PLAYBOT: Polar Vortex of Chinook theatre
Now here is a hollow mockery: The biggest winter theatre festival in Edmonton is called The Chinook Series – named for the meteorological miracle of a blessed hot wind that’s nowhere in sight.
With dozens of performances taking place Feb. 7-17 in the ATB Financial Arts Barns’ theatres and other area venues, the sked for this thing reads like a mini-Fringe Festival of festivals within a festival. Just no strolling outside eating ice cream in your shorts. Not literally ice cream in your shorts, just feels like it. It’s cold out there! Stop trying to make winter fun! Stay inside!
Gemini (Feb. 8-17, Almanac) – Returning from a sold-out run at the 2017 Fringe, this two-handed dramedy deals with the fascinating relationship between a man (Vern Thiessen) and his bartender (Louise Casemore), taking place entirely in the bar. This is part of the Canoe Theatre Festival, not to be confused with the “Flying Canoe Festival,” which recently tried to make winter fun.
Glass Washrooms (Feb. 9-10, Westbury Washrooms) – OK, so this is being staged in an actual washroom: A solo autobiographical work by local trans artist NIUBOI about how public spaces can be “unnerving” for gender non-conforming people.
A Chitenge Story (Feb. 8-9, Backstage Theare, Arts Barns) – A woman (Makambe K Simamba, right) travels to her homeland of Zambia to seek revenge on the man who abused her as a child. This is part of several productions in the BAM! Series, “Black Arts Matter.”
Songs My Mother Never Sung Me (Feb. 13-17, Westbury Theatre, Arts Barns) – A family opera about a deaf mother and her hearing son – the true experience of playwright and fixture of the Edmonton music theatre community, Dave Clarke. This play is part of SOUND OFF: A Deaf Theatre Festival.
There’s lots more, most of it theatre, some of it music and dance, which can be considered theatre: including the EXPANSE dance festival taking place in the Arts Barns lobby; also progressive salons and workshops of all types.
Check the sked and plan your winter Fringe!
Lend Me a Tenor
Why tenors? Why not baritones, altos or contra-sopranos? Why is it the tenor who has become the penultimate rock star of the opera world? Maybe it’s the voice: Not too high, not too low, just right.
You’ve heard of the Three Tenors, The Canadian Tenors and an act more frightening than the nine ring-wraiths: Ten Tenors? Now we’re up for a new Mayfield Dinner Theatre show that deals with a tenor missing in action. Playing Feb. 5-March 31, Lend Me a Tenor is a dependable Broadway farce about a world-famous tenor who keels over on the very night of the big show. An attempt is made to fool the audience with a last-minute replacement, which has hilarious consequences – especially when the real tenor wakes up. Like most of these sorts of plays, the audience knows what’s going on long before the characters do.
Leave of Absence
Going away doesn’t make a problem go away – a theme explored in some sobering detail in the Walterdale Theatre’s new production, Leave of Absence, on stage Feb. 6-16. The play focuses on a teenage girl who is bullied for allegedly being gay, and of a community torn apart by dogma.
Hey, if Catholics want their own education system, they should pay for it, right? But apparently they already do, by ticking the box marked “Catholic” on their school tax form. Yet it’s becoming clear that some policies are out of step with modern times, and if something doesn’t change, a lot of people may just decide to tick the other box. It’s that simple.
All for Love
Looks like they’re hitting the classics hard over at the University of Alberta drama department. The latest foray into the distant past is this 1677 play about the love affair between Antony and Cleopatra, which as everyone knows didn’t end well. Expect both swords and sandals in this epic adventure where very few – if any – of the main characters are alive at the end. Spoiler alert.
All for Love plays Feb. 7-16 at the Timms Centre for the Arts.
Hansel & Gretel
Wait, what? This opera was written by Engelbert Humperdinck?
No, not the singer, but the 19th Century German composer who died in 1921 – and it’s so weird that the man born Arnold George Dorsey stole his name. Anyway, to be clear: There will be no renditions of Release Me or After the Lovin’ heard in the Edmonton Opera production of Hansel & Gretel, continuing at the Jubilee Auditorium Tuesday, Feb. 5 and Friday, Feb. 8. Just the lush orchestrations and operatic drama of a classic opera in a fanciful adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fable – where it doesn’t end well for the witch.
Miss Teen
Many ridiculous cases of stage-mom-gone-overboard both real and fictional are evoked in Michele Riml’s new play Miss Teen, playing until Feb. 10 at the Varscona Theatre in a Shadow Theatre production. Starring Patricia Cerra, Kristi Hansen, Emma Houghton, and Emily Howard, the story revolves around an awkward young girl who wins a local beauty pageant. Cue the mom – who figures her suddenly famous kid is going to make them all rich. And you can see where this is going. Director John Hudson says it best: It’s a “beautiful dysfunctional family comedy.”
