Lots to see on Edmonton stages this week, a small survey of the landscape

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

Hey, Edmonton. You have choices for your evenings out at the theatre this week: two Canadian comedies, a wicked Brit satire, a multi-disciplinary arts festival, a stage adaptation of a much-loved novel, a prairie love story, a big Broadway musical…. Here’s a scan of the E-town stage landscape.

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In the Canadian comedy that opens Thursday on the Varscona stage, Shadow Theatre’s season finale, we meet two sisters, retired, on the front porch of their home on Manitoulin Island. And in Where You Are, by actor/playwright Kristen Da Silva, the tranquil surfaces of their lives, and the family secrets slumbering within, are disturbed by the visit of one sister’s daughter — with secrets of her own.

John Hudson’s production stars Coralie Cairns and Davina Stewart as the retired siblings, Nikki Hulowski, and Brennan Campbell. It runs through May 18. Tickets: shadowtheatre.org.

•At the Citadel, we meet the March sisters, Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth, growing up in genteel poverty in Civil War America. They step from the pages of Louisa May Alcott’s evergreen two-part novel Little Women of 1868/69 in a stage version by Toronto-based playwright Jordi Mand that premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2022. The production directed by Jenna Rodgers, Concrete Theatre’s new artistic director, stars Hayley Moorhouse as Jo, the sparky sister with the writerly ambitions, along with Donna Leny Hansen as Meg, Christina Nguyen as Amy, and Erin Pettifog as Beth. Little Women starts previews Saturday and opens officially next week, through May 25. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.

•Jabulani returns Thursday to take over Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre Thursday through Sunday, in a second annual edition of Ribbon Rouge Foundation’s multi-disciplinary arts festival named after the Zulu word for “rejoice.” It’s designed to celebrate — in theatre, visual arts, dance, music, poetry — Edmonton’s African, Caribbean and Black Albertan community.

One Too Many, A Thousand, a community-based theatre initiative in collective storytelling, explores, as billed, “the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ immigrants and people of colour in Edmonton.” It runs Friday  Rooted in collective storytelling, it examines themes of displacement, resilience, identity, and belonging. One Too Many, A Thousand is a community-based theatre performance that explores with audiences the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ immigrants and people of colour in Edmonton. It runs Friday through Sunday on the Nancy Power stage.

The characters of This Is Canada, Too, running Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, is an interactive performance based on exchange between audiences and characters — some recent immigrants, some long-time Canadians — facing some new challenges. Jan Selman, who directed Jabulani’s mainstage theatre production Oboingba Tries To Change Her Fate, directs the new show.

Tickets for both One Too Man, A Thousand and This Is Canada, Too: theatrenetwork.ca.

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matkin in Radiant Vermin, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

•Northern Light’s crack Trevor Schmidt production of Radiant Vermin, which continues through Saturday, is a wicked satire by the English writer Philip Ridley in which an appealing young couple (played by Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk) tell us about their, er,  unusual shortcut to their dream home. En route to triumphant real estate acquisition, they peel back the thin veneer of morality. Which turns out to be thinner than vinyl siding. Shocking and funny. Have a peek at the preview and review. Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com.

Alphabet Line, an unusually lyrical new play by AJ Hrooshkin that’s the season finale at Fringe Theatre, kicks up the prairie dust on the rural-urban divide. In 1940s Saskatchewan a queer man living alone on a family farm reaches out every day by radio, and hears nothing back from a big empty world. Until one day he gets a response, from a grad student out in the countryside for the summer. Can they, will they, connect on the land? Check out the review and an interview with the playwright here. Giulia Romano’s Prairie Strange production runs through Saturday. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

Niko Combitsis and Kory Fulton in Jersey Boys, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

At the Mayfield, Jersey Boys, in a jukebox musical class of its own, tells the classic story of the rise and fall of a pop band — that happens to be true. Danny Austin’s music-filled production continues through June 8.  Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca. Check out ’s interview with the director here; the review here.

•At Walterdale, Edmonton’s community theatre, Louise Mallory’s production of Stag and Doe continues through Saturday. The 2014 comedy by the Canadian playwright Mark Crawford (Bed and Breakfast), is set in a community hall kitchen, the traditional intersection of cross-hatched local pre-nup rituals. And, let’s face it, weddings have an uncanny ability to bring out the worst in people.  Tickets: walterdaletheatre.com.

[And if you’re a little east of town, like 2,000 miles east, check out Punctuate! Theatre’s premiere production of a new play by Matthew MacKenzie (Bears, First Métis Man of Odesa). Takwahiminana opens in Toronto Thursday, at Soulpepper. Like MacKenzie’s wonderful First Métis Man, it’s a cultural fusion that makes sparks from two fires. Developed as part of Punctuate!’s Pemmican Collective, it follows the fortunes of a Métis woman born in India who’s moved back to her ancestral home in Alberta. Michael Washburn stars in Mike Payette’s production. It runs through May 11. Tickets: soulpepper.ca. Surely, an Edmonton production awaits?]