BEST OF EDMONTON THEATRE 2019: A Good Year
There were north of 15 live productions on Edmonton stages in November 2019 alone.
A highly unscientific survey of local Artistic Directors suggests that Edmonton audiences are ignoring our seemingly endless economic difficulties, and continuing to support live theatre. In short, it’s been a good year. Here are some of the highlights:
Best Production: Drama
The Skin of Our Teeth
The Bright Young Things’ lucid and inventive production makes sense of Thornton Wilder’s 77-year-old masterwork. An immortal American family (above) goes through a series of apocalypses ranging from the Ice Age to World Wars. Director David Horak’s lucid and inventive approach makes sense of a work that demands a lot from the audience. Planting his tongue firmly in his cheek, he starts off Looney Tunes and slowly turns his massive ship around to embrace a very serious message. It’s an epic, difficult piece from the adventuresome company that manages to make sense of all that dense language and opaque ideas to show the durability of that most elastic of entities – the family.
Best Production: Musical
A Christmas Carol
Daryl Cloran’s triumphant production of A Christmas Carol, set in America in the 1940s, proves that Charles Dickens characters are indeed timeless. Reinventing the Citadel’s classic 19 year production could easily have proven to be a disaster – but Cloran’s inventive, highly accessible family production, using Edmonton playwright David van Belle’s funny and heartwarming script, a lavish budget and a cast of 36, is an instant Christmas classic. The essence the original is preserved, and invokes many emotions ranging from tears to awe. There are numerous scenes that are unforgettable.
Best Performance By An Actor:
John Ullyatt in Matilda: the Musical
You usually find a Lear or Loman nominated in this area but there was a moment on an Edmonton stage last year where the stars aligned, the Earth moved and we caught an actor at one with the universe. In his tartan skirt, munificent bosom and glower that would strike fear in the stoutest of young hearts, John Ullyatt as the formidable Miss Trunchbull terrorized the kids of Cruchon Hall. In a recent interview I asked the actor what was the “runner’s high” in his long career and he admitted, “There was one point when I was throwing that child around by her pigtails when I had the thought that I’m doing everything I’ve ever wanted to do with a part.” Interesting – from an actor who has played Coriolanus, Brick, Biff and Lumiere.
Best Performance By an Actress:
Kristen Johnson in Baroness Bianka’s Bloodsongs
In director Trevor Schmidt’s tongue-in-cheek bloody cabaret, Kristen Johnson plays a real-life regal bloodsucker in a flat-out hilarious manner. The tall performer, sheathed in a form-fitting black dressed topped off with the towering film noir blond hairdo, is not one to be trifled with. She has a lovely voice and shows a real comic ability blending words and music seamlessly while creating an immediate and infectious chemistry with her audience. Runner up: Vanessa Sabourin in Northern Light’s 19 Weeks, a dramatic tour-de-force as a woman terminates a late-stage pregnancy.
Best Broadway Musical:
Come From Away
This musical tells of the selfless Newfoundlanders who opened their home to stranded travellers on 9-11; They cooked thousand of meals and tapped into the genuine warmth of the Newfound ethos. The production wore its boundless heart on its sleeve often leaving the audience in tears. The story was told with tangy, folksy music, set to a Gallic drumbeat and served up by a lively cast of 12 who speak in a bewildering number of roles and accents.
Pushing The Limits:
Flight of Mind
Heather Inglis’s Theatre Yes used the hidden areas of the Citadel (staircases, prop rooms, backstage, hallways) to stage Beth Graham’s ingenious and sometimes soaring probe into the forces that propel us to “break the surly bonds of Earth.” My favourite scene had us watching Icarus through a Citadel window, as he plunged to earth from high atop a local skyscraper.
Mr. Burns, A Post Electric Play
The play gave us a ragtag group of apocalypse survivors who take one episode of The Simpsons and trace its genesis through three generations (and on three different stages) from wispy memory to full religious spectacle. The entertaining production, complete with huge cast, from You Are Here Theatre and Blarney Productions, explores our desperate need for storytelling as a basic wellspring of civilization.
Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
Suzie Martin’s production of Alice Birch’s play at the University of Alberta is an angry, passionate and often quite funny scream of defiance against violence toward women.
Best Child Performance:
Lilla Solymos
This year a 12-year-old Edmontonian pulled off a stunning display of actorly ability. Back in February Lilla Solymos played the plucky, preternaturally composed Matilda in the Citadel production of the same name, impressively singing and dancing and more than holding her own with a bunch of older musical comedy pros. She followed that with her chilling take on Rhoda, the devil child and budding serial killer in the Teatro production of The Bad Seed; and finished off the year as the dark-eyed candle-lit ghostly waif who guides Scrooge through his past – and gets to sing a haunting version of, I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.
Best Duos:
Coralie Cairns and Nadine Chu, The Roommate
In Shadow Theatre’s production, Sharon (Cairns), lonely in her rural Iowa home, advertises for a roommate. She gets Robyn (Chu), a gay vegan slam artist poet. As the play progresses the two grow closer together in the hands of these two superlative performers.
Mathew Hulshof and Chris Pereira, Bed and Breakfast
Two likeable gay guys, Brett (Hulshof) and Drew (Pereira) from Toronto inherit an old house in small-town Ontario. In two hours these gifted actors will establish a real bond while seamlessly mutating into some 22 characters. From Theatre Network.
Marci T. House and Nicole St. Martin, Sweat
Cynthia (House) and Tracey (St. Martin) play two long-time working class buddies are torn apart by race and economic disparity in rust belt America in this Citadel production.
Best Local Play:
The Ballad of Peachtree Wood, Workshop West
Playwright Nicole Moeller finds L.A. Confidential on the mean streets of Edmonton and creates a complex, well-written crime drama.
Most Magical Production (literally):
Minerva, Queen of Handcuffs
Bradley Moss’s production of magician Ron Pearson’s play featured the incomparable Miranda Allen – an Edmonton real-life escape artist. In telling this story about the female escapologist who became Houdini’s nemesis, Moss sprinkles real performance magic throughout this highly entertaining true tale of one spunky lady who took on the magic establishment of the 1920s.
THE FRINGE:
Best Fringe Solo Performances:
Nikki Hulowski
The lovely, but self-destructive Julie (Hulowski) goes on the prowl searching for a sexual adventure in After Miss Julie.
John D. Huston
Master monologist Huston is memorably impressive in Under the Lintel, his philosophically dense one-person show.
Melanie Gall
St. Albert’s Melanie Gall is a charming narrator with the voice of a diva in this Deanna Durbin retrospective called Ingenue.
Best Fringe Duos:
Julien Arnold and Ruth Alexander
The two demonstrate that they are all that is needed to create a pub full of raucous North English patrons in Two.
Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt
These two performers demonstrate a years-long chemistry as NaturElles Flora and Fawna, a couple of very young girls fleeing into the woods to escape some “mean girls.”
Best Fringe Musical:
The Wonderous Marvelettes
Foote in the Door Productions takes us back to Grad Night 1958 and a marvellous song-filled bubble gum world of early rock, doo-wop, pop and rhythm and blues.
Best Fringe Group Effort:
Bright Young Things
Ionesco’s Theatre of the Absurd head-scratcher The Bald Soprano isn’t everyone’s plum pudding, but it’s hard to think of an Edmonton company that could deliver David Horak’s production of with any more communal brio.
Best Fringe Show:
Josephine
Remarkable performer Mishap Harris exhibits a sassy personalty, great voice, earthy sexuality and impressive stage presence.
