Andrew Ritchie in Cycle, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Hey Edmonton, it’s time to come out and play.
As always our mighty summer Fringe is the tip off. And the 44th annual edition sold a spirit-lifting 140,000-plus tickets to its 221 shows, hinting at a post-pandemic bounce we’ve all been dreaming of.
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But escalating production costs, a continuing funding freeze that amounts to a reduction, dwindling sponsorships, have all contributed to a year of continuing struggle, with more than a whiff of desperation, for Edmonton’s theatres and festivals, in perpetual fund-raising red-alert. Which makes the return of our theatre companies and indie artists to stages large and small, a sign of remarkable ingenuity and creativity in the face of big challenges.
The theatre season is happening: new artistic directors; new plays (by Stewart Lemoine Trevor Schmidt, Nicole Moeller, Kenneth T. Williams among others); new musicals at the Citadel and Shadow Theatre, significant theatre birthdays (the Citadel turns 60, Northern Light 50). A teenage boy and a Bengal tiger are currently together in a lifeboat onstage, negotiating the vast Pacific in Life of Pi, opening this week at the Citadel. The Pink Unicorn, launching Northern Light’s big five-oh season, is in rehearsal (opening Sept. 26). The sounds of silence are floating through the ether at the Mayfield (The Simon & Garfunkel Story).
The upcoming Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season awaits a Thursday reveal (though the sale of Theatre 8-packs has spilled the beans about one of the shows if you’re curious). The Fringe hasn’t yet announced their season offerings. And Theatre Network is holding off till “early October” to declare their 2025-2026 plans. And, of course, there’s more to come from Edmonton’s roster of indie companies and artists (that’s just the way the indies work).
Meanwhile, to intrigue you in the new season, here are ten exciting prospects (in no particular order) to seek out.
Morningside Road. Shadow Theatre launches their season with the premiere of a new Canadian musical, the company’s first-ever mainstage musical, a Celtic-flavoured original with a fascinating team: book by actor/ playwright/ choreographer/ composer Mhairi Berg and music by the the playwright and Simon Abbott (Grindstone Theatre’s remarkably versatile resident composer/ musical director). The story connects a girl seeking life advice from her grandmother, who shares stories of growing up in Edinburgh on the title street. It’s a quest for truth and meaning challenged by the old woman’s memory under assault from dementia. The Shadow production (Oct. 15 to Nov. 2) is directed by the company’s new artistic director Lana Michelle Hughes, who takes over from John Hudson when he retires July 1. Berg and Maureen Rooney star, accompanied by Abbott’s three-piece band. Tickets: shadowtheatre.org.
Vinyl Cafe: The Musical. In its 60th anniversary season the Citadel is premiering a new Canadian holiday musical — based on the legendary, quintessentially Canadian CBC Radio story collection created by the late Stuart McLean. The new musical, by Georgina Escobar with Jess Milton, music by Colleen Dauncey, lyrics by Akiva Romer-Segal, incorporates some of that Canadian archive’s most popular Dave and Morley stories — the Toronto couple, their kids, their friends and neighbours, their ‘hood. Yes, “Dave Cooks The Turkey” and “Rashida, Amir, and the Great Gift-Giving” get tapped. Daryl Cloran, who thought up the idea, directs; his production runs Nov. 8 to 30. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.
Request Programme, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic supplied.
Request Programme. In this wordless 1973 piece by the German avant-gardiste Franz Xaver Kroetz, a solitary woman comes home from work, prepares dinner, cleans up, tunes in to a call-in radio show — nothing out of the ordinary. And then something happens that makes all the “ordinary” detail significant and turns the piece (artistic director Trevor Schmidt has called it “performance art”) into a gut-wrencher. In honour of NLT’s 50th anniversary it’s a tribute to the large-scale experimental work of NLT in the ‘90s under Schmidt’s artistic director predecessors D.D. Kugler and the late Sandhano Schultz. And Schmidt’s cast features actresses, a different one per performance, who have Northern Light credits in their resumés, 17 in all, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s. It runs May 1 to 16. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.
Crybaby. Uniform Theatre, the enterprising young indie musical theatre company that brought Stephen Sondheim’s macabre Assassins to the Fringe, is back. Cry-Baby, a 2008 Broadway musical is based on the 1990 John Waters film, a rom-com musical comedy (and cult fave) that tells a Romeo and Juliet-esque story about a bad-boy rebel and the upper-class “square” that falls for him in 1950s Baltimore. The book is by the Hairspray team of Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan; the music, intriguingly, is by the late Adam Schlesinger, the co-founder and muse of the stellar rock band Fountains of Wayne. Cry-Baby runs March 14 to 24 in Theatre Network’s Phoenix Series at the Roxy. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.
Cocktails at Pam’s. Forty years ago Edmonton audiences found themselves at a a Stewart Lemoine comedy that wasn’t so much a play as an actual 60s cocktail party. In real time. With small-talk, mismatched guests, conversational fragments, canapés, non-sequiturs — and the perfect hostess until.… (well, my lips are sealed). Stewart Lemoine’s Cocktails at Pam’s was Teatro La Quindicina’s first outing onstage at the old Varscona after assorted Fringe venues hither and yon. And it got revived at three Fringes after that, five years apart, before landing in Teatro’s first season at the re-built Varscona in 2016. It’s back in this first Teatro season under new artistic director Farren Timoteo, a veteran Teatro leading man who’s paying his first visit to Pam’s as part of the all-new cast of 11. Lemoine’s revival runs July 9 to 26 at the Varscona. Tickets: teatrolive.com.
actor/playwright Jameela McNeil, whose play Ms. Pat’s Kitchen premieres at SkirtsAfire Fest 2026.
Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen. The mainstage production at the upcoming 14th annual SkirtsAfire Festival, by the award-winning actor-turned-playwright Jameela McNeil, is an a contemporary Edmonton story, that celebrates the Caribbean community here. At the centre of the inter-generational fractures in Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen, which had its start in a workshop production at the 2024 Nextfest, is a contentious mother-teenage daughter relationship in a Jamaican family. And it steps up to the thorny issue of consent, nuanced by cultural and age factors. Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen was at the RISER New Yorks Festival this season, directed by Sue Goberdhan. And in 2026 Patricia Darbasie directs the full-length SkirtsAfire premiere March 5 to 15. As a bonus, it’s in a “new mystery venue.” Tickets: skirtsafire.com.
Cyrano de Bergerac. A new adaptation of the classic Edmond Rostand romantic adventure, a glorious intersection of wordplay and swordplay, is the grand finale of the upcoming Citadel season. Commissioned by the theatre, it’s by Edmonton playwright Jessy Ardern, who’s made something of a specialty of adaptations with contemporary resonance (Queen Lear). She retains the 17th century Paris setting, and even pays homage to the virtuoso verse form of the original by turning it out in rhyming couplets! Amanda Goldberg directs the Citadel production (May 2 to 24), starring Scott Shpeley as the brilliant swordsman with the seductive gift of the gab (and the epic nose). Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.
Ecos. This large-cast bilingual immersive dance-theatre piece by Elisa Marina Mair-Sanchez — developed at the Found Festival as El Funeral in 2021 and 2023 — is a kaleidoscopic insight into the immigrant experience across generations, focused by a family funeral. Andrés F. Moreno’s production for Diaspora Diaries Collective (Oct. 30 to Nov. 9 at Mile Zero Dance, a co-presenter) is part of Common Ground Arts Society’s new Prairie Mainstage Series. Tickets: commongroundarts.ca.
Big Stuff. You know that feeling: you’re gradually being buried in your stuff. What do you do with the stuff you’ve accumulated along the way and can’t bear to part with? The stuff that connects you to people you’ve lost? The show, by the Toronto-based married Canadian comedy duo Matt Baram (originally from Edmonton) and Naomi Snieckus along with director Kat Sandler, combines memoir, storytelling and improv with the audience in a particularly original way by all reports. It was a held-over hit in Toronto a year ago, and runs Oct. 18 to Nov. 9 as part of the Citadel’s alternative Highwire Series in the Rice Theatre. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.
Cycle. Who owns a city anyhow? In a city where the subject of bike lanes is in the top 10 provocations, Andrew Ritchie’s exciting (and nerve-wracking) solo show spins its wheels, and dares to do its storytelling from atop a bicycle. And Ritchie, an ex-bike food courier in Toronto (who has lived to tell the tale, and cycles everywhere in all seasons in Edmonton!) invites audiences to join him on stationary bikes, as he makes a case for sharing of urban space. Kristi Hansen’s award-winning Thou Art Here Theatre production of Cycle — choreography by Ainsley Hillyard, projectionscape by T. Erin Gruber — is part of Theatre Network’s Phoenix Series Oct. 15 to 26. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.
