OLD AND NEW
Citadel announces 2018-19 season
Two feel-good Broadway musicals and two plays designed to completely immerse the audience in the theatre experience are part of an innovative lineup at the Citadel Theatre for 2018-19.
The season kicks off in September with Once, a charming musical that traces the budding relationship between two musicians. The 2012 Tony winner for best musical features 12 cast members who must all sing, dance and play instruments.
“It’s a really smart love story and a perfect choice to kick off the season with a lot of fun,” artistic director Daryl Cloran said Monday while announcing the upcoming season.
In the New York production, audience members could buy a beer from a bar on stage before the show started, which is not happening in Edmonton. But there are plans to transform the lobby of the Shoctor into an Irish pub with the air of a kitchen party.
Cloran noted the focus for next season at the Citadel will be reimagining what theatre can be. Several shows take familiar tales, such as a soldier’s story or a Shakespeare classic, and turn them into something fresh and challenging.
Redpatch, for example, views the Great War from the eyes of a young Métis soldier and coincides with the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War. Opening in the Maclab in October, and written by Raes Calvert and Sean Harris Oliver, the play won six Jessie Award nominations in Vancouver last season and is a partnership with the Arts Club Theatre Company and Hardline Productions.
“We all know the First World War story, but to see it through the lens of a young Indigenous soldier is so powerful,” said Cloran, who stresses the importance of diversity in modern theatre.
Also on tap for 2018-19 is a new holiday story titled Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley, a bright and humorous “sequel” to the Jane Austen classic, Pride and Prejudice. Written by Margot Melcon and Lauren Gunderson (the most produced playwright in America this season), the show focuses on Mary, the bookish middle child in the Jane Austen classic. Directed by Edmonton native Nancy McAlear, it runs Nov. 18 to Dec. 9.
Two overlapping Christmasthemed shows (A Christmas Carol runs Nov. 30 to Dec. 23) begs the question of whether A Christmas Carol is approaching the end of its run. While there are no plans to dump Edmonton’s favourite Christmas play (it’s still “selling like hotcakes,” Cloran says), the show will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary, an eternity in regional theatre circles.
“Christmas at Pemberley is a chance for us to be testing the waters for other holiday entertainment for Edmonton,” said Cloran.
The Citadel’s big, contemporary drama for the upcoming season launches in January 2019 with the acclaimed drama Sweat, by Lynn Nottage, who won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for drama with this work. Directed by Calgary’s Valerie Planche, it’s set in a working class bar in a steel town facing a plant closure and is a partnership with Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre
It’s super fun and a really good chance to develop a new work. Why commission one play when you can commission two?
Company.
“It was easy to see Edmonton in it — a town dependent on an industry. It’s about loyalty, and what you do when your life gets ripped out from under you.”
Cloran hopes audiences will line up for Matilda when it dances onto the stage, under his direction, from Feb. 16 to March 17, 2019. After opening in London’s West End in 2011, the musical ( based on a Roald Dahl story about a precocious five-year-old) broke a record for winning the most Olivier awards. It also won five Tony awards on Broadway in 2013.
“It’s funny and heartfelt and inspiring,” said Cloran. “I can’t get through it without crying.”
But perhaps the most innovative play coming next season is actually two plays. Commissioned by Cloran for the Citadel, The Candidate plays in the Maclab, but in tandem with another production by the same playwright, Kat Sandler. The second show, playing in the Club, is called The Party and sees the audience serve as guests and witnesses to secrets unfolding at a cocktail soiree.
Both shows are fast-paced comedies, but they are set nine months apart. The Party lays the ground for a later scandal to emerge for a politician poised for national victory. There are 10 characters in the cast, and they must race back and forth between the two theatres to appear on the two stages running simultaneously from March 30 to April 21, 2019.
Both shows are directed by Cloran and Kat Sandler, and Cloran admits it’s a cheeky way to get patrons to buy two sets of tickets.
“It’s super fun and a really good chance to develop a new work,” said Cloran. “Why commission one play when you can commission two? It’s an exciting and audacious thing for us to do.”
The main stage season closes in May 2019 with a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, directed by Josette Bushell-Mingo, artistic director of Sweden’s National Deaf Theatre. It will feature deaf and hearing actors signing or speaking. The Tempest is a partnership with Sound Off, Canada’s national festival for deaf performing arts, which is based in Edmonton.
“I want to keep pushing having under-represented voices on our stage,” said Cloran.
Although the Citadel series Beyond the Stage (which features shows that are a mix of art forms) isn’t usually announced until April, Cloran disclosed three productions from the upcoming, multi-show season. Nassim, by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour (White Rabbit, Red Rabbit) is a show with no rehearsals, no preparation. Every night of the run, from April 30 to May 5, 2019, a different actor comes on stage to receive a script they have never seen in a sealed envelope.
In March 2019, watch for Slight of Mind, developed by Theatre Yes (The National Elevator Project) as part of their residency at the Citadel. The production is a one-of-akind theatre experience that uses multiple spaces within the Citadel complex, moving small audiences among locations for a show that has an overarching story set in different rooms.
The popular Edmonton actor and singer Farren Timoteo will also return to The Club for the 2018-19 Beyond the Stage season with his one-man show, Made in Italy.