HicksBiz Blog
Category: Citadel Theatre
Citadel Theatre
The Gay Heritage Project
Citadel Theatre, Club Stage
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Feb. 10 to 27, 2016
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, HIcksBiz.com
Even a cheerful cynic accepts that much good comes from watching shows like the Gay Heritage Project.
Presented cabaret-style in the Citadel Theatre's innovative Club space, The Gay Heritage Project is an insightful, informative and entertaining look into what it's actually like to be gay.
No matter how many gay friends or acquaintances one might have, very few straight folks know that much about what's behind the curtain. The old expression "walk a mile in my shoes" comes to mind.
Three gay actors, by necessity researchers, realized precious historical or even contemporary knowledge wasn't out there about their unique culture, their tribe.
Homosexuality has been part of mankind since the beginning of civilization, but from the fall of Rome to, finally, social acceptance in the 21st Century, little history has bee ...
Read the rest of entry »
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jan 23 to Feb. 23, 2016
Review by Graham Hicks, HicksBiz.com
Written in 1962, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf sits in that pantheon of dysfunctional family dramas that poured out of American playwrights with the release of literary social taboos following World War II – Death of A Salesman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (and the rest of the Tennessee Williams canon), Dark At The Top of the Stairs, Long Day’s Journey into Night.
With one huge exception: It’s very, very funny and playwright Edward Albee’s wicked humour seems to work even better as time goes by, given the acceptance and prevalence of cheerful cynicism in the early 21st Century.
Face it, the rest of those classic psycho-dramas were awfully heavy slogging – the long wrung-out pauses, the gloom, the sourness, the non-stop drama, the deep dourness of all those screwed-up people.
Martha and George and Nick and Honey are as screwed ...
Read the rest of entry »
Chelsea Hotel: The Songs of Leonard Cohen
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jan. 13, 2016 to Jan. 24, 2016
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
Chelsea Hotel is an intriguing concept – a unique theatrical rendering/interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s considerable canon of songs, back-to-back for 90 minutes of musical theatre.
On the Edmonton pride side, creator/director Tracey Power has recently re-located back to Edmonton where she graduated, some years ago, from the Grant MacEwan Theatre Arts program. Citadel Artistic Associate James MacDonald served as the show’s dramaturge (theatrical consultant) before it embarked on its current cross-country tour.
It’s an intriguing concept … that while most pleasant and creative, doesn’t really work.
Chelsea Hotel occupies a no-man middle ground. Either this show should be blown up Cirque de Soleil style and go to Vegas for a two-year run, or it should be pared down to its essential Leonard Cohen mi ...
Read the rest of entry »
A Christmas Carol
Citadel Theatre,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
To Dec. 23, 2015
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
How is it possible, after seeing a show on 16 consecutive opening nights, that one is still reduced to tears and gentle sobs of happiness/joy/sadness, at least 10 times through the evening?
Because it's A Christmas Carol, darn it! And not just any Christmas Carol but an adaptation for the stage by Tom Wood that is as classic as the brilliant book on which it is based.
It still must mystify its creators, Wood and director Bob Baker, that they produced such a gem of a production that it has hardly needed any tweaking since that original opening night on the Citadel's Maclab Stage in 1999.
Here's Christmas Carol, 2015, as popular if not more so than ever.
And if there are any rumours out there declaring this to be the last year Christmas Carol will be done at the Citadel, they are unequivocally, absolutely and utterly untrue, says Citadel General Manager Penny Ritco.
Why does thi ...
Read the rest of entry »
Evangeline
Book, lyrics and music by Ted Dykstra
Directed by Bob Baker
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton Canada, to Nov. 22, 2015
Ticket information
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
What’s on at the Citadel Theatre for the next two weeks until Nov. 22, 2025, has a real good shot at being a Broadway hit in a few years.
Dare to dream in technicolour. Evangeline could emerge as a hot Hollywood property, a Disney-style animated movie in the tradition of Beauty & the Beast and Pocahontas.
If I’m a Broadway producer, I’m looking for:
A great love story:
• Evangeline is one of the best. Lovers tragically separated, spending their lives looking for one another.
Great tunes:
• Evangeline is full of them.
Happy, happy:
• Multiple scenes of happy village folks leading the idyllic life, singin’ and dancin’ to beat the band.
Sad, sad:
• Tragedy and mayhem besets the villagers and the hard-luck lovers at every turn. Struggles are endured, emotions are deeply scar ...
Read the rest of entry »
One big BOOMing theatrical experience! BOOM opens the Citadel Theatre’s 50th season
Review of BOOM by Graham Hicks
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage,
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Sept. 24 to Oct. 11, 2015
Tickets
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
BOOM!!!
Who is this Rick Miller, and why is he so ridiculously talented?
BOOM!!!
How can one actor, in a one-man show, enthrall a 681-strong audience for two hours with an intermission?
BOOM!!!
Why would the Citadel Theatre’s artistic director Bob Baker, a man who’s both a shrewd judge of theatrical quality and who understands his audience better than anybody in Canadian theatre, use a one-man show to launch its stellar, big-deal 50th season celebration?
BOOM!!! BOOM!!! BOOM!!!
Because Bob Baker understands that Rick Miller is an affable genius – a story teller, musician, composer, historian, humourist, impressionist, ventriloquist, actor, writer, director.
And that’s before weighing up his greatest gift of all: An ...
Read the rest of entry »
Vigilante - written, composed and directed by Jonathan Christenson
World Premier, Citadel Theatre (Mclab Stage), Edmonton, Canada
A Catalyst Theatre production
March 7 to 29, 2015
Review by Graham Hicks
It sure is fun, and fascinating, to watch the evolution and growth of an artistic genius in our backyard ... like watching your immensely talented kid brother slowly reveal his extraordinary potential.
This review is about Jonathan Christenson’s latest rock-opera Vigilante, playing on the Citadel’s Maclab Stage in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, through March 29.
But before we get there, the artist and the show need context.
Christenson, born, raised and resident in Edmontonian, is playwright, lyricist, composer and director of his own shows.
He’s written musical theatre most of his adult life. House of Pootsie Plunket (1999) and Blue Orphan (2001)brought Christenson a national profile with his collaborator at the time, Joey Tremblay.
But it was when Christenson went solo - writi ...
Read the rest of entry »
Playing With Fire – The Theo Fleury Story
Maclab Stage, Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Through Feb. 15, 2015
Tickets, starting at $30
Review by Graham Hicks, hicksbiz.com
Relax.
Playing With Fire – The Theo Fleury Story – is not going to subject you to scene after scene of the grim sexual abuse story of Fleury’s adolescence that finally sent his hockey coach tormentor Graham James to prison.
In fact, this one-man show on the Citadel’s Maclab Theatre is surprisingly cheerful and funny, given it’s a detailed autobiographical account of the famous and diminutive Calgary Flame's ascent and then descent into a living hell of drug, alcohol and gambling addiction, then, one hopes, back to an addictions-free life. (Who knows? The play is based on Fleury’s autobiography, published in 2009.)
It’s also innovative, played on a mini-hockey rink, with top-notch multi-media enhancements to the story, beautifully acted with Shaun Smyth taking hi ...
Read the rest of entry »
Venus in Fur – A HicksBiz.com review by Graham Hicks
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage
9828 101A Ave., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Through February 8, 2015
Tickets start at $30
What’s this? A little foreplay? Black corsets? Whips? Legs that go on forever?
At The Citadel Theatre?
Yes!
But, this being the theatre, we’re not talking pornography. And, if it was a film, Venus in Fur would likely have a “G” rating. But you wouldn’t take your kids.
Venus in Fur is based on a wildly creative idea and is executed on the Citadel’s Shocter stage in wildly creative ways.
The plot’s straightforward and needs explanation before writing about this production.
A struggling director/writer (Jamie Cavanagh) is holding auditions for the female lead in his new play, based on a 19th century erotic novel, Venus in Furs by the original Mr. Sadomasochism himself, an Austrian writer by the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. This is historic fa ...
Read the rest of entry »
One Man, Two Guvnors
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage
Through Sunday, November 16, 2014
Tickets $30 and up, www.citadeltheatre.com
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
In One Man, Two Guvnors, Francis (John Ullyatt) splays away with a metaphorical comedic machine gun, shooting off humour in every which direction, at every which moment, within every which comedy device ever devised since the first playwright walked on his or her back legs.
Lord, this is one great screwball comedy that Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre has used to brighten up its 2014/15 season – up there with previous productions such as Monty Python’s Spamalot, Noises Off, the Noel Coward runabouts and Tom Wood’s initial adaptation of The Servant of Two Masters – on which this show is also based – back in 2002/03.
As the program notes usefully point out, British playwright Richard Bean is a worthy heir to the brilliant line of British physical/spoken humour that stretches from Spike Milligan to Peter Sellers, John Clee ...
Read the rest of entry »
|
|