innovative and grisly 1979 masterwork did something experimental and bold (as is their wont). In a tiny 60-seat place (CO*LAB) they gave us a vivid small-cast (eight actors, one piano player) close-up of the musical/melodrama/operetta, set in the lunch-room of a meat packing plant. Close? We could almost smell blood. And we could feel the heat from the murderously vengeful barber in Sheldon Elter’s seething performance, with his resourceful accomplice Mrs. Lovell played zestfully by Kristi Hansen. A win for low-budget theatrical ingenuity. Read the 12thnight review here.  

Lianna Makuch in Barvinok, Toronto 2018, Pyretic Productions. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Barvinok: In the Pyretic production directed by Patrick Lundeen, Lianna Makuch’s play, set in motion by the inheritance of war-ravaged Ukrainian history — across generations, across oceans — takes on the suspenseful configurations of a mystery, a ghost story of sorts, a dream quest. A young Canadian (Makuch) travels to war-torn Ukraine on the trail of her grandmother’s secret, embedded in another time and another war. The story she traces is gathered from real-life interviews by Pyretic’s Makuch, Lundeen and Matt MacKenzie on location with “regular” Ukrainians. And its theatrical storytelling works the way memory works — across translucent windows, in bursts of action, in fragments of dialogue and images, in haunting musical riffs played by a ghostly chorus on vintage Ukrainian instruments (scored by Larissa Polo). Read the 12thnight review here. 

Dora Maar: the wicked one, Workshop West. graphic by db photographics

Dora Maar: the wicked one: In this riveting solo play, elegantly directed by Blake Brooker (it opened the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season), Beth Graham and Daniela Vlaskalic (The Drowning Girls, Comrades, Mules) explore the high price tag on artistic creation, and the dangerous magnetism of fame, power, and ego. And they do it at multi-planar angles, taking their cue from  Picasso’s Dora Maar portraits. In a performance of charismatic brio, Daniela Vlaskalic is the innovative French photographer, best known as Picasso’s lover, model, and muse, whose attraction to the seductive energy of creation proves her undoing. The actor charts Dora’s fall into darkness, in extended loops that parallel the fate of Icarus who flew too near the sun till his wax and feather wings melted. Read the full 12thnight review here.     

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

Re:Construct: This insightful, cleverly theatrical little play by Even Gilchrist (hitherto better known to Edmonton audiences as a designer) was one of the surprises of the year. It’s an insight, a de:construction, of gender and the notions of perfectibility that underpin it — a diary of self-discovery. Which makes it sound much heavier, and less funny, than it is. Re:Construct unfolds in a playful origami way as we’re welcomed to a celebration of Self (complete with cake and candles) thrown by a trans man and his idealized cis alter-ego (Émanuel Dubbeldam and Geoffrey Simon Brown, both delightful). What would it take to reinvent ourselves, and become the voice in our head? Re:Construct tells us it’s possible. And that feels so hopeful. It premiered in a production directed by Sarah J Culkin and assisted by the RISER Edmonton program. (If you missed it, you have another chance: Re:Construct will be at One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo in January). Read the full 12thnight review here. 

And there’s more. Stay tuned for The Year In Edmonton Theatre, part 2, coming up soon.  

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An update on E-town holiday shows: overcoming grinch-itude and getting festive, part 2

Posted on December 12, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

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

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Lighten up everyone. If stress and/or seasonal ennui have overtaken your festive spirit and malled it beyond recognition, it’s obvious that you need a holiday show booster. And, like sweaters with antlers and shameless pom-poms on them, holiday shows come in every size and shape in this theatre town.

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Herewith, an updated survey of some possibilities this week. 

•At the Roxy on 124th St., on the Theatre Network mainstage, the smart, high-spirited sketch comedy trio Girl Brain — Alyson Dicey, Ellie Heath and Caley Suliak — will address the peculiarities and absurdities of the season in their own riotous way. Their new show runs Friday to Sunday. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca. 

•BE Merry!, Ballet Edmonton’s annual evening of dance, music, and song (with the title that speaks volumes), returns to the Varscona Theatre stage Thursday through Saturday. The 2022 edition features dance by the company, and performances by jazz pianist Chris Andrew, vocalist Andrew MacDonald-Smith (who’s also the co-artistic director of Teatro Live!), ESO cellist Ronda Metszies and violinist Neda Yamach. The evening’s host is Ballet Edmonton executive director Sheri Somerville, a chanteuse of note herself with a resumé full of Teatro leading roles. Tickets: balletedmonton.ca or varsconatheatre. com.

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

•The Best Little Newfoundland Christmas Pageant is back for a 13th season, this edition at the Backstage Theatre. It’s the work of the the delightfully named Whizgiggling Productions, named after the Newfoundland expression that means (approvingly) “acting silly or foolish.”

The play, a stage adaptation of a much-loved Barbara Robinson novel that’s an Nfld. classic, takes us backstage at a small-town Christmas pageant. Ah yes, the volatile world of the amateur theatrical, where the fortunes of the annual town Christmas pageant are in grave doubt. Who ever suspected “the worst kids in school,” the Herdmans, would show up for the auditions? Lured by the prospect of free snacks,  they’ve muscled their way into plum roles. The storyline may baffle them completely, but they’ve nailed the spirit of ruthless competition. Will the town’s Christmas tradition survive the assault?

Tickets: TIX on the Square (tixonthesquare.ca). 

And continuing:    

•If you can’t suppress a teeny spasm of sympathy for Mr. Grinch as you slide inexorably into the figgy pudding season, there’s a show for you. Rapid Fire Theatre’s annual Yuletide musical The Blank Who Stole Christmas is both therapeutic and cathartic, in a festive sort of way. A tribute to both the Grinch and that jauntiest of rhymers Dr. Seuss. An intricate achievement in musical comedy construction, it’s both scripted and improvised. 

The gist is that a different guest improviser shows up every night, in costume, to be The Blank, a villain of their own choosing. The Rapid Fire cast of six, who’ve rehearsed their script and their moves, know nothing in advance of the identity of The Blank: a celebrity chef, perhaps, or a rock star? a cartoon personage or William Shakespeare? All will be revealed, on the night. 

The score is by Erik Mortimer, a composer/musician/musical director without whom Edmonton theatre would falter. Kate Ryan of the Plain Janes directs; Jason Hardwick choreographs. It runs at the Gateway Theatre through Dec. 17. Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com 

The benighted Ebenezer (that’s Mr. Scrooge to you) appears in two different guises this holiday season. 

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

•At the Citadel, A Christmas Carol is big, lavishly costumed, full of music (with a live band). In David van Belle’s adaptation it’s Christmas Eve, 1949. Which unlocks the whole familiar post-war songbook, It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and the rest. Not that you’d better wish Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge a Merry Christmas. He’s terrorizing the staff and the in-store Santa at Marley’s, the department store he runs, in a fury that batters everyone around him. And in the iconic role he’s inherited for the first time John Ullyatt is terrifying, and wonderful in the way he charts the tragedy and the last-minute reclamation of the man with permafrost in his heart.

Through Dec. 23. Tickets: 780-425-1820, citadeltheatre.com. Catch 12thnight’s preview interview with John Ullyatt here. And the 12thnight review here. 

It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol: a panto radio Play, Capitol Theatre. Photo supplied.

•At the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park (and then the Spotlight Cabaret), It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol: a panto radio play is a mash-up of holiday faves. A cast of four top comedy undertakes a sort of Dickensian ghost story/panto fusion in which Mr. Scrooge (Dana Andersen) shares the stage with puppets, Minions, Edmonton jokes about the continuing fiasco that is the LRT. The music is live, played by Paul Morgan Donald. See the 12thnight preview here.  

It runs through Dec 17 at Fort Edmonton (tickets: showpass.com/its-a-wonderful-christmas-carol), then Dec. 20 to 23, for brunch shows, at Spotlight Cabaret (tickets: spotlightcabaret.ca).

•Walterdale, Edmonton’s venerable community theatre, opts to raise your spirits with a classic 19th century sparkler, A Fitting Confusion by the Belle Époque French master farceur Georges Feydeau. Zack Siezmagraff, who writes farces himself, directs the high-speed 10-actor Walterdale production that runs through Dec. 17. Tickets: walterdaletheatre.com. 

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So what happens next? Die-Nasty does A Christmas Carol part 2

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

So what happens to the Cratchits, the Fezziwigs, and Old Scratch himself after that fateful make-over Christmas, anyhow? Don’t tell me the question has never crossed your mind.

Tonight at the Varscona Theatre is your only chance to find out. A Christmas Carol (Part 2) will reveal all. And since it’s entirely improvised by the Die-Nasty cast with special guests, even the actors don’t know how things will turn out. 

Will Tiny Tim, who seems to have had a major growth spurt (he’s played by lanky Tom Edwards), go to college and become a drama major? Do the Fezziwigs retire to Vancouver Island and take up organic Christmas tree farming? Does Mr. Scrooge take up ghosting himself? The future is mysterious.

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The cast features Cody Porter as the old skinflint, with Rebecca Bissonnette as the invaluable Mrs. Dilber, whose recipe for gruel is second to none. Joleen Ballendine guests as the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. Bob and Emily Cratchit are played by Jason Hardwick and Kristen Throndson. Delia Barnett is “the last Fezziwig.” And Ellen Chorley is Charles Dickens (who has a lot to account for since he never got around to writing the 10-year sequel). 

The evening at the Varscona (Die-Nasty’s first annual Holiday Fundraiser as billed) includes a silent action that includes theatre tickets. And tickets are on a variable ticket pricing system, starting at $15. They’re available at varscontheatre.com.  

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Die Harsh, a new Christmas musical satire from the Hot Boy Summer team

Posted on December 9, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

No wonder Byron Martin and Simon Abbott write musical comedies together. 

It was a partnership meant to be. In a case of extreme showbiz (and seasonal) compatibility, their favourite Christmas movie of all time is … Die Hard. And so it comes to pass, in this the season of decking the halls … Die Harsh: A Christmas Musical, the latest from the Grindstone Theatre team of musical satirists that brought the world a couple of hits, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCATS.

Their motives weren’t exactly obscure. “Something fun for a Christmas show,” says Martin of the inspiration of a year ago, while they were working on Hot Boy Summer.  “Something that would connect with our audiences.”

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

As an iconic action movie Die Hard was ripe for the plundering and mockery by ‘cheap theatre’ and a pair of artists whose muse leans into parody and black comedy. “We’re telling it from Hans Gruber’s perspective,” explains Martin of the sexy German villain role that rendered Alan Rickman free of any mortgage problems forever. Malachite Theatre’s Benjamin Blyth, an actor/director with blue-chip classical theatre cred, especially in the Shakespeare repertoire, takes on the anti-hero role, and plays Alan Rickman playing Hans Gruber. “He really understands the stakes,” says Martin, and laughs.

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Any questions about the plot? Sound familiar? Alan Rickman cum Hans Gruber leads a gang of international terrorists who seize an office tower during a Christmas party, and take hostages. And oh yeah, there’s a cop. And everyone sings Have Yourself  A Merry Little Christmas (just kidding).

Edmonton audiences haven’t seen Blyth before now in musical roles. “I do karaoke every week with him,” Martin says. “People don’t realize: that’s how you really get cast in shows!” 

Blyth’s cast-mates include Evan Dowling and Sarah Dowling, a real-life married couple playing a married couple, “a reality TV move,” as Martin allows. Mark Sinongco (the singin’/dancin’ Tyler Shandro of Hot Boy Summer), and Paul-ford Manguelle (thunderCATS) are also in the show. 

Martin and Abbott, who are in Grindstone’s weekly improvised musical The 11 O’Clock Number, create the book and the lyrics together in their collaborations. Abbott, who’s an expert keyboardist, is the composer;  Martin directs. As in Hot Boy Summer, the  music of Die Harsh deliberately isn’t confined to one certain style, as Martin describes. Hans’s intro song? Another Year Another Heist. The song list extends from vintage musical theatre rock in the vein of Sweet Transvestite from Rocky Horror to go-for-the-gusto German polka in Hans’s flashback to his first heist. There are “real heart-job rock ballads,” says Martin. “And the FBI does a cane dance.”

Martin is still amazed by the way Hot Boy Summer escalated, gathering sold-out audiences in venues that ranged from 240 seats at the Faculté St.-Jean to 350 at the Orange Hub, in runs that extended again and again. With Die Harsh his idea is to start small since he considers the show to be still in development. There’s no set, “so everything’s on the actors…. We’re improvising and seeing what sticks.” Beverly Gan of The House of Sew is designing costumes.

“It’s really silly; it’ll be interesting to see how the audience reacts,” says Martin mildly. He’s at the stage of rehearsing a comedy when directors tend to ask themselves “is this funny at all?” Of one thing he’s certain, though, and he takes it seriously. “It’s a ton of fun!”

Die Harsh: a Christmas musical opens Dec. 20 at Grindstone’s tiny bistro/ theatre home base in Old Strathcona. “A small stage, and a cast of five,” with Abbott playing keyboards live. So far it seems to be on a Hot Boy-ish roll. The opening run through Dec. 30 sold out immediately, “even before we finished writing it! Yes, it’s nerve-wracking!” Martin has already added 16 shows, including eight in the first week in January. And for some of the shows Grindstone is partnering with three local restaurants, including Biera, Boxer, and Greenhouse for an urban dinner and theatre experience.

Hey, a Christmas musical with a bona fide anti-hero. “We’ll be back, and bigger next year,” says Martin. As the Grinch and Ebenezer know, that’s how holiday traditions start.

PREVIEW

Die Harsh: a Christmas Musical

Theatre: Grindstone

Co-created by: Byron Martin and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Byron Martin

Starring: Benjamin Blyth, Evan Dowling, Sarah Dowling, Mark Sinongco, Paul-Ford Manguelle

Where: Grindstone Theatre and Bistro, 10019 81 Ave.

Running: Dec. 20 to 23, 27 to 30, and Jan. 4 to 8

Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca

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Overcoming Grinch-itude and getting festive: holiday shows on E-town stages this week

Posted on December 6, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Could this be you? “You’re a monster, Mister Grinch, Your heart’s an empty hole, Your brain is full of spiders, You have garlic in your soul….” 

If your holiday spirit has been eroded by spending time in a mall (and/or hearing that song from the Mariah Carey canon ever since your Halloween pumpkin went to the Great Composter) you need magic, and you need real music. And soon.

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Both are available this week, my friends, in a variety of permutations grand-size and small-ingenious. 

•If you can’t suppress a teeny spasm of sympathy for Mr. Grinch as you slide inexorably into the figgy pudding season, there’s a show for you. Rapid Fire Theatre’s annual Yuletide musical The Blank Who Stole Christmas is both therapeutic and cathartic, in a festive sort of way. A tribute to both the Grinch and that jauntiest of rhymers Dr. Seuss. An intricate achievement in musical comedy construction, it’s both scripted and improvised. 

The gist is that a different guest improviser shows up every night, in costume, to be The Blank, a villain of their own choosing. The Rapid Fire cast of six, who’ve rehearsed their script and their moves, know nothing in advance of the identity of The Blank: a celebrity chef, perhaps, or a rock star? a cartoon personage or William Shakespeare? All will be revealed, on the night. 

The score is by Erik Mortimer, a composer/musician/musical director without whom Edmonton theatre would falter. Kate Ryan of the Plain Janes directs; Jason Hardwick choreographs. It runs at the Gateway Theatre through Dec. 17. Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com

Lightning Cloud Presents Bear Grease, at pêhonân, Edmonton Fringe 2021. Photo supplied.

•At the Westbury Thursday through Sunday, as part of its ongoing international touring, it’s Bear Grease, an Indigenous adaptation of the iconic musical/movie that’s just back from a run at Calgary’s Grand Theatre. The run at Fringe Theatre marks the return of the co-creation by the husband-and-wife team of MC RedCloud (Evandalism) and Crystle Lightning to its point of origin in Treaty 6 territory. 

Bear Grease was the 2021 Fringe’s hottest ticket. And it’s been playing to sold-houses on both sides of the border ever since. In the immortal words, of the original, rock n’ roll is here to stay: this is the decolonized version. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

•Magician Keith Brown, whose show sold out its run at last summer’s Fringe, hits the Backstage Theatre Friday for a one-night only variety show. And he has talented showbiz friends. Keith Brown & Friends includes musician Jay Gilday, Brian’s fellow magician Jay Flair, and physical comedian/clowns Dayna Hoffman and Max Hanic. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

The benighted Ebenezer (that’s Mr. Scrooge to you) appears in two different guises this holiday season. 

•At the Citadel, A Christmas Carol is big, lavishly costumed, full of music (with a live band). In David van Belle’s adaptation it’s Christmas Eve, 1949. Which unlocks the whole familiar post-war songbook, It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of the Year, Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas and the rest. Not that you’d better wish Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge a Merry Christmas. He’s terrorizing the staff and the in-store Santa at Marley’s, the department store he runs, in a fury that batters everyone around him. And in the iconic role he’s inherited for the first time John Ullyatt is terrifying, and wonderful in the way he charts the tragedy and the last-minute reclamation of the man with permafrost in his heart.

Through Dec. 23. Tickets: 780-425-1820, citadeltheatre.com. Catch 12thnight’s preview interview with John Ullyatt here. And the 12thnight review here. 

•At the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park (and then the Spotlight Cabaret), It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol: a panto radio play is a mash-up of holiday faves. A cast of four top comedy undertakes a sort of Dickensian ghost story/panto fusion in which Mr. Scrooge (Dana Andersen) shares the stage with puppets, Minions, Edmonton jokes about the continuing fiasco that is the LRT. The music is live, played by Paul Morgan Donald. See the 12thnight preview here.  

It runs through Dec 17 at Fort Edmonton (tickets: showpass.com/its-a-wonderful-christmas-carol), then Dec. 20 to 23, for brunch shows, at Spotlight Cabaret (tickets: spotlightcabaret.ca). 30

•Walterdale, Edmonton’s venerable community theatre, opts to raise your spirits with a classic 19th century sparkler, A Fitting Confusion by the Belle Époque French master farceur Georges Feydeau. Zack Siezmagraff, who writes farces himself, directs the high-speed 10-actor Walterdale production that runs through Dec. 17. Tickets: walterdaletheatre.com. 

•If you haven’t seen The Innocence of Trees yet, there’s still time (but barely, it runs through Saturday night) and you shouldn’t blow it.  Theatre Network’s beautiful production, which opens their first full season in the new Roxy, is a fantasia, and a meditation, on art and artists. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca. See the 12thnight preview, an interview with playwright Eugene Stickland, here. And the 12thnight review here.

And next week, stay tuned, there’s more: Whizgiggling Productions brings back The Best Little Newfoundland Christmas Pageant … Ever! for its 13th seasonal outing Dec. 16 to 18 at the Backstage Theatre. Tickets: TIX on the Square (tixonthesquare.ca). And the sketch comedy trio Girl Brain is at Theatre Network’s Roxy Dec. 16 to 18. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year: A Christmas Carol at the Citadel, a review

Posted on December 2, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

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

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The ‘hap-happiest season of all,’ as the familiar song has it, can officially begin. A Christmas Carol is back onstage at the Citadel for the 23rd year.

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Daryl Cloran’s production is thrillingly big, bigger than last year’s incarnation (with a cast of nearly three dozen, including 15 kids), lavishly costumed, full of music (the live band is onstage). And when you hear John Ullyatt as Ebenezer Scrooge — making his Scroogian debut — tentatively say “joy,” like a man exercising extreme caution tasting an unfamiliar fruit in case he has to spit it out, you’ll know something that’s at the heart of Dickens’ indelible ghost story of 1843. Life’s damages take their toll; change is hard; the journey towards human interconnectedness isn’t the autobahn. 

As you’ll see again in this the deluxe fourth annual iteration of David van Belle’s cleverly idiomatic, quick-on-the-uptake post-World War II adaptation, its setting adjusts to the  contours of our moment in history. It’s Christmas Eve in 1949 a century and a continent away from the original with Mr. Scrooge as the flinty and furious boss of Marley’s department store. And like the very familiar secular holiday songbook it unlocks, it’s imbued with nostalgia for an age that’s gone (and possibly never was), “tales of the glories of Christmases long long ago,” as that catchy song has it. 

In 2020, the show song that struck us to the quick in pandemical times was the wistful Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (“if the fates allow…”). In last year’s return to live, I’ll Be Home For Christmas took on new colours, along with the notion of home. This year? The sheer bustling togetherness of The Most Wonderful Time of the Year (“There’ll be much mistletoeing/ And hearts will be glowing/ When loved ones are near ….”).  On opening night, I found the sound mix in early scenes a little band-heavy, a temporary excess of enthusiasm perhaps. But the music is used more skilfully, and judicially, than in the production’s earlier incarnations.

True, this adaptation doesn’t reach the debtor’s prison/workhouse/annihilation by starvation stakes of the Victorian original. But the entrenched inequities of the 20th century, and our own, are traumatic. And the sense of humanity struggling to find some sort of footing in the sharp crevices of the world is recognizable to us now. 

The Cratchits in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

The Cratchits are a single-parent family up against it. Post-war there’s no Bob Cratchit. Mrs. Cratchit (Alison MacDonald) is the  beleaguered store manager in Scrooge’s tyrannical grip at Marley’s. “Cratchit!” barks Scrooge, who allows that she might have a first name but doesn’t know it.  Christmas Day off? Don’t be silly. Health benefits? Forget it. Tiny Tim (the adorably grave 10-year-old Elias Martin, who knows something first-hand about living with disability) is a fragile figure, on a slippery slope to oblivion.   

One image that struck me with new force this year was the two scary children introduced by the Ghost of Christmas Present as a final warning: Want and Ignorance. In van Belle’s conception, they’re not the offspring of poverty; they’re the insatiable, vicious products of affluence — the wanting more and more, ignorance armed with a gun. It’s been a year for that. 

The central inspiration of Cloran’s stagecraft, and Cory Sincennes’ handsome design (lighted beautifully by Leigh Ann Vardy), is the revolving department store door at Marley’s. It sends characters onto the Maclab’s thrust stage and sets them in motion, into the world of post-war retail over which Mr. Scrooge presides with brute force. Since he lives over the shop, physically and metaphorically, it’s his HQ. And it’s the starting point of the ghostly intervention that will send him on a tour of his past that is a journey of last-minute redemption from solitary damnation. 

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

Ullyatt, a wonderful actor, digs into the role of Mr. Scrooge with an energetic fury that goes beyond exasperation into the realm where anger is the obverse side of pain. The musical exhortation to “be of good cheer,” a mainstay of retail practice and seasonal orthodoxy, ups the ante, but the ante was already high. “Scram! Get outta here!” he shouts at an a cappella choir, all dressed up from Victorian Christmas Carols past (like the Citadel’s hit Tom Wood adaptation of 19 seasons standing) past. “Dressed up like it’s Old-Time-y London… you look ridiculous.” 

“Wrap it up!” he hollers at the in-store Santa, in a dubious retail marketing decision based on his observation that the customers waiting in line aren’t actually shelling out for something. “Fire her!” Mr. Scrooge tells Cratchit vis-à-vis a new employee who has arranged a display that doesn’t front-rack the colour red, as required by company policy  (red increases sales by 5.4 per cent). 

“Why should I subsidize the lazy?” he snaps at two businessmen collecting Christmas money for the poor. “You don’t work you don’t eat.” 

In ways that are sometimes difficult to define, the performance has a different tone and energy from that of Ted Dykstra, who originated the role in the production’s 2019 premiere and occupied it twice more. For one thing, acid-flavoured irony isn’t its keynote. Ullyatt’s performance makes of Scrooge’s tour of his past a veritable archaeological expedition to a trapped self, through layer after layer of inflammable dust and protective granite, uncovering “consequences” (his go-to expression) as it goes. 

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

The lyrical nostalgia of White Christmas, the signature song of The Ghost of Christmas Past (hauntingly played by Lilla Solymos), is anathema to him. “Does your mother know you play with candles?” he snaps at the ghost, who wears them on her shoulders. Even his astonishment has an ashen-lipped stricken look to it when the Ghost takes him back to the abuses inflicted on his impoverished boyhood self.

Christina Nguyen (centre) in A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

The Fezziwigs’ Christmas dance party, which returns Scrooge to his Jazz Age self, is again a highlight (choreographed by Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks). Julien Arnold and Ruth Alexander as the host and hostess  pretty much define the outgoing high spirits of Christmas generosity. Even thinking about Mr. Fezziwig’s red pompadour hairdo makes me smile. And Sincennes’ costumes seem even more gorgeous, and detailed than we saw in 2021. 

It’s an irresistibly rambunctious highlight scene. And Ullyatt’s watchful Scrooge, taken aback as he is, manages a rusty semi-smile that vanishes as soon as it appears. The excellent Braydon Dowler-Coltman returns to the role of Scrooge’s younger self, Ben to his friends. He’s eager to present as ambitious and positive to Belle (Daniela Fernandez) and is nearly, but not quite, able to conceal an undercurrent of obsession about success, and money.   

The ebullient Ghost of Christmas Present, a born performer (“I don’t teach baby, it’s all show and tell”), is played with great showbiz zest and good nature by Sheldon Elter, who replaces Ullyatt this year in that role (and in an extremely festive green satin suit with red trim). 

The script has acquired a tiny resonant scene that’s a counterpart to the Act I moment when Scrooge rebuffs a lost immigrant family clutching a map and needing directions. “Learn. To. Speak. English,” he tells them. In Act II The Ghost of Christmas Present speaks to a couple of kids in their own native language. “I’m good at reminding people of home,” he says to an incredulous Scrooge, who seems equally perplexed by the ghost’s language skills and his kindness.

Is it my imagination that the script seems to have been tweaked in other ways, too, that particularly suit Ullyatt’s timing and cadence? In any case, on Scrooge’s ghost-led tours, his performance beautifully calibrates the incremental consequences of Scrooge’s choices en route to the damning knowledge of the misery he’s caused. “I don’t know what to do…. I think it’s too late.”  

And his discovery of a new self that’s been there along, buried inside the layered fortress of the old Scrooge, gives a particular bounce to the Christmas morning scenes. The possibilities of joy in generosity and human connection are giddy: you’ll see what full-body delight looks like. Scrooge, amazed by himself,  is testing his new limbs by giving gifts. “I’ll change; I am changing,” he declares. And that matched pair of verb tenses is telling. 

The little scene in which Uncle Scrooge arrives at the home of his ever-hopeful nephew Fred (Oscar Derkx) and his wife (Patricia Cerra) is wonderfully negotiated by the actors. “I didn’t know how to be part of a family,” says Scrooge finally, humbly, throwing himself on their forgiveness. 

And family, in both the domestic and the worldly sense of the larger human network, is what it’s all about. The packed opening night house understood that perfectly as they roared to their feet. 

REVIEW

A Christmas Carol

Theatre: Citadel

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

Directed by: Daryl Cloran

Starring: John Ullyatt, Julien Arnold, Ruth Alexander, Sheldon Elter, Daniela Fernandez, Alison MacDonald, Elias Martin, Oscar Derkx, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Graham Mothersill, Priya Narine, Patricia Cerra, Lilla Solymos, and ensemble

Running: through Dec. 23

Tickets: 780-425-1820, citadeltheatre.com

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A mash-up of holiday classics (with ghosts) at Fort Edmonton: It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol

Posted on November 29, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“I’m not the man I was….” 

No kidding. The flinty Mr. Scrooge gives off new sparks in the panto-radio play mash-up that opens at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park Thursday, as part of the Edmonton Christmas Market.

As the name suggests, It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol, larky in spirit, gathers an assortment of holiday classics — and, as Davina Stewart puts it, “Flintstones them.” 

She’s part of the cast of four with comedy cred — including Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald — who are joined, just for Thursday and Saturday’s performances, by special guest Kevin McDonald from Kids in the Hall.

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The hour-long show they’ve concocted for the festive season may well be the only Dickensian spinoff around in which Darth Vader is the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come. And some of the orphans who trail through the Victorian period are as likely as not to be Minions. 

McDonald, an old friend of Andersen from 2nd City days, arrives from Toronto running; “he said Yes before he knew what he was saying Yes to,” laughs Stewart. He plays all the ghosts, Past, Present, and Future, plus Bob Cratchit in the show. Andersen is the stone-hearted Ebenezer, returning to a role he first played more than two decades ago in Regina, under the direction of clown guru Michael Kennard of Mump and Smoot fame. 

House is Mrs. Cratchit. And all the little Cratchits, from Tiny Timbits on upward in age and size through Vente and Grande, are “a work-in-progress.” Morgan Donald, the musical director of Die-Nasty, plays live.

Anachronism is the lifeblood of holiday pantos, a kooky Brit tradition that tops up a familiar story with a de rigueur mishmash of local, topical references and pop culture jokes. As Stewart predicts, you can expect the news of the day will produce Elon Musk jokes, the long-running Edmonton joke of the LRT, who’s getting 500 bucks and who isn’t — you know, the cringe-y absurdities we know.  

And, to anticipate your question, there will be puppets. 

It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol runs Thursdays and Saturdays through Dec. 17 at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park. And the $25 (plus fees) tickets include entrance to the Christmas Market. Then it’s the show+brunch show at the Spotlight Cabaret Dec. 20-23. 

Tickets for the Capitol Theatre run: showpass.com/its-a-wonderful-christmas-carol. Tickets for Spotlight Cabaret: spotlightcabaret.ca.

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A new Scrooge for the Citadel’s Christmas Carol: John Ullyatt dons the pinstripes

Posted on November 28, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

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

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In a theatre town where a lavish Citadel production of A Christmas Carol isn’t just another entertainment choice but a bona fide civic tradition, “Bah, Humbug!” is by now the “to be or not to be” of the Edmonton holiday season. Instead of A Christmas Carol Theatre Calgary is doing a production of Little Women this holiday season: that just wouldn’t wash here.   

In David van Belle’s four-season-old adaptation of the indelible 1843 Dickens ghost story, opening Thursday on the Maclab stage, there’s a new Ebenezer Scrooge. 

John Ullyatt inherits the fateful line, and the dyspeptic snarl, from a distinguished line of Scrooges — starting with Ted Dykstra, who originated the role in van Belle’s 20th century adaptation, back through the 19 seasons of Tom Wood’s Victorian era version. It’s a Scroogian lineage that includes Wood himself, John Wright, Glenn Nelson, James MacDonald, Rick MacMillan, and Julien Arnold (a former Bob Cratchit). And in a similar dramatic stretch, Ullyatt steps into the shoes (and nightshirt) of the frozen-hearted misanthrope thawed by ghostly intervention on Christmas Eve, direct from playing one of Dickens’ most engagingly warm-blooded creations. 

John Ullyatt as the Ghost of Christmas Present, A Christmas Carol, Citadel Theatre 2021. Photo by Nanc Price.

For the last three editions of the $1 million Citadel production directed by Daryl Cloran, including the film version of 2020, Ullyatt has been the exuberant Ghost of Christmas Present (“and Presents”!). Which is to say, a riotous, breezy hep-cat in a green satin showstopper suit. In Tom Wood’s A Christmas Carol before that “I wasn’t a regular; I came and went from the show,” he says. Most recently he was Scrooge’s irrepressibly festive nephew Fred, who persists year after year, despite one rebuff after another, in wishing Uncle Scrooge a Merry Christmas, and pressing his luck with Happy New Year and a dinner invitation.  

One year Ullyatt played Bob Cratchit, lovable family man and victim of Victorian capitalism. One year he stepped in as Jacob Marley, the spectral chain-rattling version of Scrooge’s business partner, back from the grave with a warning.  

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

And now, in van Belle’s conception, with its post-war song-book of secular seasonal hits, Ullyatt finds himself snapping “wrap it up! at an in-store Santa. Mr. Scrooge is the ruthless, flinty boss of Marley’s department store, on a short fuse on Christmas Eve, 1949. “It’s a great gig!” says Ullyatt who’s been talking to assorted Scrooges about it. “A lot of fun. And hard! Everyone’s been really supportive and encouraging.” 

It’s a grand-sized role. “OK, I do leave the stage to go get changed,” laughs Ullyatt. “Fortunately I’m not one of those actors who needs a lot of water; I’m a camel of an actor.” 

The Scrooge of this adaptation, relocated a century ahead of Dickens, in retail and across the pond, is younger than the ossified Victorian bean-counter of Dickens’ novella. Still, Ullyatt is unusually young for Scrooge. “I haven’t done anything with my voice,” he says. “Maybe I’ll end up Grandpa Simpson. But so far, it’s just me trying to find my own way through it,” he says of a role that has often downsized Scrooge to iconic grouch. “I’m going through it the way I would any play.” 

For Ullyatt, an actor who thinks and rethinks and re-rethinks, this means dismissing any easy way through the part to let himself off the hook. Needless to say he rejects the unsatisfying simplification that Scrooge is “just a bit grumpy,” as Ullyatt puts it. This is not a case of  “having a shitty day,” and then, lo and behold, waking up on Christmas Day in a much better mood. “He’s a really nasty person, and I think he has no clue about how much misery’s he’s caused.” 

“What’s lovely about this is that there are deep-seated reasons why this man has become the way he is…. As Scrooge goes back (in time to scenes from his life) I think we can see where he lost the joy, where he lost the love, the part where he shuts himself off from the rest of the world, from love, from kindness.”

“It’s a very clear good story. No matter who’s doing it.”

“Actually I think Scrooge is unbelievably, intensely, sensitive,” Ullyatt thinks. “That’s what’s made him shut himself off. He’s grown a hard shell — to protect himself, from poverty, from having someone you love deeply be taken away from you…. And that’s what makes him so delightful at the end when he re-finds empathy and compassion for people.” 

He’s thought a lot about Scrooge the signature miser, the “tightfisted hand at the grindstone,” as Dickens put it. “One thing I’ve had to figure out is that he’s greedy not for the sake of greed (per se). He’s like a kind of Doomsday hoarder — to protect himself  from being poor, from having it taken away from him.” 

Ullyatt, in full self-critical throttle, sighs. “One of the thing that’s challenging for me is that I like being funny. Funny comes easier to me — darkly comic, that’s my thing I suppose — than being mean…. I have to challenge myself not to let my mind or body fly off and do something silly…. Discipline: it’s good for me. My bent is to be hard on myself.” 

“I see actors going for curmudgeonly laughs … an easy trap to fall into. It’s what I’m so determined not to do, not to comment on it. The point is, whatever Scrooge does comes from a deeply broken individual. I’m really feeling my way through it.” 

Ullyatt admits to missing a little the fun of playing the Ghost of Christmas Present (and wearing the green satin suit). “But watching Sheldon (Sheldon Elter, recently Sweeney Todd in the Plain Janes production of the Sondheim musical) do it is awesome. He’s so great!” The joy of that outgoing spectre is similar to Fred’s, Ullyatt thinks. And Fred is a poster boy for that feeling. “That joy in the face of such an obstacle. What a great way to live your life if you can….” 

PREVIEW

A Christmas Carol

Theatre: Citadel 

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

Directed by: Daryl Cloran

Starring: John Ullyatt, Julien Arnold, Ruth Alexander, Sheldon Elter, Daniela Fernandez, Alison MacDonald, Elias Martin, Oscar Derkx, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Graham Mothersill, Priya Narine, Patricia Cerra, Lilla Solymos, and ensemble

Running: through Dec. 23

Tickets: 780-425-1820, citadeltheatre.com 

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The Innocence of Trees, a strange and wonderful fantasia on making art, opens the new Theatre Network season. A review

Posted on November 25, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Emma Ryan and Maralyn Ryan in The Innocence of Trees, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Theatre Network mainstage is overhung with canvases, dropped at every angle, catching the light in different ways. The back wall, the horizon of the theatre, is a single canvas, and a vertical black line moves across it, searching, it seems, for the perfect dimensions of the landscape.  

It’s a stunning sight, a beautiful theatre of art — a collaboration of set designer (Briana Kolybaba), lighting designer (Even Gilchrist), and projection designer (Ian Jackson).  

Theatre Network opens their first full season at the new Roxy with with a strange and wonderful fantasia, an original meditation of sorts on art and the making of art, and the contradictions that drive the artist.  

The character at the centre of Eugene Stickland’s new play The Innocence of Trees, a TN commission years in the creating, is Agnes Martin, the Saskatchewan-born painter —  troubled in life, perplexing at times in her pronouncements, rigorously disciplined in her art — who made abstract expressionism her own. Witness her distinctive six by six-foot gridwork canvases hanging on the walls of the big New York galleries including MOMA. 

Maralyn Ryan in The Innocence of Trees, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

She is wonderfully, unflinchingly, played in all her contradictions by Maralyn Ryan in one of her most compelling performances ever. Martin, whose name you might never have heard, exists in two selves, at two ages, in The Innocence of Trees. It’s an encounter between Ryan as the older artist who struggles through the scorching fire of schizophrenia with a philosophy that puts happiness first, and the young incarnation of herself, at 10, trapped in a harsh, unlovely childhood in a bleak Saskatchewan farmyard.

That girl is played by Emma Ryan, a fine young actor (and recent U of A theatre grad) who happens to be Maralyn Ryan’s granddaughter. The lineage of Edmonton theatre can just amaze you sometimes. In Bradley Moss’s production, which creates the intricate illusion of simplicity in the most ingenious theatrical ways, theatre genealogy gives a particular frisson to glimpses of the older Agnes in the younger, a prisoner of horizons that always recede. “There’s so much out there and yet there’s nothing,” says young Agnes, chafing at her confines and the flat lines of her world. “Why doesn’t anything ever happen now?”

The older Agnes, not much given to consolation, is wry as she faces the fact that “if I thought this was a journey of recovery” — a journey towards “joy, happiness, innocence, beauty” in the past, as she says — “I was overly optimistic.” And Emma Ryan’s delicate, thoughtful performance as the younger Agnes gives us hints of that sturdy clear-sightedness to come.

And yet innocence is a notion that Martin returns to, again and again. The play is named for a famously enigmatic Agnes Martin quote about the origins of her vision (cited in Peter Schjeldahl’s 2004 New Yorker piece about her). “I happened to be thinking of the innocence of trees and then a grid came into my mind and I thought it represented innocence … so I painted it and then I was satisfied.” 

The central contradiction that playwright Stickland explores, one that makes his play mystifying and fascinating (and eminently discussable), is the artist’s own signature: the “beauty and freedom” of the grid. Which seems like a sort of tantalizing oxymoron. One of the durable inspirations of the Saskatchewan landscape? But even ocean waves, which ripple across canvases in the production, are a grid of points of light, in Martin’s vision.

Maralyn Ryan in The Innocence of Trees, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

It’s an intriguing puzzle that Martin, and Stickland’s play, present us.  The supremacy in art of intuition and feeling over intellect is Martin’s credo. And yet, grids, advised by the voices in her head, are the product of  mathematical calculations, as you see from Jackson’s projection-scape playing across the hanging canvases. I came away with a new appreciation of the tension for artists between control and inspiration.

The play, the performances, and Moss’s airy and spacious production revel in this playground of art, beautifully set forth in Kolybaba’s lovely design. Cellist Morag Northey, collaborating with Darrin Hagen, plays live over underscoring. And the sound is a rich texture of emotional riffs, sometimes harsh and jagged, woven with tiny  allusions to changes of scene. As clouds flicker across the canvases, you hear a tiny whiff of Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now or Irving Berlin’s Blue Skies. When Martin sets up her New York studio, there’s a lick or two of New York New York.   

It’s in the spirit of the play, maybe, to think about what The Innocence of Trees isn’t. It isn’t a biography, though it’s inspired by one. It’s isn’t play about child abuse or mental illness, though both figure in Martin’s story of turning to art and craving beauty. Rebuffed by a cold brute of a mother she turns inward, an orientation not without its dangers, and finds the discipline to be self-reliant and people-resistant there. It’s why she leaves New York mid-career, and why she loves the off-the-grid isolation of her remote mesa in New Mexico. “Maybe artists aren’t meant to have friends like normal people.”

I did wonder that at the outset of The Innocence of Trees about the meta- touch of having the meeting of the two selves of Agnes Martin happen across time in a theatre,  in front of an audience (“you are not my friends!”), in a play they both acknowledge. Older Agnes is waving a script. “Be careful not to deviate,” she advises Younger Agnes, who wonders why. But late in The Innocence of Trees, you’ll see the play and the production bring this home, in a strange and very moving scene.

There’s something so brave about Agnes’s unsentimental gaze, about her matter-of-fact way of facing what she sees, about her drive to create beauty from what she feels, and to hold her art unforgivingly to account for that — all captured in Maralyn Ryan’s performance. I can’t fully explain why, but it brought tears to my eyes. 

I’ll just say that as the launch for a new season in a new theatre, it could hardly be better. Theatre Network is back. 

p.s. Go early, or stay after the show to see the exhibit of David Woodman’s photography of the road trip he took with Agnes Martin. Downstairs, there’s a series, each minutely different, of Martin’s small penciled grid pieces (On A Clear Day) and a projection wall in the Lorne Cardinal Theatre.

REVIEW

The Innocence of Trees

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

Written by: Eugene Stickland

Directed by: Bradley Moss

Starring: Maralyn Ryan and Emma Ryan, with Morag Northey

Running: through Dec. 11

Tickets: 780-453-2440, theatrenetwork.ca

 

 

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