A holiday show update! There’s more, if you get your act together

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

Release your inner elf, part two. An update! More holiday shows are opening this week. You’ve got a big choice on Edmonton stages, and your time, like Scrooge’s, is running low.

•It’s A Wonderful Christmas Carol returns for the holiday season Sunday (through the 24th), and for the first time to the stage of the Varscona Theatre, for three performances.  This light-hearted live radio play/panto mash-up — “hilarious, haunting, sometimes superfluously silly” as billed — is a retelling of Dickens’ celebrated take of last-minute ghostly intervention and redemption. And the production stars Edmonton faves Dana Andersen, Andrea House, Paul Morgan Donald, and Davina Stewart. Tickets: varsconatheatre.com.

•At the Capitol Theatre, Fort Edmonton, Dec. 19 to 23 and 27 to 29 is a festive holiday musical — with a great score by Irving Berlin. White Christmas and its celebrated title song come to the vintage stage at the Fort in a NUOVA Vocal Arts production. Tickets: eventbrite.ca.

Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Theatre Network. Photo supplied.

•The great Canadian theatre artist Ronnie Burkett has brought the magic of his company of marionette actors — and the virtuosity that makes them live and breathe — to Theatre Network. In Little Dickens the cast of the Daisy Theatre, a marionette cabaret with a recurring ensemble of 56 (!) exquisitely crafted characters dressed to the nines, does their own version of A Christmas Carol. It’s a clever, raucous, playfully bawdy affair, semi-improvised by the playwright/ actor/marionettiste/  director/ designer (with assistance from a few game volunteers from the audience). Little Dickens is, quite simply, a riot and a spirit-raiser. And you should on no account miss it. It runs through Sunday. Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

Have a peek at the REVIEW here (and an interview with the perpetrator here).

The cast of a Christmas Carol, 2023, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

•At the Citadel, where the tradition of A Christmas Carol on the mainstage is 25 years strong, Lianna Makuch’s lavish production of the repertoire’s most famous ghost story continues through Dec. 24. The adaptation by playwright David van Belle, set in 1949, finds the frozen-hearted Ebenezer Scrooge (John Ullyatt) as the proprietor of Marley’s department store, implacably rooted to the bottom line. The entire run is dedicated to Julien Arnold, whose unexpected death during a preview performance of the show, while in the role of the joyful Christmas party host Mr. Fezziwig, has shocked and saddened the valiant director and cast of the production. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

The Blank Who Stole Christmas, Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo supplied.

•Rapid Fire Theatre’s original holiday musical The Blank Who Stole Christmas has returned for a third holly jolly season,. Partly scripted, partly improvised, the production features a different guest villain every performance, who plays a character of their choice, a mystery to the cast of improvisers until they step onstage. By report, the Blanks have included Tiny Tim, which tells you something about the improv expertise of the Rapid Fire cast. There are three versions of the show, calibrated for age, sensibility, and susceptibility to the F-bomb. These details, as well as tickets, are available at rapidfiretheatre.com. Through Dec. 22 at RFT’s Exchange Theatre.

Evan Dowling in Die Harsh The Christmas Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

•Returning for a third figgy pudding season is Grindstone Theatre’s festive holiday tradition, Die Harsh the Christmas Musical. This is what happens when the musical-writing team that gave the world Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer and thunderCats — Byron Martin and Simon Abbott — intertwines their favourite Christmas movie Die Hard (really!) to A Christmas Carol. This year it’s at the Orange Hub (10045 156 St.) through Dec. 29. Read all about it in his PREVIEW interview with Martin here. Tickets: grindstonetheatre.ca.

Damon Pitcher, Jacob Holloway, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

•Ah yes, the festive Yuletide season, a favourite for connoisseurs of family dysfunction. Krampus: A New Musical, by the musical comedy team of Stephen Allred and Seth Gilfillan (Conjoined), cuts through the eggnog. Let’s just say their indie theatre company isn’t called Straight Edge Theatre for nothing. Krampus premiered at the summer Fringe in 2022, which kinda gets at its insurrectionist spirit. The production, enhanced for the mainstage, is part of the Workshop West Playwrights Theatre season at the Gateway Theatre (8529 84 Ave.). It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: workshopwest.org. Have a peek at the REVIEW. And meet the co-creators in this PREVIEW.

Ellie Heath, Caley Suliak, Alyson Dicey in Weekend at Girlies, Girl Brain at Theatre Network. Photo by Brianne Jang, bbcollective photography

•And if sight of falling snow has lost its lustre for you (even more than the sound of Mariah Carey) you can go on holiday, and hang out pool-side at a Mexican all-inclusive, with Girl Brain. Weekend at Girlies is the holiday offering from Edmonton’s favourite female sketch comedy trio, at Theatre Network’s Roxy. No sunscreen required. It runs through Dec. 22. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.  Check out the PREVIEW here.

•An intrepid snow-transcendent offering for the festive season, Andrew Ritchie’s Cycle, a Thou Art Here Theatre production, is all about movement, bicycles, the joy of cycling in every season, and what it means to live in a city. It runs through Dec. 22 at Mile Zero Dance, 9931 78 Ave. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca. See the REVIEW here.