2025, and live theatre as the prize human connector: the year in Edmonton theatre, part 1

2025: What a crazy, scary year it’s been. The world seems impossibly fractious, incoherent, unrecognizable. Can anyone really say they feel at home there?

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But the full-throttle invasion of screens of every size by A.I. has made the liveness of live theatre, where you share a room with real live people — more demonstrably authentic (and uncontrollable by algorithm) — more precious than ever.

It felt like that kind of year in Edmonton theatre. Challenging, yes, in every way, but energizing in placing a high value on human connection through storytelling. As a song in one of my favourite shows of the year, the new homegrown musical Morningside Road, has it, home is a place “built of stories we call our own.”

Our theatre artists, ingenious adventurers in the field of making much with little, took us to experiments in surprising venues — an off-the-track music club (An Oak Tree), the basement of a house on a tranquil urban street (Lucky Charm), a brick-lined hall in an old armoury (KaldrSaga)….

Michele Fleiger and Maralyn Ryan in Wildcat, Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre. Photo supplied.

They’ve invited us to reflect on the anxieties and chaos of our socio-cultural moment in ways that seem absolutely current, no matter the vintage of the play. Northern Light Theatre’s Radiant Vermin, for example, took a 10-year-old play about housing prices and greed, and found it flammable now. In a big year for new Canadian work on Edmonton stages Nicole Moeller’s new crime caper Wildcat at Workshop West was strikingly local in its references and hopeful about re-animating our atrophied capacity for resistance and change. Hayley Moorhouse’s Tough Guy, which premiered at the Fringe, set about unearthing ‘queer joy’ in the non-stop traumatizing harshness of the age.

Goblin: Macbeth, Spontaneous Theatre. Photo supplied.

There was delight to be found in the creative drive of artists to re-animate the classics — whether by pairing a rom-com hit of the 1590s with Supertramp in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the 70s Musical at the Citadel, or handing over a tragedy to a trio of curious goblins (Goblin: Macbeth), or relishing the perfectly mis-matched roommates for Belinda Cornish’s hilarious revival of The Odd Couple at Teatro Live!. Ah, or launching a new company (Edmonton Repertory Theatre) in these parlous times with the (very) Canadian classic Billy Bishop Goes To War.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Alexander Ariate in The Odd Couple, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

And the artists who brought work to the 44th annual edition of the Fringe, our mighty summer live theatre extravaganza, seemed to lean into plays, as opposed to “Fringe shows,” in a way we hadn’t seen in a while — and sold 138,500 tickets doing it.

It’s been a memorably non-static year in Edmonton theatre. New artistic directors at the Mayfield (Kate Ryan), Teatro Live! (Farren Timoteo), Shadow Theatre (Lana Michelle Hughes at the end of the current season). New companies (Edmonton Repertory Theatre). The return of hibernating companies (Cardiac Theatre), and changes pending at Theatre Network with the departure of artistic director Bradley Moss after 30 seasons, and at Common Ground Arts with the joint departure of managing producer Mac Brock and Found Fest director Whittyn Jason.

To jostle, I hope, your own memory bank of highlights from a tumultuous year, here are a dozen of my favourite shows, in no particular order. It’s Part 1. Stay tuned for Part 2, an assortment of memorable performances, designs, experiments, and moments.

Bailey Chin, Daviner Malhi, Kevin Klassen in Life of Pi, Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. Photo by Nanc Price.

Life of Pi. Both the fantastical story itself (borrowed from a 2001 Yann Martel novel, adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti) and the thrilling theatricality of how it gets told made a captivating experience to launch the Citadel’s 60th anniversary season. Haysam Kadri’s beautiful Citadel/Royal Manitoba Theatre production was a stunning collaboration of humans and puppets (Puppet Stuff Canada), lighting, projections, sound, set, by artists at the top of their game — all to tell a magical story about stories, about a boy, a quartet of zoo animals, and finally a ferocious Royal Bengal tiger adrift together in a lifeboat on the fathomless Atlantic for 227 days. The review is here.

Mhairi Berg and Maureen Rooney in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Morningside Road. This funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully sculpted new homegrown “Canadian Celtic” musical cum memoir, by the combined forces of playwright Mhairi Berg and composer Simon Abbott, is an intricate time-travelling story about stories, and the way they’re populated, in colour, by memory. In the present is Girl (Berg) immersed in the oft-repeated stories Granny (Maureen Rooney), a peppery sort of Gaelic sage, tells about growing up in pre-war Edinburgh and beyond. And stories, like the songs, are layered in its complicated, fascinating archaeology of time. It’s for three actors (including Cameron Kneteman) and a live band of three who seem to float in memory in the Shadow Theatre premiere production directed by the company’s new artistic director Lana Michelle Hughes. This is a gem with a future. Check out the review here.   

Alexander Ariate as Horse in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux. Set and costumes Beyata Hackborn, lighting Sarah Karpyshin

Horseplay. This irresistibly imaginative funny, heart-wrenching coming-of-age story of love, ambition, a friendship tested by crushing competitive pressures from the world, is about two BFFs, a horse named Horse (Alexander Ariate) and a jockey named Jacques (Lee Boyes). It got an outstanding premiere production at Workshop West, directed by Heather Inglis. And it introduced us to a stellar newcomer, playwright Kole Durnford. Have a peek at the review here.

Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus in Big Stuff. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Big Stuff. This appealing original, by and starring the married comedy duo Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus, starts with the thorny relationship we have to our ever-accumulating stuff — to toss or not to toss, that is the question. And somehow, magically, it includes their relationship and our connection, via stuff, to the people, the moments, the motifs we’ve lost. How can a show about grief be so funny? And how does this delightful, amused and amusing pair establish such a warm rapport with us and our own stories about our own stuff, and our own people. There was a kind of magical embrace going on in the Citadel’s Rice house.

Goblin: Macbeth. This creation of Spontaneous Theatre, outrageously puckish as a concept, is one of the great surprises of the theatre year. Not that the expertise by Rebecca Northan, Bruce Horak and Ellis Malone was unexpected. But the three curious goblins who get intrigued by the odd human activity called theatre and have a go at Shakespeare’s tragedy did turn out a compelling, affecting, thoroughly intelligible three-goblin Macbeth in this fun, playful, smart show. Fingers crossed the Citadel is signing up for the new Goblin: Oedipus as you read this. Check out the review here.

Mathew Hulshof, Bella King, Rachel Bowron in On The Banks Of The Nut, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

On the Banks of the Nut: The premise of this 2001 Stewart Lemoine screwball, revived with a younger generation of actors at Teatro Live!, has a madcap comic value all its own: an expedition by a hapless federal talent agent (Sam Free) and a bright and breezy office temp (the dazzling Bella King) through the rustic wilds of Wisconsin in 1951. They are in search of “a citizen of exceptional talent” (aren’t we all?). And the intersection of this airy quest and the aphrodisiac effect of great orchestral music make for a hilarious adventure, with an all-star cast directed by the playwright. And Mathew Hulshof with his dander up does have a certain unmistakeable resemblance to Gustav Mahler. The review is here.

new  A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Luc Tellier (centre) as Puck, Citadel Theatre. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream the 70s Musical. Matchmaking Shakespeare’s most popular rom-com with Supertramp and the Everly Brothers and a 25-song jukebox of danceable 70s hits is arguably an idea too kooky to resist. And this nutso ingenuity, devised by Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran, has, it turns out, a hilarious aptness to it you (I mean I) didn’t really expect. Will and Marvin Gaye, who knew? Great chunks of lyrical poetry vanish into stardust; instead, the hothouse intensity of love and love-gone-wrong get power ballads, rocking laments, and the exhortation to “give a little bit, of your love to me.” A cast of serious actor-singers dig in. And the ultimate theatrical pay-off is the transformation of the artisan garage band, led by John Ullyatt as Bottom the weaver, into rock stars. Major fun. The review is here.  

Cody Porter in Angry Alan, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Angry Alan. A surprising little stinger of a play by the Brit writer Penelope Skinner sheds light on one of the great mysteries of our time: how on earth do reasonable, even decent, guys get seduced, recruited, radicalized, by the preposterous claims of the men’s rights movement? In Trevor Schmidt’s Northern Light production Cody Porter, in a terrific performance as chronic underachiever Roger, stumbles onto the website of the title, and tumbles headlong into the Google vortex where explanations of his disappointing life, caged by rampant feminism, await. Utterly plausible, and scary as hell. Check out the review here.

Ellie Heath, Brian Dooley, Monk Northey in Jupiter by Colleen Murphy. Photo by Ian Jackson

Jupiter. A new and fulsome epic from the feisty and fearless Colleen Murphy takes us into the heart of a working-class family haunted across the 30-year multi-generational fault lines of dysfunction and dark secrets. It premiered at Theatre Network in a production directed by Bradley Moss, and his  cast (which included the canine star of the season Monk) was led by Brian Dooley as the booze-soaked patriarch and Ellie Heath as the bright high school brainiac who fades into disappointed middle age. It made a lot of the Canadian family dysfunction repertoire seem pretty insipid in comparison. The review is here.

Tough Guy by Hayley Moorhouse, Persistent Myth Productions at Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson.

Tough Guy. In this muscular and accomplished play by Hayley Moorhouse five queer friends are trying in five ways to negotiate the emotional fall-out from the trauma of a mass shooting at a gay nightclub. In addition to the super-charged performances of Brett Dahl’s Persistent Myth production, what’s remarkable about Tough is the way the playwright has stepped up to doubts about the artistic expression, on stage or screen, of queer trauma in a homophobic/ transphobic world. Does queer art restore agency to the queer experience? Is there such a thing as “queer joy”? Tough Guy was brave enough to want to know. The review is here.

Louise Casemore in Lucky Charm, Found Festival 2025. Photo by Brianne Jang

Lucky Charm. The most ingenious storytelling of the year happened in the atmospheric downstairs of a bungalow on a neighbourhood street. Louise Casemore’s strangely fascinating puzzle of a play (first developed at the Found Festival) is a séance, an invitation to lift the veil between the living and the world of the dead. It’s offered to us by the widow of the world’s most celebrated escape virtuoso, ironically like her late husband Harry Houdini a notable debunker of spiritualism. And somehow in the course of Max Rubin’s production, Bess Houdini’s own story as a Jazz Age player is unlocked, by our own memories. An intriguing conjuring of spirits, up close. Check out the review here.

Dance Nation, SkirtsAfire Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Dance Nation. The mainstage production at SkirtsAfire in 2025 was an insightful, funny, disturbing play by the American writer Clare Barron that took us into the fraught world of pre-teen dance-crazy 13-year-olds, onstage and off-, poised anxiously on the threshold between childhood idylls and grown-up complexities. The characters are played by adult actors, ages 20something to 50something, who range freely between their younger and current selves. Amanda Goldberg’s ensemble production, her first as the new festival artistic producer, captured the stresses, the dreams, the triumphs. See the review here.

The tip of the iceberg, as I think of exciting evenings in the company of The Pink Unicorn, Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, The 39 Steps, and so many more.