Category: Citadel Theatre
Citadel Theatre
The Silver Arrow
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta Canada
April 4 to 29, 2018
Ancestors and Elders
Shumka Ukrainian Dancers, Kehewin Native Dance Theatre and Running Thunder
Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
April 27 and 28, 2018
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Mixing and matching of the highest order has been happening on Edmonton’s two major stages.
The Citadel Theatre’s Silver Arrow is a rollicking re-telling/re-invention of the legend of Robin Hood, a world premiere as written by Edmonton playwright Mieko Ouchi.
In this Robin Hood, the world is cheerfully turned upside down – women play men’s parts, half the action is in the air on ropes and sashes, ethnicity is all a blur. The play is written around actor Kristi Hansen’s real-life disability of being born one-legged, with much fun and good-natured humour written into the character, including a beautiful prothesis created for her by a shy admirer.
All the above is all just ...
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Undercover
A Spontaneous Theatre production presented by the Citadel Theatre
The Citadel Theatre Club space,
April 4 to 29, 2018
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, HicksBiz.com
In a theatrical age dominated by ultra-serious political correctness, what a relief that Rebecca Northan knows how to have fun in a thoroughly professional way.
Her touring show Undercover, on the Citadel’s cabaret stage through April 29, 2018, is a good old-fashioned murder mystery, a whodunit, complete with an old mansion, a dark and stormy night and black-outs in which the bereaved very suddenly, with much shrieking, becomes the bereaved.
But it’s a whodunit with a fantastically fun twist.
Every night, the show's assistant detective is an audience member, drawn at random to play the part.
The script is cleverly written to let the latest and ever-changing member of the cast control the plot.
As Northan says in thanking the audience/cast member at the end of the show, the second half of the show has never ev ...
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Children of God
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
March 3 to 24, 2018
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
There’s all kinds of good news about the Citadel Theatre’s latest offering, Children of God.
It’s a very good piece of theatre.
Causes do not overwhelm characters.
The plot carries itself admirably, never devolving into polemics.
The acting, singing and music is of the highest standard.
It does what “issues” theatre is supposed to do – presents its cause without losing its audience through too-much pounding upon our heads.
All of which is an immense relief.
The issue of Canada’s residential schools, where indigenous children were collected and sent for both education and assimilation from 1831 to 1996, has rightly been front and centre in Canada since the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015.
Corey Payette’s musical play – centred on six indigenous children who’d kno ...
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Mamma Mia!
Citadel Theatre, Maclab Stage
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
February 17 to March 18, 2018
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
Mamma Mia, the biggest “jukebox musical” of them all, made its West End debut in 1999.
Nineteen years later, the show built around the legendary pop songs of ABBA is still so popular that the Citadel Theatre’s excellent production of the same is pretty well guaranteed to sell most of the seats available for its four-week run, February 17 to March 18, 2018.
The show is 19 years old!
Jukebox musical is a term for a musical stage production built around the songs of a singer or a band. Musicals have been constructed around the music of Queen, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, more recently Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (Jersey Boys) and Carole King.
But Mamma Mia continues to tower over all the other jukebox musicals ever created.
Why?
Because there’s as much art, to paraphrase the late, great Edmonton Sun entertainment writer Dave B ...
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The Humans
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
January 6 to 27, 2018
Theatre review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
What is all the fuss about?
Why is a yet another cliche-filled play about yet another dysfunctional American family considered to have been 2016's hottest Broadway property, winning every award in the book?
The Humans, having its Canadian premiere at Edmonton's Citadel Theatre January 6 to 27, is about as American soured-apple pie as it gets.
Rebellious aspiring musician younger daughter Brigid, currently bartending, is living in a dingy two-floor apartment with her boyfriend in New York City's Chinatown.
Ambitious older daughter Aimee is about to be fired from her law firm, mainly because her medical problems are eating into her billing hours. And her girlfriend has broken up with her.
Mom and Dad, Deirdre and Erik, are devout but liberal-minded Catholics, on good terms with the daughters but still nagging them a ...
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Subtle changes in the 18th edition of the Citadel Theatre's A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
At the Maclab Stage, Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Dec. 1 to 23, 2017
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
The changes are subtle, but they are there.
For the first time since A Christmas Carol graced the Citadel’s Maclab stage 18 years ago, the grand annual Christmas presentation is not being directed by the now-retired former Citadel Theatre artistic director Bob Baker. Nor does it star Tom Wood, who wrote the stage adaptation of the story that the Citadel has used to this day, and who has played Scrooge for most of those 18 years.
It is the end of an era, but not the end of an era.
For if ever a transition was seamless, this is it.
Director Wayne Paquette has long been Bob Baker’s assistant director for A Christmas Carol.
The role of Scrooge this year is being alternated between Glenn Nelson – who has played the role before &nda ...
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Hadestown
Citadel Theatre
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Nov. 11 to Dec. 3, 2017
Tickets start at $30.
Review by Graham Hicks, Hicksbiz.com
Hadestown is a beautiful, rich mix of all that is good and right in American performance art.
That said, it has its problems.
No report on Hadestown can take place without considering the current context. The acclaimed musical, close to a modern-day opera, is getting its final polish here at the Citadel Theatre before its producers and financial backers move the show to Broadway.
The production, based on a concept album by the talented and distinctive American songwriter/singer Anais Mitchell, contemporizes and universalizes the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Hadestown was a major off-Broadway hit in New York City. But it had to be adapted from an intimate theatre space to the big spaces of Broadway theatres. Enter the Citadel’s 681-seat Shoctor Stage.
So The Hadestown we are watching in Edmonton is not yet a final product. ...
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Ubuntu (The Cape Town Project)
Maclab Stage, Citadel Theatre,
Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
October 11, 2017 to Oct. 22, 2017
Tickets: $30 and up
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
I can’t remember the last time an audience at a Citadel Theatre production sat utterly bewildered for the first 10 minutes and then, by the show’s end, rose as one in an immediate, enthusiastic, standing ovation.
But such was the case October 12, 2017, at the opening night of Ubuntu (The Cape Town Project) on the Maclab Stage.
Ubuntu – meaning “a person is a person through other people” in the South African Bantu language – is full of richly layered complexity, simply and joyfully presented.
Its mystery and magic lies in its deep understanding of the human condition, on so many levels, ALL THE TIME!!!
In almost every scene, three or four sub-themes, ideas, emotional hues, cultural clashes, pleasing/jarring visual and aural prompts simultaneously e ...
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Shakespeare in Love
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
September 16, 2017 to October 8, 2017
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Rest easy, the Citadel Theatre is in good hands.
Daryl Cloran has had a year now as the new artistic director of the Citadel Theatre, but the 2016/17 season was still picked and planned by his predecessor Bob Baker, who retired in the spring of 2016 after a long and rich tenure at the helm of the largest theatre in Canada west of Toronto.
This season’s opener Shakespeare in Love is the first show of the first season that Cloran has fully overseen. Plus he decided to direct the show as well – which must have involved many 18-hour days leading up to opening night on Thursday, September 22, 2017.
Big challenge! Shakespeare in Love is a sprawling, BIG play in all aspects, over two hours long, 20 actors, jam-packed with action and meaning. You may remember it began life as a movie, a major hit that earned seven Academy ...
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Peter and the Starcatcher
Citadel Theatre, Maclab Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, CANADA
April 1 – 23, 2017
Tickets - $30 and up
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
Call it a qualified success.
The Citadel Theatre’s version of the 2012 Broadway hit Peter and the Starcatcher is full of fun, friendliness, theatrical invention, imagination, silly puns, song, dance, vaudeville, panto, slapstick and so on.
But the show – based on a book that is another author’s prequel to the classic Peter Pan – is just too frantic, trying just too darned hard to squeeze a monster into a mere two hours.
The 14 actors each have a main character, and they all perform multiple other characters. The show dashes from scene to scene – in the first half, on board the two sailing ships the H.M.S. Neverland and H.M.S. Wasp somewhere in the late 19th Century when Britannia ruled the waves, in the second half on the mythical island that will become Neverland.
The theatrical challenge is a ...
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