Foote in The Door is in good with Company
Foote in The Door is an Edmonton based performance collective. They are graduates of the Citadel’s Foote Theatre School (and other groups who train young people in musical theatre). Getting tired of waiting for our major companies to phone with offers of jobs, they have banded together, in the best Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney tradition, to […]
Pretty Goblins pretty awesome
Twin sisters: even in the womb, they reach out to each other, clasping hands. A wondering doctor notes that their hearts are moving to the same beat. They will be born with a closeness that few will ever feel. Innocents floating in an amniotic sea, unknowing of the horrors that will be visited upon them. […]
Infinity is the perfect amount of time
Playwright Hannah Moscovitch doesn’t dodge the big issues. Moscovitch has written with distinction and considerable heart about the Holocaust, Nazi war criminals and gender politics in modern academia. Her plays (The Russian Play/East of Berlin – and others) have been produced all over the country (including Edmonton) and she has been dubbed “the hottest young […]
Mayfield production leaves reviewer All Shook Up
All Shook Up is a hunka, hunka burnin’ love set to the music of Elvis Presley. All air-brushed, gussied up and de-sexed, the music that once drove parents to lock up their children (metaphorically, I hope) has been transmuted into a bright, easy-listening, Broadway-style pop entertainment that is a light year away from The King’s […]
PLAYBILL: Robin Hood flower
In a world premiere mix-up of the classic tale, Robin Hood is a woman, the story is by the acclaimed Edmonton playwright Mieko Ouchi, there’s music by the great Canadian songsmith Hawksley Workman, and the performers are doing aerial acrobatics. Also, Citadel Theatre artistic director Daryl Cloran is directing the show himself. It’s hard to […]
PLAYBILL: Can’t go wrong with Elvis
One of the things the Mayfield Dinner Theatre does very well is the dependable “jukebox musical.” This is due mainly to artistic director Van Wilmott – a hardcore music and gear geek, songwriter, performer, arranger and producer who’s been active in Edmonton’s music scene for at least 40 years, many of them working hard at […]
Going To St. Ives a powerful conversation
Lee Blessing is an American playwright who specializes in minimalist works with small casts that encompass such universal problems as guilt, moral responsibility, personal ethics and political attitudes. If you remember his Citadel hit from a few years ago, A Walk in the Woods, he does so in a fluid, thoughtful way that renders the […]
SLUT: Let’s talk about sex
Northern Light Theatre artistic director Trevor Schmidt announced his 2017-2018 season as three plays that explore women’s identities with regards to sexuality, religion and the Christian morality of the societies in which they had been raised. “The Virgin, the Whore and Something in Between,” was his tongue-in-cheek subtitle. The Virgin was the ultimate unspotted female, […]
Undercover best game of Clue ever
The detective story is one of the most durable of genres. The first one was Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841. Since then Sherlock survives, Agatha Christie has become a cottage industry and the world-weary Sam Spade continues to stalk the modern shamus. The latest to (metaphorically) don Bogart’s old […]
PLAYBILL: Women rule Edmonton theatre
The only thing that’s missing from the new interactive murder mystery at the Citadel Theatre is the murder. Spoiler: It’s not a real murder. Also missing is any notion that the improvisational crime thriller Undercover (A Spontaneous Theatre Creation) is going to be your usual audience-interactive murder mystery – because in the hands of the […]
The School for Scandal shockingly relevant today
The School for Scandal was written by Richard Brindsley Sheridan in 1777. As a piece of satire about Georgian-era social intrigues, it has proven to have remarkable durability and has spoken to successive generations of theatregoers about their own times. It not only probes some of society’s more outrageous and viperous self-aggrandizers, it does so […]
PLAYBILL: A new kind of high school drama
If you consider the arts a bellwether for society’s cultural disruptions, it makes perfect sense we’re lately seeing more stories about transgendered people. It is not a coincidence. It’s not an epidemic. What was hidden is now being explored. Times are changing, acceptance is the way forward, and the best method to combat ignorance and […]
