EDMONTON THEATRE 2018: The Colin MacLean Awards
If the Alberta economy is in tatters, it would be hard to tell from the number of plays and musicals to grace our stages this year.
Theatre budgets may be suffering and costs ballooning, but we fortunate Edmonton theatre-goers have enjoyed a mountain range of productions. Like our Rockies, some were high, others not so much.
Overall, the quality of product continues to drift upward – if for no other reason than high demand and the competition for audiences. The first-rate training schools we have in Edmonton continue to turn out eager young performers. Very good musicals were in encouraging supply. There were challenging new works as well as beautifully imagined revivals of old and modern classics.
Judging from the quantity and quality of what we saw over the year, I would suggest that we may be the best-served theatre city of our size in North America. My wife and I attended somewhere North of 85 shows this year (including the Fringe). Based on that, here is our list of some of the top theatrical events:
Best Musical: Onegin
A production of the Vancouver Arts Club that played Citadel’s Maclab stage last January, Onegin’s indie-folk-rock-chamber-pop take on Pushkin was challenging musically, skillfully assembled and a joy from beginning to end.
Most Charismatic Performer Of The Year
Alesandro Juliani as Onegin was commanding from the second he appears in a cloud of smoke – and, with his impressive range, made the pain of his self-discovery at the climax a palpable thing.
Most Unexpected Spectacular Moment
The veritable deluge of rain in the Festival Players production of Singin’ in the Rain. It cascaded down in sheets, soaking wet, creating creditable puddles on the stage, complete with copious splashing – and elicited a burst of delighted applause from the audience.
Best Attempt at Reinvention
With Kate Ryan’s spiffy production of Canada 151, the Mayfield Dinner Theatre demonstrated there is still life in their unending (but entertaining) string of jukebox musicals. The evening was (is, it plays until Jan. 27), a nostalgic bath in all things musical and Canadian (Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, The Band, The Tragically Hip … well, you know the list). In producing the long-awaited celebration, the Mayfield mounted what was probably its best tribute show ever.
Best Drunk Scene
In the Varscona Theatre’s production of Noel Coward’s Fallen Angels, the two accomplished performers Belinda Cornish and Vanessa Sabourin tear with great enthusiasm into the famous drinking scene, and snozzle their way to comic bliss. The two tipple as if they’d spent a lifetime getting lit up together regularly.
Best Ensemble Effort
Edmonton comic writer Neil Grahn fired a comic salvo this season with his new play The Comedy Company. It was the true story (more or less) of a troupe that grew out of soldiers on the front in World War 1. John Hudson’s cast was called upon to recreate the (very funny) comedy of the troupe and deliver some very heavy dialogue – there were not a lot of laughs in the trenches. Shadow Theatre assembled a crackerjack cast: Julien Arnold, Nathan Cuckow, Sheldon Elter, Jesse Gervais, Steven Greenfield, Andrew-MacDonald-Smith and Nick Samoil.
Best Supporting Actors
Budgets being what they are today, supporting players are often called upon to perform many roles – in the same show. Sarah Emslie, Diego Stredel and Helen Belay play an entire muster of spies, minions, apparatchiks, assassins and a couple of characters named Nadia. “I’m Nadia – but not the same one as before,” explains Emslie. The show was Vern Thiessen’s darkly comic play Lenin’s Embalmers at the Studio Theatre.
Most Uplifting Moment
One of the most pernicious elements of the atrocious Canadian residential schools system was the effort to pull any vestige of their own culture from the young students. In one scene in Corey Payette’s powerful Children of God, modern music starts and slowly gives way to the mesmerizing sound of aboriginal drumming. Years of oppression fall away as the children exult in the forbidden celebration of their own music. Transforming theatre from the Citadel.
Most Touching Display of the Blossoming Of Long Suppressed Love
In an inspired piece of Irish blarney in John Patrick Shanley’s Outside Mullingar, Jenny McKillop finds a delightful balance between a maidenly, lovelorn vulnerability and a spunky pursuit in her long quest for the forlorn boy next door, played by Garett Ross. McKillop finally ignites the peat moss smoulder in his heart with a particularly Irish demand, “You’ve been chaste as a dove for most of your life and now you’re going to come on like a pirate.” Who could ignore an invitation like that? Produced by Shadow Theatre.
Best Solo Performance
Shelton Elter’s Metis Mutt has been through many re-writes and a number of directors, but Elter remains at its beating heart. It’s the story of the pain and ultimate triumph of a young Metis man who finds his way out of a destructive cycle. Elter is a charismatic performer who uses comedy, music, mime and just plain talk to allow access to his own story. Produced by Theatre Network, Metis Mutt is a courageous move by the performer who turns a one-man show into a powerful journey to self-realization and affirmation.
Runner Up Best Solo Performance
Judith Hawking turns in a stand-out execution as the imperious Maria Callas in Terence McNally’s play, Masterclass. The singer-actor possesses a fine voice and delivered a multi-hued portrait of the mid-Century opera star’s glory, triumph and pain. Directed by Kelly Handerek and presented by Opera NUOVA.
Best Duo
Holly Turner is an archeologist and Kristin Johnston an ancient archeological woman come to life in Byrony Lavery’s Origin of the Species, produced by Northern Light Theatre. The two debate the history of humanity on the planet, with a feminist bent. The argument is gripping and the chemistry between the two performers is astonishing.
And While We’re on the Subject Origin Of Species, The Award For Most Ingenious Set Goes To …
Director Trevor Schmidt for his setting on Origin of Species – an eccentric collection of stuff and objects, all sorts of gadgets, small sculptures, bottles, knick knacks, doodads and doohickeys. And clocks. Many clocks. All turn out to be central to the plot.
Best Performances As Twins
In Maggie Tree’s uncertain Blood: A Scientific Romance, actors Gianna Vacirca and Joyce McKenzie created the mystical bond that fraternal twins often seem to possess. They illuminated their performances with intimate little gestures and hidden intimacies, finishing each other’s emotions – often speaking in shared rhyming couplets. Uncanny.
Best Marriage Of The Bard and the Broad (Humour)
Dave Horak’s merry-masterclass in mayhem, The Comedy of Errors, by this year’s Freewill Players. I’m sure that Shakespeare, somewhere, smiled. Or possibly laughed out loud.
Best Performance by an Actor
Collin Doyle in The Zoo Story (Bedlam Theatre) is a stunning example of fierce concentration and growing menace. The actor began haltingly with a fixed smile and the groveling supplication of an Eastern street beggar. Slowly Doyle ratchets up the intensity until he’s in complete command. The outside clamour of the Fringe dropped away and we were in an electric energy field surrounding that remote bench in Central Park.
Best Kiss
It started as an unexpected attempt at a peck by two bookish and romantically unpractised nerds, Mary (Mikaela Davies) and Arthur de Bourgh (Umed Amin), in Nancy McAlear’s sparkling production of Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley at the Citadel. The two got into the spirit of the thing with a tentative lip lock that grew to something quite passionate – bringing a spontaneous awwwwww! from the audience.
Best Production Of The Year
Also best female performances, best new play and best direction (top photo):
Beth Graham’s Pretty Goblins (based on a poem by Christina Rossetti) is stunning. Laura (Nadine Chou) and Lizzie (Miranda Allen) play fraternal twins. They have two separate personalities, but they set off on a joint journey that will take them beyond Rossetti’s miasmic world of goblins and forbidden fruit, into a searing Sargasso Sea of primeval emotions that will leave you breathless. As intimate, involving, satisfying (and hard to watch) as anything I saw on the stage this year. Produced by Workshop West, Brian Dooley’s direction is laser focused on Graham’s shifting emotions.
Other Top Shows This Year
Shakespeare’s R & J
Motown: The Musical/Les Miz/Beautiful/The Book Of Mormon – Thanks, Broadway Across Canada!
Mamma Mia, Once – Citadel
School For Scandal – Studio Theatre
St. Ives – Concrete Theatre
Infinity – Theatre Network
Skirts On Fire – Teatro La Quindicina
What a Young Wife Ought to Know – Theatre Network (photo, above)
Top Fringe Shows
We’ll Meet Again
War Of 1812
A Canadian Bartender at Butlin’s
Call Me Mr. Robeson
The Zoo Story
The Real Inspector Hound
