A friendship story, Ukrainian and Métis: Kohkom’s Babushka by playwright BFFs Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine.

Posted on September 21, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Jessica Rose, Michaela Washburnm, Cassandra Bourchier in Kohkum’s Babushka by Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine. Photo by Abigail Edwards.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

When the co-creators of Kohkom’s Babushka, one Ukrainian and the other Métis, were 12 years old, they became best friends forever. Instantly inseparable. And that lasting friendship between Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine is at the heart of their play for kids coming to the Servus Credit Union stage at La Cité francophone in a Punctuate!/Pyretic Productions collaboration before a four-stop tour to Alberta Indigenous communities.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Theatre artist BFFs: it happened in junior high, on the first day of Grade 7. Ballendine and Makuch were in the same home room class. They discovered they lived next door but one, so they walked home from school together. They watched Days Of Our Lives together after school. They watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer together on weekends.

They took drama classes together; they created their own theatre together.“We made weird little skits together and filmed them,” says Makuch. She remembers Ballendine at the playground, pretending to be French; “I backed her up, of course! ‘This is my French friend’…. We made make-believe worlds together.”

Joleen Ballendine and Lianna Makuch, co-authors of Kohkum’s Babushka. Photo supplied.

After high school they were in theatre school (the U of A) together. In their early 20s, they did Fringe shows together (like George F. Walker’s Tough), and wrote them, too (their 2013 satire Excuse Me, This Is The Truth is one). “Yup, we’ve been frequent collaborators now for over two decades!” says Makuch, whose award-winning original play archive includes Barvinok and Alina. She’s also a director (her Dora Award-winning production of Matthew McKenzie’s First Métis Man of Odesa is currently running at Theatre Calgary).

At a certain point their focal points diverged. “Lianna was doing a lot more theatre; I was doing a lot more comedy,” says Ballendine, a Rapid Fire Theatre improv star (and the company’s director of outreach), who writes for both stage and television.

With Kohkom’s Babushka, the two long-term friends have have created a show for kids (eight and older), that’s about friendship and celebrates theirs, as they explore the links between their two cultures: Makuch is Ukrainian; Ballendine is Métis.

Makuch came across the book by Saskatchewan author Marion Mutala when she was shopping for a gift for Ivan, the baby son of Punctate!’s Métis resident playwright MacKenzie and his wife Ukrainian actor Mariya Khomutova. “Here was a beautiful little book about Ivan’s history.”

Ah, inspiration! “Joleen had just had a child. And the idea of creating something for young people was really on my mind,” says Makuch. “I knew it wasn’t really my story to tell (alone). But I happen to be Ukrainian and my best friend happens to be Métis….” And writing a play for kids inspired by Mutala’s book about that was “an expression of our friendship, that turned out to be a beautiful personal exploration of our individual cultures; it set us on our own ancestral paths, both together and individually.”

Since its birth as one of the play seedlings at Concrete Theatre’s Sprouts Festival, Kohkom’s Babushka has had three different development periods, thanks to the Banff Centre, where it premiered last year. And Makuch’s cast, led by the notable Métis actor Michaela Washburn, includes recent MacEwan grads Robyn Cook and Kit Brooks, with Aidan Laudersmith.

Jessica Rose and Cassandra Bourchier in Kohkom’s Babushka by Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine. Set and lighting design: Stephanie Bahniuk. Photo by Abigail Edwards.

With the book as “a launching point,” plus the inspiration of their own friendship, the playwright duo have fashioned a theatrical story of two girls, one Ukrainian and one Métis, who are best friends, a story that takes them back to the past,” as Ballendine describes. They’ve had a falling out, and find themselves mysteriously transported back to 1892, when the first Ukrainian settlers arrived in the prairies and had a relationship, a substantial cultural connection, with Métis people.

The girls have to cooperate in order to find their way back to the present and save a cherished tree from the ax. And along the way they discover the historic intertwining of their two cultural traditions, including the signature scarves. Did you know that babushka is originally a Cree word? “Where and when did those relationships diverge. And what do we do now?” as Makush says.

For Makuch, whose Ukrainian inheritance and identity has had a powerful impact on her creative life, it’s been “an interesting time to examine what it means to be Ukrainian in Canada, what it means to be an ally as a Ukrainian person, what reconciliation looks like through a Ukrainian lens. What is our role in colonialism?” And there’s an unmistakeable alignment, too, “between Ukraine’s current (and continuing) struggle for independence and freedom against a colonial power and the Indigenous fight for justice against Western systems of oppression.… A lot of room for reflection there.”

But “Kohkom’s Babushka is a story for children: big ideas for little people!” as Makuch says. “It’s why Joleen and I felt so compelled to tell this story of reconciliation, in an accessible way, for kids…. It’s been a challenge, a really rewarding challenge.” Ballendine calls it, a “big conversation” that reveals itself through the idea of friendship. “That’s the ‘in’ for kids…. And there’s a matriarchal heartbeat too.”

PREVIEW

Kohkom’s Babushka

Theatre: Punctuate! Theatre and Pyretic Productions

Created by: Joleen Ballendine and Lianna Makuch

Directed by: Lianna Makuch

Starring: Michaela Washburn, Robyn Cook, Kit Brooks, Aidan Laudersmith

Where: Servus Credit Union Theatre at La Cité francophone, 8627 91 St.

Running: school performances Sept. 23 to 25 and Sept. 28 and 29;  public performances Sept. 26, 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., with a Métis-Ukrainian Celebration Hub including live music, dance workshops, food, vendors; Sept. 30 (in honour of National Day For Truth and Reconciliation) 1 p.m.

Tickets: https://www.punctuatetheatre.com/kohkoms-babushka

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on A friendship story, Ukrainian and Métis: Kohkom’s Babushka by playwright BFFs Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine.

The Ties That Bind: a new season at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

Posted on September 14, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Conni Massing’s Last Supper, premiering at Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre. Poster image by Dave DeGagné.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

For their upcoming 48th season, Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, devoted to the development and showcasing of the Canadian repertoire and its writers, will feature a trio of mainstage productions from veteran theatre artists with long and distinguished histories with the company: a world premiere by a star Canadian playwright, a solo memoir by and performed by another, and a Canadian classic, directed by the Workshop West founder himself.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Announced Monday from WWPT’s newly reno’ed Gateway Theatre in Strathcona, by managing director Martin Galba, the 2026-2027 lineup, dubbed The Ties That Bind, was assembled by an “interim artistic programming committee,” following the abrupt departure of artistic producer Heather Inglis after six years, at the end of this past season. .

The Workshop West season to come includes the much anticipated world premiere of Last Supper, a new “culinary caper” by multi-award-winning Edmonton playwright Conni Massing (Dead Letter, Matara, The Invention of Romance, Fresh Hell). Her ties with WWPT date back more than three decades (Dustsluts in 1992, Homesick in 2000). At the centre of the new Massing comedy is a fraught dinner encounter between a formidable and snobby restaurant critic and a disillusioned chef, a wedding caterer with dreams of a career in haute cuisine. Brian Deedrick directs a four-member ensemble that includes Belinda Cornish and Garett Ross as the critic and the chef, Jenny McKillop, and Graham Mothersill. The production runs Jan. 27 to Feb 6.

Frank Moher in Boy Player at Western Edge Theatre, and the season-opener at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. Photo froom website.

The season opens (Nov.4 to 15) with Boy Player, a solo memoir that brings the celebrated actor/playwright Frank Moher (Odd Jobs, The Third Ascent, Kidnapping the Bride, McLuhan: The Musical) back to the stage in person. The Edmonton-born Gabriola Island-based Moher tells, with music, the true, life-changing story of … Frank Moher, orphaned as a kid and suddenly relocated from Edmonton, Alberta to New York City,  where he’s rescued by discovering his true passions — for theatre and for the soul-mate who would become his wife. Moher, whose plays have been produced across the country and internationally, has a history with Workshop West that unspools back his Sterling Award-winning Prairie Report in 1988. Boy Player premiered this past spring at Western Edge Theatre in Nanaimo, a company he started in 2002, and ran till 2022.

Steven Greenfield in Billy Bishop Goes To War, directed by Gerry Potter. Poster image by Dave DeGagné

The finale of the season (May 19 to 30), is a bona fide Canadian classic: Billy Bishop Goes To War, a 1978 two-hander musical by John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson. The production we’ll see at the Gateway, starring Steven Greenfield and Cathy Derkach, is directed by Workshop West founder and first artistic director Gerry Potter, who first directed Billy Bishop for his new company in 1983, citing its importance to a new sense of cultural nationalism. He directed a revival, with the same cast, for the new Edmonton Repertory Theatre last fall.     

Workshop West’s signature Springboards New Play Festival returns (April 20 to 24) with staged readings of new plays at every stage of development, by playwrights at every level of experience. And there’s a new “Workshop Series,” happening four times in the course of the season, with a workshop and staged reading for each of four scripts curated from submissions to Workshop West’s Play Reading Service, led by dramaturg in residence Conni Massing and curated by Jessy Ardern, whose Cyrano de Bergerac at the Citadel was the hit of last season.

The Edmonton Playwrights Circle, co-presented by the U of A Drama Department, is led by the season’s playwright in residence Brad Fraser, another star playwright with long connections to Workshop West. Toronto-based Fraser is back in his hometown for the year as the U of A’s  Lee Playwright In Residence.

Behold, the bar! newly reno’ed Gateway Theatre. Photo by Martin Galba

Workshop West’s multiple programs to foster playwriting and develop the community of writers here continue, including the Indigenous Playwrights Circle led by Josh Languedoc, and #WritesOfPassage, started in 2015 by then-Workshop West artistic director Vern Thiessen to spread the word(s) amongst Edmonton high school kids.

Since 2024 all Workshop West tickets and subscriptions are pay-what-you-will, available at workshopwest.org.

  

Posted in Features, Previews | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Ties That Bind: a new season at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre

‘Ya gotta spin to win’: Rumpelstiltskin, Alberta Musical Theatre. A review

Posted on September 13, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Jayden Leung, Kohen Foley, Avery Przyswitt in Rumpelstiltskin, Alberta Musical Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, EPIC Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Ya gotta spin to win,” sings the be-sequinned hustler TV host (Jayden Leung) in the opening number of Rumpelstiltskin. And, hey, it turns out that if you’ve already got a good thing going, you gotta spin to lose, too.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

As you’ll see in Ellen Chorley’s revival of this smart, sassy little Alberta Musical Theatre Company original for kids, which premiered more than a decade ago, the musical writing team of Farren Timoteo (book and lyrics) and the late Jeff Unger (music), have a puckish, not to say subversive, relationship with the Brothers Grimm and their morbid fairy tale canon.

The Timoteo/Unger musicals for AMTC approach fairy tales obliquely, with a contemporary sense of humour, and the kind of theatrical savvy that makes them cool for the adults in the crowd too. And in Rumpelstiltskin, the kind of old-school wacky showbiz comedy — bold strokes, outsized performance energy, multiple characters in motion, fab costumes and quick changes — evidently suits AMTC’s new artistic director just fine. Chorley, the Nextfest director, an actor/playwright herself, has a kids’ theatre company (Promise Productions).

Her high-speed high-energy debut production with AMTC lands onstage at the Varscona this weekend and next, before the cast of three extremely limber young triple-threats — Leung, Kohen Foley and Avery Przyswitt — set forth on a school tour that’s so long (October to June!) it makes other theatre tours look like temporary, fly-by-night affairs, and the Von Trapps’ walking tour across the Alps look like the broad jump.

Taking their cue from the spinning of straw into gold that’s the central motif in Rumpelstiltskin, the Timoteo/Unger duo take the Grimm tale into the world of cheesy television and loony game shows. And Leo Schwesinger’s rainbow-hued set, lighted by Rae McCallum, is dominated by one of those outsized wheels of fortune where contestants spin to win big, or (oh, shucks, too bad) lose everything. Hey, it’s all about greed, needing more, and the odds against winning a pile.

Jayden Leung in Rumpelstiltskin, Alberta Musical Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, EPIC Photography

The manic huckster Skip Goldman presides, captured hilariously in a comic high-style performance by Leung. His entry through the theatre is a veritable solo pageant in self-congratulation. And Foley and Przyswitt are amusing too, as Mr. and Mrs. Miller, the perfect couple who have a perfect life that delights them perfectly, a perfect baby (he looks like a plastic doll to Skip), and complete satisfaction — until they really really don’t. As soon as Mr. Miller, who thrives on over-time and working harder than everyone else, goes to the boss to cinch a slam-dunk deal about the raise he’s been gunning for, and richly deserves, and is dead certain he’s going to get, and then, well … as a little boy sitting near me on opening night couldn’t help saying, O no!. The bank shows up immediately. And Mrs. Miller in desperation consults a goofball private detective cut from Philip Marlowe noir-esque cloth.

The performances are backed up by Logan Stefura’s eye-popping costumes, lots and lots of them (with major bow ties), and Bethany Hughes’ vintage choreography, which has all sorts of period references, in every cartoon dip and kick. And the actors are accompanied, as well, by a sort of Greek chorus of adorable, spirited kids, audience volunteers I’m thinking, who appear intermittently to lip-synch old-timey radio ads.

The script is smart and fun, full of wiseacre throwaways. And I’ve always admired the sophistication of Unger’s music for kids in that it isn’t actually “for kids”-type music. Rumpelstiltskin turns on the musical theatre axis (musical director: Cathy Derkach); it’s a bona fide 60-minute musical comedy, with a score that includes a doo-wop lullaby, G&S and Rodgers and Hammerstein pastiches — all with the benefit of an onstage pianist, Caitlin Grant.

“It’s a lot easier to appreciate winning something if you lose something first.” Skip Goldman’s advice to Mrs. Miller almost makes sense, but not quite. Try this take-away instead: the time to appreciate Alberta Musical Theatre is now, before they hit the road for months. Take a kid with you. Or not. You’ll have fun anyway.

REVIEW

Rumpelstiltskin

Theatre: Alberta Musical Theatre Company

Written by: Farren Timoteo (book and lyrics) and Jeff Unger (music)

Directed by: Ellen Chorley

Starring: Kohen Foley, Jayden Leung, Avery Przyswitt, with musician Caitlin Grant

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: Sunday, plus Sept. 19 and 20

Tickets: tickets.varsonatheatre.com

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on ‘Ya gotta spin to win’: Rumpelstiltskin, Alberta Musical Theatre. A review

A new musical for the mouthy red-haired orphan from Green Gables: Bridget Ryan’s OH, ANNE! at Theatre Network

Posted on September 12, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Emma Reynolds, Jordan Empson, Jorja Polischuk, Abby McDougall in OH< ANNE!, Carter-Ryan Theatre, photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The original musical comedy that launches the new ‘Roxy Remixed’ season at Theatre Network this week has a heroine for our Moment: optimistic, fanciful, plucky, un-squelchable.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Anne with an ‘e’, the mouthy red-haired orphan from P.E.I, emerged from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s evergreen 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, and she’s been a distinctively Canadian star ever since. And in OH, ANNE!, Bridget Ryan’s ingenious four-person musical, four early-career actors, all women, re-create Anne’s story and her Avonlea world with East Coast flavours and sounds — the music of sea shanties, traditionally a male preserve, reclaimed from the public domain.

from Coast To Coast To Coast, Jason Carter exhibition at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre. Photo by Bridget Ryan

The musical arrives to launch the new Theatre Network season from a sold-out premiere four-month run last year at Canmore’s Carter-Ryan Gallery and Live Theatre — gallery by day, 51-seat theatre by night — started and run by Ryan and the star Canadian visual artist Jason Carter, her creative and life partner. And at the Roxy, OH, ANNE! is paired with Coast To Coast To Coast, an exhibition of Carter paintings and sculptures that has an epic sweep across the country, to capture his vivid images, province by province by territory. They occupy the Roxy’s two floors of gallery, with his light-up sculptures transforming the entire Lorne Cardinal black box theatre downstairs into a magical haunted garden.   

The Battery at St. John’s Nfld., part of Coast to Coast to Coast exhibition by Jason Carter, at Theatre Network’s Roxy. Photo by Bridget Ryan.

The season-opening touch down at Theatre Network for Anne with an ‘e’ counts as a homecoming for actor/ director/ playwright Ryan, who’s from an Edmonton family of theatre artists, the kind that are not only musical theatre blue-bloods but have a tendency to start things. Consider: her sister Kate Ryan (the actor/ director/ playwright who launched Plain Jane Theatre, now the Mayfield artistic director), her mom Maralyn Ryan (the actor/director/playwright who started the St. Albert Children’s Theatre), her late great dad Tim Ryan (who founded MacEwan’s theatre arts department).

Bridget Ryan, writer and director of OH, ANNE!, opening the Theatre Network season at the Roxy. Photo supplied.

This is a long preamble to a morning coffee at Duchess to start a day of lighting cues, as Ryan explains that she moved to Canmore in 2018, after years of commuting. “When Tim passed in 2010 I started to think about legacy,” she says. And an Edmonton day job of being an exuberant supplier of inventive segments for Channel 7 Breakfast TV just didn’t seem to fit that bill.

Edmonton is where Carter, a Woodland Cree from the Little Red River Cree Nation and one of the country’s leading Indigenous painter/sculptors, took the leap, and committed to a full-time visual arts career. When he moved to Canmore in 2011 to open a gallery, his impetus, and big break, was a huge 2010 commission from Calgary International Airport. A large-scale Carter piece, with its joyful, boldly stylized, jewel colour-saturated shapes conjuring Canadian wildlife and landscapes, occupies the U.S. departure chamber, and there are Carter paintings at every gate in the airport extension, 50 in all.     

So Canmore became the Rocky Mountain locale of both a gallery of Jason Carter work and (“on a whim,” as Ryan puts it) “a little 51-seat Off-Broadway-type theatre,” of a kind she knew very well from five years in New York working for producer Richard Frankel and doing occasional cabarets in Don’t Tell Mama.

Ryan’s debut in the new theatre was a cabaret (“two-and-a-half hours long! What was I thinking!”). In 2023, the Carter-Ryan got its first play: Maralyn Ryan, directed by her daughter, starred in the stage adaptation of the Joan Didion memoir The Year of Magical Thinking. And people kept coming — an assortment, Canmore residents, people from Calgary, Canadians, Americans, tourists who visited the gallery, drawn by Carter’s appealing work, and discovered there was a theatre at the back…. “It surprises people, a ‘proper theatre’!.” Its mantra: “no space is too small to think big.”

It’s a ‘proper theatre’ that, since 2024 and an original Ryan four-hander People and Stuff (Maralyn Ryan as a woman trying to get rid of her accumulated stuff to her adult kids, who don’t want it), produces whole seasons of shows. Last fall, in another landmark in ingenuity at the “microtheatre,” Ryan directed a nine-actor production of Sondheim’s Into The Woods, with leading Edmonton actors Cody Porter and Elena Porter as the Baker and the Baker’s Wife. Ryan’s musical collaborator Morgan McKee, composer, jazz musician, musical director, keyboardist  (and “soul-mate” says Ryan), played live; “he went home and iced his hands every night.”

Maralyn Ryan has just started rehearsals in Canmore for her first musical Ain’t We Got Fun, a new Ryan musical spun from that pepper-upper ode to positivity in times that are “bum and getting bummer.”

It’s a crazy busy place, “our challenge to keep creating!” as Ryan puts it with her usual exclamation-mark good cheer, since it’s selling the art that pays for the art, at a gallery-theatre that gets no grants.

The Cheezie Musical, Carter-Ryan Theatre. Photo supplied.

Canadian stories are meat and drink to the indefatigable Ryan and Carter. This past summer, Ryan and composer McKee created another original musical, an homage with some political salt to it, The Cheezie Musical: The Unofficial Underdog Story Of How A Snack United A Nation, inspired by the quintessentially Canadian Hawkins Cheezie. Its six-week premiere run through Aug. 16 at the Carter-Ryan sold out entirely, and it has Toronto dates later this season at Factory Theatre (Edmonton, are you listening?).

“My gawd, we’ve earned their trust!” says Ryan, pausing to appreciate audiences who keep returning to check out the latest at the little theatre in Canmore. “Theatre is so humbling. I never take (the audience) for granted! It pushes us, for sure, to take (that) next risk!” And she’s enthusiastic about the chutzpah of the creative team — “not fearful to get it right,” artists who “say Yes!” to a risk that’s a cool idea. A highly entertaining raconteur, Ryan has riotous anecdotes about New York cabarets to opening-night audiences of four, including her dad, someone’s ex-boyfriend, a guy who couldn’t get a ticket to something sold out next door…. And then, you know what happened?

Jorja Polischuk, Emma Reynolds, Jordan Empson in OH, ANNE!, Carter-Ryan Gallery and Live Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Which brings us to OH, ANNE!, a new take on the Canadian classic novel, and a striking departure from the anodyne well-trod 1965 Anne of Green Gables musical that ran annually at the Charlottetown Festival till COVID and is still a staple there. The Ryan version is very different, with its small and agile cast who play all the characters, and its rollicking sea shanty score. Of a dozen songs in the show, one is a Ryan-McKee original,  The Ballad of Mary McGee, in the classic style.

The  look, too, is very different than genteel Hallmark Green Gables. Carter’s design, a stylized, timbered barn in distressed wood, with an upstage window vista of an East Coast lighthouse (a Carter original), was built entirely of genuine weathered prairie barn timber for the original production. Because the Theatre Network stage is much bigger in both width and height, Carter has redesigned his set to the new scale, tested earlier this month at a Canmore high school.

The new musical is a tribute, says Ryan, to “amazing, strong women,” both Anne with an ‘e’ and the four actors, Emma Reynolds, Abby McDougall, Jorja Polischuk, Jordan Empson who play her, and everyone else who figures in her story, Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, Diana Barry, Gilbert Blythe….  Having an all-woman cast gives authority to Anne’s story, Ryan thinks. “Her strength is all about optimism, hope, (insisting on) space. Gilbert is not the star!”

PREVIEW

OH, ANNE!

Theatre: Carter-Ryan Gallery and Live Theatre presented at Theatre Network

Written and directed by: Bridget Ryan

Starring: Jordan Empson, Emma Reynolds, Abby McDougall, Jorja Polischuk

Where: Roxy Theatre, 10709 124 St.

Running: Sept. 15 through Oct. 18

Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca 

 

Posted in Features, Previews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on A new musical for the mouthy red-haired orphan from Green Gables: Bridget Ryan’s OH, ANNE! at Theatre Network

Charm (and 32 hits from the ’60s and ’70s): The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on September 5, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Mhairi Berg, Rachel Bowron, Autumn-Joy Dames, Rachel Bowron in The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The frothy musical currently running at the Mayfield is one of those fizzy, light-headed entertainments that remind you what fun it can be to have an evening at the theatre ruled by charm. Charm and hit songs that you know, smartly arranged to show off four likeable, accomplished performers singing in close harmony, with amusing synchronized moves.

That The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, directed and choreographed with comic pizzaz by Julie Tomaino, is all-girl all the way (and involves white go-go boots) is the capper.

Forget for the evening that high school is where you got totally screwed up and stayed that way for life. It’s also where your personal party soundtrack comes from. Grease and Footloose are downright doom-laden in comparison to The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, a girl-group response of sorts to the guy-group’s Forever Plaid. It lifts off and stays air-borne, with occasional glimpses of the ground but no intention of actually landing.

It’s the fourth instalment of a (so far) five-part series of Wonderette musicals launched by Roger Bean in 2000, that takes the title girl group from the sock hop at Springfield High (“Go, Chipmunks!”) through grad to so-called adulthood, school reunions, careers, husbands, and all that. In Act 1 it’s 1969, 10 years after grad, and the Wonderettes are back together, for a retirement party in honour of their favourite home-room teacher. Miss McPherson still hasn’t finished grading five semesters worth of papers (they’re presented to a lucky audience member in a huge stack of boxes). And after 39 years of “entirely satisfactory service” she can’t get her special retirement prizes, including a free correspondence course in real estate, until she finishes.

Evidently Wonderettes creator Roger Bean spent almost no time thinking about a book to house 32 (!) hit songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s (it can’t even decide if the house has a fourth wall or not), or dialogue. And neither should you. You have better things to do (like clap, and hum, feel those dance moves in your shoulders and elbows, order a glass of wine, etc.).

Louise Duff (centre), Mhair Berg, Autumn-Joy Dames, Rachel Bowron in The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Anyhow, at the outset the Wonderettes introduce themselves (“Go, Chipmunks!”), in their signature colours, with signature personality traits. In candy pink, Cindy-Lou (Louise Duff), who’s now Cynthia if you please, is the confident one. In green, Betty-Jean (Autumn-Joy Dames) has a touch of snarky and a whiff of grievance. In blue, comical dimbulb Suzy (Rachel Bowron) misses the point and then blurts whole life chapters in a high-speed jumble. In orange, bespectacled nerd Missy (Mhairi Berg) is a bossy boots.

This is a deluxe cast. At the outset, as the actors convey, the characters are a wee bit self-conscious (a decade will do that) but game; they seem to recognize that “Go, Chipmunks” and their group choreography are just a bit goofy. But they’re prepared to be amused. They are unfazed by their popsicle-hued LOVE lollipops (in a selection of foreign languages, as they explain), whilst singing the classic “L is for the way you look at me….”).

And their life “revelations” are nicely judged by Duff, Dames, Bowron and Berg not to sink like stones instead of ice cubes in the bubbles. Suzy’s husband is kind of but not really but sort of unemployed ever since he kind of sort of got canned from the matchbox factory. Betty Jean has a no-goodnik off- and on-again boyfriend she keeps throwing out who keeps coming back. Missy now has a Band of Gold as the song goes: she’s MRS. Missy Lee, married to her idol, another Springfield teacher Mr. Lee, but has had to shelve her dream of a house with white picket-fence. Cindy-Lou, a source of friction in the friend quartet since she’s the guy magnet, has dreams of a music career in New York, and (spoiler alert) she leaves for the Big Apple just before intermission.

Why on earth am I telling you this? It’s the “story,” for heaven’s sake, which is just about the last thing you need to know to have a blast from the past at the Mayfield. Relax, the only narrative arc in The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On has to do with the entire staff and management of  Springfield High sneaking off to the Do Drop Inn to have it off with each other.

There’s a sort of jaunty glow of well-being exuded by the close four-part harmony arrangements of Michael Borth  (musical direction by the expert Jennifer McMillan), woven together in two-and-three song medleys. And it even extends to 70s ballads and odes of yearning, grievance, and dissatisfaction, like The Foundations’ Build Me Up Buttercup, when we get to Act 2, where there’s a greater proportion of solos with backups.

It’s 1978, and the 20-year reunion of the Wonderettes in the Springfield High school gymnasium with the neon proscenium (designer: Ivan Siemens). The Wonderettes, back together, are still perky, but up against it. Their psychedelic bell-bottom jumpsuits (costume design: Jessica Oostergo) are particularly cruel. And all four have discovered (or re-discovered) gaps and downsides to their relationships — namely, their guys.

Men, even the greats like Principal Varney, are such treacherous jerks. Linda Ronstadt put it better: “You’re no good you’re no good you’re no good, baby you’re no good.” They’re AWOL (or off at the Do Drop Inn). They’re not like forever friends.

The book, thin as gauze, is just kind of stuck together. So the four performers, estimable actors all, are on their own to fashion individual “characters” from bits and pieces. They do, somehow, because they’re skilled. And besides, they have an excellent five-member band to be onstage with. They deliver a huge song list with verve and bounce; the sound quality and mix (designed and operated by Harley Symington) are impeccable, as always at the Mayfield. And the songs keep coming. What fun.

REVIEW

The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre, 16615 109 AVe.

Written and created by: Roger Bean; vocal and musical arrangements by Michael Borth

Directed by: Julie Tomaino

Musical director: Jennifer McMillan

Starring: Mhairi Berg, Rachel Bowron, Autumn-Joy Dames, Louise Duff (standbys: Bella King, Layne Labbe)

Running: through Nov. 1

Tickets: mayfieldfieldtheatre.ca, 780-483-4051

Posted in Reviews | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Charm (and 32 hits from the ’60s and ’70s): The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On, at the Mayfield, a review

It’s play time in Edmonton theatres: the new season

Posted on September 4, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

The Great Gatsby, an adaptation by Erin Shields, Citadel Theatre. 2-26-2027 poster image supplied.

Popcorn Falls, Teatro Live! 2026-2027 season. Poster image supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Hey Edmonton, it’s time to come out and play!

The new theatre season is starting. And it enters buoyed by cheering news from our grand-slam summer theatre festival: the 45th annual Fringe sold a heart-lifting 142,000 tickets, on the rise since the pandemic, to its 209 shows.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

That welcome update about our enthusiasm for the live and in-person comes after another tough year of ingenuity-testing creativity and red-alert fund-raising, for Edmonton artists and companies, struggling with rising costs, frozen or reduced funding, dwindling sponsorships.

The theatre landscape in Edmonton is changing contours in a dramatic way. The new season is happening with a mass (a burst? a battalion? a flight?) of new artistic directors and producers — Lana Michelle Hughes at Shadow, Farren Timoteo at Teatro Live!, Jenna Rodgers at Theatre Network, Ellen Chorley at Alberta Musical Theatre, Brett Dahl at Concrete, Rainier Pearl-Styles at Common Ground Arts, Louise Casemore at Alberta Playwrights Network. It comes with disturbing news from venerable Workshop West Playwrights Theatre: the sudden, publicly unexplained, departure of artistic producer Heather Inglis at the end of this past season of Canadian play premieres. The announcement of an upcoming 48th Workshop West season by “an interim artistic programming committee” is coming Sept. 14.

New artistic directors, new plays (by Louise Casemore, Trevor Schmidt, Erin Shields, Alexandra Lainfiesta, and others), new musicals, new partnerships. At cash-strapped 52-year-old Theatre Network, the trio of productions in their ‘Roxy Remixed’ season (read about it here), are basically presentations of work from other theatre companies: Canmore-based Carter-Ryan Theatre (Oh, Anne!, look for a 12thnight.ca advance feature to come), Theatre Yes (an original “rock ’n’ roll panto” Jack and the Beanstalk), and SkirtsAfire Festival and Ruby Slippers Productions (Bella Luz).

There’s even a new festival — actually an old one, magically back from the Great Beyond. Fringe artistic director Murray Utas has revived Chinook Fest, the long-defunct winter theatre festival. It  returns in February, with a lineup that so far includes Michelle Thrush’s Inner Elder and Ian Coyote’s Playlist.

Speaking as we are of clues for the future, rehearsals are in progress at the Citadel for Murder On The Orient Express (opening Sept. 24). Broadway Across Canada is bringing the “Shakespeare-adjacent” West End/ Broadway hit & Juliet to the Jube (Sept 22-27).

But first, Alberta Musical Theatre, now under Chorley’s artistic directorship, brings Rumpelstiltskin, pre-tour, to the Varscona for two weekends (Sept. 11 to 13 and Sept. 19 and 20).  And the new season starts this very week, with Kate Ryan’s  production of the musical The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On at the Mayfield, directed by Julie Tomaino. Check out the rest of the Mayfield season in the 12thnight preview here.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetite, here are a dozen (OK, a baker’s dozen) intriguing prospects to consider for the upcoming season, in no particular order.

Yaga by Kat Sandler, the upcoming Shadow Theatre season-opener. Graphic supplied.

Yaga. The Canadian playwriting star Kat Sandler (The Candidate, The Party, Wildwoman, Punch Up), whose muse runs to funny, dark comedy, re-imagines, as a witty feminist horror thriller, the misogynist folk mythology of the wicked old crone who lives in a hut with chicken legs. Lana Michelle Hughes’ Shadow Theatre production launches her first season as artistic director (Oct. 14 to Nov. 1).  Check out the rest of Hughes’ Shadow season in the 12thnight preview here.

The Extractionist. The heroine of this 2021 “neon-noir thriller” by Calgary-based playwright Michaela Jeffery (WROL, The Listening Room) is an experienced extractionist” (nothing to do with dentistry, thank god!). She extracts desperate people out of cults and de-programs them. Which is the portal into a shadow world of powerful, dangerous manipulators, a fascinating, shivery premise. And The  Extractionist will have two Edmonton theatre productions this season, one at the U of A’s Studio Theatre (Dec. 3 to 12) and the other at Walterdale, Edmonton’s venerable community theatre (April 21 to May 1).

Popcorn Falls. How can you not warm to a play in which live theatre, careening through the intersection where egos collide, saves the day? In James Hinton’s Off-Broadway comedy, re-located to Alberta, a town on the skids can only be rescued from oblivion by putting on a play. Hey, it could happen. And here’s fun: everyone in town is played by two actors, Teatro Live!’s new artistic director Farren Timoteo and Garett Ross. Ryan Parker, a top-drawer comic actor and theatre photographer, makes his directing debut in the Teatro Live! production (Feb. 18 to March 7) at the Varscona. Check out Timoteo’s whole Teatro season in the 12thnight preview  here.

Bella Luz by Alexandra Lainfiesta, a SkirtsAfire Fest/ Ruby Slippers co-production presented in association with Theatre Network. Image by Brianne Jang.

Bella Luz. This new play by Guatemalan actor/playwright Alexandra Lainfiesta is set in Canada, in Guatemala, and in a psychedelic game show world where the prize is … permanent residency. Fantasy and magic realism mingle in an unstable world where home is an elusive shangri-la. Theatre Network’s new artistic director Jenna Rodgers directs a cast of five  in the SkirtsAfire Festival/ Ruby Slippers production that runs at the Roxy Theatre March 4 to 14. Lainfiesta is clearly an artist on a roll: her bilingual solo play Chula, premieres in the Citadel’s HighWire Series April 17 to May 9. Read about Rodgers and her whole Theatre Network season in the 12thnight preview here.

The Great Gatsby. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great Jazz Age novel, hauntingly tragic, has found its way before now into plays, films, television series, musicals, an opera, a video game — and has often lost its heart there, in empty spectacle. Now the Citadel has unleashed the impressive theatrical pizzaz and savvy of Canadian playwright Erin Shield — an expert on adapting classics through a contemporary feminist glass (Jane Eyre, Ransacking Troy, Queen Lear) — on a new stage version. And Daryl Cloran’s premiere production (Oct. 31 to Nov. 22) promises a theatrical splash: Jay Gatsby’s glittering champagne bash, and a live onstage jazz band. Check out the entire Citadel season in the 12thnight preview here.

i am your spaniel; or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson. Common Ground Arts, Prairie Mainstage Series. Image supplied

i am your spaniel; or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gillian Patterson. The second offering in Common Ground Arts’ Prairie MainStage Series (April 29 to May 7), from Winnipeg’s hot We Quit Theatre duo (“We love to quit. We always do, and never will.”), is the season’s only “drag performance lecture.” It may claim exclusive proprietorship of a hitherto unoccupied niche in Shakespearean scholarship (and Canadian theatre). This begins in textual analysis of Shakespeare’s First Folio manuscript of Shakespeare’s most widely performed comedy, and moves right along to such theatrical accoutrements as found object puppetry, original music, and “reenactments.” Tantalizing, right?

Undressed by Louise Casemore, Shadow Theatre upcoming. Graphic supplied

Undressed. The concept of this multiple-character solo creation  (finally onstage here, March 17 to April 4 in the Shadow Theatre season) is nothing if not evocative. The adventurous theatre artist Louise Casemore (OCD, Lucky Charm), who thrives on audiences interaction, has created an onstage auction of used wedding dresses (heart-stabbing price tags, lace overlay of memories). And she transforms into the people who wore them.

Jack and the Beanstalk. Edmonton used to have pantos, annual iterations of one of Britain’s looniest, most riotous exports (at least as mad as Marmite, Fawlty Towers, and Twiglets). Now, at long last, we again have one to call our own, a “Canada’s first rock ‘n’ roll pantomime,” thanks to Theatre Yes’s Ruth Alexander and Nikki Hulowski, and Theatre Network where Jack and the Beanstalk hits the stage Nov. 29 to Dec. 20, crammed with sneaky local references, terrible puns, and an open invitation for the audience to hoot and holler. And there’s this: the eight actor/musicians in the cast actually play all the instruments, from a 22-song jukebox that starts in the ‘70s and moves on to the present. Check out the entire Theatre Network season here.

The Glittering Heart, revived in the 2026-27 Teatro Live! season. Poster image supplied.

The Glittering Heart. Teatro Live!’s 45th anniversary season includes a comedy by resident playwright Stewart Lemoine that had a brief premiere run at the Fringe 36 summers ago — and has never been revived, till now (May 27 to June 13). The startling, empowering weirdness of its premise, a journey of self-discovery, is still striking. Over dinner one night in 1959, a Winnipeg wife announces to her husband she’s leaving him to move to Venice and live an extraordinary life. The characters include a famous opera singer and a conductor. And Lemoine’s four-member cast includes veteran Teatro stars Belinda Cornish and Mathew Hulshof, with new(ish)comers Bella King and Aidan Laudersmith. Check out the entire Teatro Live! season here.

Émanuel Dubbeldam and Michael Watt in Milked by Simon Longman, Northern Light Theatre. Photo supplied

Milked. What makes this 2015 play by the English writer Simon Longman  the most intriguingly unexpected offering in Northern Light Theatre’s upcoming 51st season? Milked is rural, for one thing, and it involves a dying cow in a field, for another. Two best friends, adrift in their early 20s, are stalled, struggling to find a foothold (or launch a career, or find a job). And now they have a more immediate crisis. Trevor Schmidt’s production (the North American premiere by the way, which Schmidt re-locates to the countryside near Red Deer) stars two of Edmonton’s hottest young actors Émanuel Dubbeldam and Michael Watt. Check out the rest of the Northern Light season in this 12thnight preview here.

Fun Home, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Poster image supplied.

Fun Home. NUOVA Vocal Arts, dedicated to training and showcasing emerging Canadian artists alongside experienced pros, tackles the beautifully off-centre and humane, moving and funny musical, based on the best-selling graphic novel memoir by American cartoonist Alison Bechdel. A 43-year-old revisits her past, her younger selves and her family, and makes discoveries about her father (played by the charismatic Doug Mertz) and her own sexuality. Benjamin Smith’s production (musical director Simon Abbott) at the Westbury Theatre in the Fringe Arts Barns, gets four performances Oct. 1 to 4.

Emma, starring Dayna Lea Hoffmann, premiering in the 2026-27 Teatro Live! season. Poster image supplied

Edmonton loves Jane. Witness a veritable outbreak of Jane Austen adaptations this season. At the Citadel, Daryl Cloran collaborates with actor/playwright Jessica B. Hill, who starred in Cloran’s playfully theatrical Stratford production last summer of  Sense and Sensibility (an adaptation by American playwright Kate Hamill). Cloran and Hill have co-created their own six-actor  adaptation of Austen’s first novel. Teatro Live! has commissioned a six-actor adaptation of Austen’s 1816 sharp-eyed sparkler Emma from Calgary-based Camille Pavlenko. Dayna Lea Hoffmann stars in Farren Timoteo’s production July 8 to 25. At Concordia University, it’s Katherine Koller’s original adaptation of Persuasion Nov. 5 to 8. At Walterdale Dec. 2 to 12, it’s an extrapolation from Pride and Prejudice, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley.

And, wait … MacEwan Theatre Arts revisits the signature Catalyst musical Hunchback (originally commissioned by the Citadel in 2011) with its wildly imaginative, boldly physical storytelling of Victor Hugo’s Romantic Gothic doorstopper. Jonathan Christenson returns to his creation to direct (Nov. 25 to 29).

Posted in Features, Previews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s play time in Edmonton theatres: the new season

SWAN? returns home, to the festival where it hatched, to celebrate its hundredth performance

Posted on August 27, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Lauren Brady in SWAN?, Bad Knees Studios. Photo by Jeol Sims.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

SWAN? has flown the world.  Lauren Brady’s dark bouffon/ballet clown comedy has alighted at the world’s biggest fringe festivals, in Edinburgh and Adelaide, twice, and won awards from the High Commission of Canada and the Beaverbrook Canadian Foundation.  The show has pirouetted to ovations at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

And now, for one night only Saturday at Rapid Fire Theatre, SWAN? is coming home, to the festival where it first became a hit. In the end, it’s a story of Fringe empowerment, its YES to renegade creative talents. Brady’s unique en pointe creation, the raunchy chain-smoking ballerina-clown who engages the audience to step up, be a romantic hero, and rescue the ‘damsel’ in distress from her curse, is an ultimate Fringe Hold-Over:  Saturday’s show at the Exchange Theatre is its 100th performance.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

And it’s a finale of sorts too. “My plan is to retire the show from the international festival circuit,” says Brady, whose new clown two-hander Gerald premiered at the Fringe just past, in the Mile Zero BYOV. The future, she hopes, is engagements in theatres in Canada and abroad, and SWAN! will fly away soon to New Zealand.

Clowns, much less clown theatre, never figured in Brady’s plans growing up in Calgary. As a kid she was full-on into ballet, and her dreams were ballerina dreams. “Until Grade 12, every day after school, I’d go to the studio 4 to 10 p.m. And then wake up and go to school.” After that, she got a gig as a dancer, touring with the Calgary Stampede Show Band. And I got to travel the world with them. It was a lot of fun.”

She applied to universities for placements in different disciplines. “I needed a break from dance,” she says. “On a whim” she applied to the University of Calgary’s drama department. “And I ended up loving it.”

A BFA in acting at the U of A followed. Her class graduated during COVID in 2021, “and I got a couple of gigs, but I knew I wanted to make stuff.” Music to the ears of U of A’ professor, star clown and clown mentor Michael Kennard, the Mump of Mump and Smoot fame. Brady made an appearance, in full spectral getup, in Mump and Smoot in Exit, which premiered at Theatre Network in 2024. And SWAN?, she says, has something of the same darkly comic bouffon vibe as Kennard and his stage cohort John Turner, and director Karen Hines (creator of the memorably macabre clown character Pochsy), embrace in their work.

In 2023 The immediate result of Brady’s new fascination with clowning was her first solo show @interWEBBED, directed by Kennard and coached by Karen Hines, in which we see the elaborate absurdities of the world of tech through the eyes of Brady’s addled clown character.

Lauren Brady in SWAN?, photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Its downside was that it was way too complicated — a three-technician set-up — to take on the road. The following year Owe-a-Debt premiered at the Edmonton Fringe. “I wanted a show I could teach a technician in under an hour, and it would fit into suitcase,” says Brady. “The biggest feedback I got from managers and producers was that the name was too clever, and that was why I was getting small houses.”

That’s when Brady re-christened OWE-a-DEBT (a witty take on the name Odette, the tragic princess in Swan Lake who’s been turned into a swan by a sorcerer’s curse). The following year, re-named SWAN?, its entire Adelaide run sold out, and the show was held over. Six scouts from Edinburgh arrived to see the show, and in 2025 it ran at the Underbelly, one of the Fringe’s high-profile curated venues.

SWAN? brings together two of Brady’s greatest artistic loves, ballet and clowning, by exploring a what-if? premise. What would happen if Odette doesn’t die at the end of Swan Lake, but has been trapped for 180 years in the world of the curse, waiting around for for an ultimate romantic partner to change her, make her complete, by declaring true love?

Brady was intrigued by the feminist possibilities of turning a romantic tragedy into a funny, provocative, dark rom-com. “At first I was so scared of audience interaction,” she says of her funny, bold, fearless overtures to audiences, as the character looks for her hero. “But I challenged myself!”

SWAN? runs Saturday, 9 p.m. at Rapid Fire’s Exchange Theatre. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

Posted in Previews | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on SWAN? returns home, to the festival where it hatched, to celebrate its hundredth performance

It’s a record-breaker! The curtain comes down on Fringe Unforgettable, the 45th annual edition of our big crazy summer theatre festival

Posted on August 23, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

After 11 days and nights Fringe Unforgettable, the 45th annual edition of our big insomniac summer theatre binge, will exit the stage (all 38 of its stages, to be precise) Sunday night.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

And it will take its curtain call as a multiple record-breaker. As of Sunday noon, with an afternoon and evening’s worth of shows still to come, this year’s Fringe had sold some 142,000-plus tickets to its 209 indoor shows (which broke its own post-pandemic ticket record of 140,000 tickets last summer). And this sunny news from the box office is accompanied by additional glad tidings: a record 550 sold-out performances, with 24 shows that sold out their entire Fringe runs (up from 2025’s 16).

The gods, who had sent punishing weather our way all summer long, relented (a Sea Change perhaps?). And Edmontonians embraced summer in a big way: the 825,000 site visits were a record-buster, and the free KidsFringe in Light Horse Park is likely to report attendance way up from last year’s 14,000.    

The news that gladdens the heart of Fringe Theatre’s executive director Megan Dart most of all perhaps is the record-breaking $1.53 million (and counting) that Fringe artists will be taking home, up from last year’s $1.49 million. And since the 2026 show count of 209 was slightly down from last year’s 221, it will be dispersed amongst fewer shows.    

The slight reduction in the number of shows this year, 209 down from 221, wasn’t a deliberate move. “It just happened,” says Dart. After all, a lot of Fringe theatre happens in BYOVs acquired and outfitted by artists themselves. But a show count between 210 and 220, give or take, is a “comfortable fit for us,” she says, “with our staff and volunteer complements.” Ah, and funding constraints, which include “city funding that’s remained stagnant for a decade.”

As she put it, “we want the artist experience to be exceptional, and the audience experience to be exceptional too.”

The prevailing principle shared by Dart and Fringe artistic director Murray Utas is “to sustain what’s good before we grow.” Sustainable growth includes caution about adding an official Fringe venue to the Fringe’s roster of 10 (at a cost of about $15,000 each), which house nine productions each, programmed by lottery (the rest are in BYOVs, venues acquired and outfitted by artists themselves).

There were 533 applications for those 90 Fringe slots this year, Dart reports.

“But  “we’ve been very intentional,” she says, about growth that doesn’t outpace audiences, or Fringe infrastructure, both human and financial. She and Utas have focused on “audience engagement, to make sure artists are getting audiences. So we’ve invested a lot of strategy and resources to reaching out to first-time Fringe goers” via such initiatives as  itineraries and Fringe tours.

Like Utas, Dart is an artist and theatre-maker herself. And she’s confident about the live theatre effect. “We know it can seem overwhelming; that 209 (count) can seem very daunting. But once someone sees their first show, they’ll be back to see three, or four, or five. And the next year, they’re a pass-holder!” And, she adds, “we’ve had an uptake in first-time Fringe ticket buyers this year.”

This week, organizers from Fringes across the country, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, plus Orlando) visited Edmonton’s Fringe, the oldest and biggest on the continent and a prototype for the rest. Dart reports that “they were struck by the incredible vibrancy of the theatre community here.” As one of them observed, “each Fringe Festival responds to the needs (and personalities) of the town where they are; you couldn’t just lift a Fringe from one place and set it down in another.”

Ours is “unique to our community,” Dart points out. This is a theatre town, and “the indie heart of this theatre community is what keeps this Fringe alive.” And the record-breaking tally of sold-out performances testifies that artists are finding their audiences.” The Fringe is “an affordable entry point for an audience.” And that audience has learned at the Fringe, a festival “that is by its very nature experimental.” It’s one reason Fringe Theatre has renamed its black box studio theatre the Brian Paisley Theatre Lab,” lab in honour of the Fringe founder whose zest for experimental art and artists never wavered.

Erika MacDonald: Tea TIME, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

And despite it all, the biggest of the Fringes has retained its appeal for artists taking a chance, trying something a new idea. Erika MacDonald, for example, an artist from Kentucky who’s been coming to Edmonton for more than a decade, is back again, with a ’new to Canada’, and risky, solo show. TeaTIME, she says, is “not really a comedy, though it starts very Up and very funny. And it’s not clown, not really, and not really storytelling either…. It’s the most audience participatory show I’ve ever done…. And the timing is really challenging,” synchronized as it is to making a cup of tea onstage, the boiling of the water, the steeping, the pouring, the cooling enough to drink. She finds “an adventurousness” in the Fringe audiences here, a willing to try  “off-traditional off-kilter shows.” Hers, she says, “has grown up a bit during the run.”

Shrute and Tungsta, Dirty Fish Theatre. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

One of the sleeper hits of the Fringe is the riotous two hander Shrute and Tungsta, whose characters are a pair of provocative German performance artistes in the bathroom of a big Berlin techno club. They test at every turn the audience’s nerve and willingness to take a risk in deliberate confrontations. Aidan Collins, who co-stars with Harper Oud, says the show run twice before before the Fringe, both times in public bathrooms, with the audience crowded into the stalls. The Fringe is the first time they’ve tried producing an unconventional show in a conventional theatre space, its own kind of challenge. And audiences have been loving it. “I think the days of passively sitting and watching a theatre show are ending. Audiences enjoy stimulation (no pun intended).”

On Saturday, I went to see a genuinely experimental half-scripted half-improvised show that takes the Fringe up on its claim that everyone has a story to tell. For PLAYS BY [BLANKS], director Joe Vanderhelm changed course from his PLAYS BY BOTS in the past. He’d used Dramabot in the past, “when AI was still fun,” to write half a script, with Rapid Fire improvisers making up the rest. Now that AI has terrorized the world, he’s unplugged AI and  enlisted “everyday people,” as opposed to career playwrights, people like his mom and his neighbour across the script, to write a script. On Saturday it was nine-year-old Alice, whose smart, funny comedy Video Game, taken over by an international quartet of improv stars half way through, was a big hit with a packed house. The sight of RFT artistic director Matt Schuurman as a tap-dancing dog in a banana suit, as required by Alice’s stage directions, will not soon be forgotten by anyone present. In its origins, the whole Fringe was an improv experiment, after all.

Time to sign off on this year’s edition (except for the Fringe holdovers that extend the fun, read about them on 12thnight here). It’s the surprises of the Fringe adventure that keep us coming back.   

Posted in Fringe 2026, News/Views | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on It’s a record-breaker! The curtain comes down on Fringe Unforgettable, the 45th annual edition of our big crazy summer theatre festival

Tips for your final weekend fling with Fringe Unforgettable

Posted on August 22, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Gnomon’s Land, Staged Theatre Productions. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Fringe Unforgettable goes into its final weekend with news as sunny as the weather’s supposed to be. Mid-week, the 45th annual edition of our mighty summer theatre bash had sold 4,500 more tickets to its 209 indoor shows than at the same point in the festivities last year — more than 130,000 so far, with a full weekend of fringing still to come. By closing night Sunday, when the the festival exits its 38 stages, the Fringe Unforgettable ticket tally will almost certainly surpass last summer’s 140,000-plus.

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Meanwhile there are still lots of theatrical experiences awaiting you for your last weekend at the continent’s oldest and largest fringe. What to see? Have a gander at the 12thnight.ca reviews collected under the heading Fringe 2026.  And consider this handful of suggestions for your weekend’s grand finale menu.

Ramneek Singh, creator and star of The Butter Chicken Odyssey, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied.

A memoir that turns into a true story with a heartwarming arc. In The Butter Chicken Odyssey, valiant food writer Ramneet Singh tells us of his epic quest through 50 of Edmonton’s butter chicken establishments to find the best. What he re-discovers in the course of this X-treme culinary (and digestive) challenge, are his Punjabi family roots, his culture, his sense of self. And what we discover at the Fringe is a an engaging and funny storyteller and a great theatre performer. Read the 12thnight review here.

No need to send in the clowns. They’re here. They come in all shapes and sizes (red noses optional) at the Fringe. They go grocery shopping (Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS) or arrive as corporate recruiters (Gerald). My favourites are the four playful clowns of Gnomon’s Land, who create characters to populate, with great precision, situations like bars or kids’ birthday parties, in a cleverly produced show (directed by Grace Fitzgerald). And there’s an audacious, and infinitely touching, finale moment of actors playing clown characters who find themselves watching themselves — as real live humans, growing up in a scrapbook of time.

A mysterious two-hander: In Being Norwegian, a little gem by the Scottish playwriting star David Greig, two solitary strangers —both somehow off the human grid, both carrying unpacked baggage of secrets — reach out, tentatively, in an apartment above a nighttime city. Exceptional performances from Cody Porter and Clarice Eckford. Read the 12thnight review here.

Cody Porter and Clarice Eckford in Being Norwegian, Trunk Theatre. Photo supplied.

Who would even think of this? part 1. The irresistibly bonkers premise of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ROBOCOP The Musical is a deluxe case. And it’s on a scale rarely seen at the Fringe: big sound, big song-and-dance numbers, lush songs from the sacred R&H canon with re-jigged lyrics, “how do you solve a problem like the crime rate?” Somehow a story kind of takes shape: yup, cops are nuns. And Andrew Boyd, a co-creator with director Lauren Boyd, bursts into song with one of those big lustrous voices that knocks you back in your seat. Crack cocaine for musical theatre junkies. Read the 12thnight review here.

Who would even think of this? part 2. Go local or .. oh wait, it’s already home. Beach to the Future: The Accidental Beach End Game, is the lunatic grand finale to Grindstone’s trilogy of original musicals inspired by Edmonton’s wacky come-and-go possibly toxic riverside Riviera and written by a team of the company’s musical theatre-soaked improv artists. It’s hilariously unsparing about the absurdities of Our Town. And catchy original songs, by Simon Abbott and Erik Mortimer, an impressive assortment of rock, pop, and rap pastiches, transcend the river sludge that’s turned a generation into lizards. Whaat? With comic performances that have a crazy go-for-the-gusto to match. Read the 12thnight review here.

Reimagining musicals, part 1. The Fringe is fertile ground for this. Don’t miss this rare chance to see Ghost Quartet, Dave Malloy’s haunting ‘musical’ of ghostly songs and dances, ghost stories that seem to float by, in and out of the past, without ending. And Jim Guedo’s production, with four actors who sing, and pick up a wild assortment of instruments to play, invites us into a beautifully atmospheric lamp-lit bar in a venue, the airy brick and wood vault of the ArtsHub Ortona, that’s part of the show. A return to the original site-specific inspiration of the Fringe BYOV (bring-your-own-venue). Read the 12thnight review here.

35mm: a musical exhibition, Uniform Theatre at Fringe 2026. Photo by Brianne Jang

Reimagining musicals, part 2. Ghost Quartet’s companion at the ArtsHub Ortona is an original, too. 35mm: A Musical Exhibition is a musical whose “libretto,” so to speak, is a succession of photographs that capture a moment that could be part of an ongoing urban story, or the dénouement, or the prequel. A marriage of a visual image and a song, fascinating and elusive. And the storytelling belongs to you. What kind of musical does that? Read the 12thnight review of the Uniform Theatre production here.

Reimagining musicals, part 3. With the stunning 650 Light Years Away, which flies off musical theatre shackles, up up and away, Andrea House teams up again with the superb jazz musician/composer Chris Andrew and bassist Rubim de Toledo. And in an entirely original kind of rhymed rap, jazz, blues, rock that turns her witty poetry into song, actor/playwright/singer-songwriter House sings us a personal open-ended story. It ventures into the vast unknown, past and future, but its funny references are particular and local — the sky over Elk Island, the pirate ship at the mall…. It’s enough to make you dizzy. Read the 12thnight review here.

The Shape of Seamen: a new comic opera, with Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt. Photo supplied

Reimagining musicals, part 4. No one saw this one coming. Jaquelin Walters’ The Shape of Seamen, the love story (and ensuing relationship difficulties) of a sailor and a mermaid, appealing played by Nicole Maloney and Michael Watt, is an original musical entirely in clever, jaunty rhyming couplets à la Gilbert and Sullivan, with live music by two fish. Must be something in the water. Read the 12thnight review here.

Tell us a story. As always, the Fringe attracts a top international galley of storytellers, including New York’s Martin Dockery, Kentucky’s Paul Strickland, Erika McDonald, Vancouver’s Candy Roberts who have the uncanny ability, as both writers and engaging performers, to turn stories into theatrical experiences. Seanchai, by first-time playwright Gavin Bradley, is a play that’s a story that’s about the telling of stories — the ancient traditional stories that bond generations through time. Susan Sneath makes a welcome return to the stage as the title Irish storyteller, retired, who’s losing her memory, and her purchase on the details. She’s visited by a young aspirant (Mark Guerrero) in search of a mentor. And together, as they re-tell the off-told Irish tales, age and infirmity and the limitations of youth fall away.

Shrute and Tungsta, Dirty Fish Theatre. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

Go weird or go home. The experimental spirit, whose demise is oft foretold by Fringe seers, isn’t actually dead, my finger friends. It’s just in the bathroom. That’s where Shrute and Tungsta, a somewhat forlorn pair of German performance artistes are hanging out, backstage in a famous Berlin techno club. Harper Oud and Aidan Collins are a study in contrasts, and this very funny duo has had the inspiration of being sexy retro-avantgardistes (is that even a word?), deliberate provokers of the audience, purveyors of sneery non-sequiturs, gross selfie footage, and all. Shrute and Tungsta are career agents provocateurs; don’t tell them, but their show is f-u-n. Read the 12thnight review here.

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in In My Room, Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

Kooky and charming, and unclassifiable. Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin, two rising theatre stars in this theatre town, have paired up on an appealing sort of chamber cabaret where the chamber is Eli’s bed, which he hasn’t left in three weeks. He’s in hiding from a world that’s bad and getting badder all the time. And he’s all alone — except of course for the musical theatre repertoire, a personal assistant who’s a good singer like he is, a personal live-in accompanist, and a microphone. A shameless (and ingenious) excuse for all concerned to stay in pjs all Fringe long. It’s funny too. Read the 12thnight review here.

Big, blistering performances. The Fringe always has some, and here are a couple: Zachary Parsons-Lozinski in the 30th anniversary revival of The Edmonton Queen. Andrea House as Mae West in Go West, Young Man.

Sarah Ivanco in A Sexy Pigeon Show, The Lighter Touch Art Collective at Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

And guest 12thnight Fringe reviewer Fawnda Mithrush has some favourites, too, that  are running this weekend: check out The Beanstalk Market Crash, Erika MacDonald’s Tea TIME, and A Sexy Pigeon Show.

And, hey, if you’re foiled by Sold Out signs, Fringe Unforgettable continues next week with holdovers, at Fringe Theatre’s Westbury Theatre, the Varscona, and Rapid Fire Theatre. Read about them here. The Grindstone does hold-overs, too. Check out their lineup, in progress so far, here.

Posted in Features, Fringe 2026 | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tips for your final weekend fling with Fringe Unforgettable

And this just in … update on Fringe holdovers, in four locations including Grindstone Comedy Theatre

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Battle of the Genres: an improvised mashup, The Kinkonauts. Fringe 2026. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The might-have-seen wistfulness that always accompanies the end of the Fringe (which comes Sunday night) is giving you some relief next week. As already announced (read about it here), some of the Fringe’s hot-ticket shows will be held over in three venues, Fringe Theatre‘s Westbury in the Arts Barns, the Varscona, and Rapid Fire Exchange Theatre. And now there’s a fourth locale, Grindstone Comedy Theatre.

Update on the update on the Grindstone holdover series lineup Wednesday Aug. 26 to Saturday Aug. 29.

The Last 1.5 Librarians North of Lethbridge Aug. 26, 9 p.m., Aug. 29, 9 p.m.

The Sad Saga of the Edmonton Interurban Railway Aug. 27, 7 p.m.

Well Behaved Women – Part Four Aug. 27, 9 p.m.

Go 4 Broke Presents BEERprov Reunion Aug. 28, 9 p.m.

Vaping Gay Aug. 28, 11 p.m.

Battle of the Genres: an improvised mashup Aug. 29, 11 p.m.

Tickets: showpass.com. 

Posted in Fringe 2026, News/Views | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on And this just in … update on Fringe holdovers, in four locations including Grindstone Comedy Theatre