Yaga by Kat Sandler, the upcoming Shadow Theatre season-opener. Graphic supplied.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
“Let’s start with what you say….You say I fly in a mortar and pestle, sweeping a broom behind me to cover my tracks, eating naughty children, their fingers, legs, and guts, their earlobes, and, best of all, their bones, grinding them till they are fine as dust and sprinkle them on my vegetables….” YAGA, Kat Sandler
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
A big opening night in Edmonton theatre. The Shadow Theatre season opens with Kat Sandler’s YAGA, a darkly funny 2019 thriller by one of the hottest playwrights in Canada (and Lana Michelle’s first production as the new Shadow artistic director. It’s Sandler’s crunchy, contemporary, and feminist, take on the Slavic folk tale about the old crone who lives in a hut supported by chicken legs, who grinds the bones of her victims for fodder and fertilizer. Hughes’ production stars N Girgis, Emily Howard, and Maxwell Vesely, and runs through Nov. 1. With an eerie correspondence, the Shadow production has a parallel run to Sandler’s own adaptation of YAGA as an eight-episode series on CRAVE starring Carrie Anne Moss (The Matrix) and Hudson Williams (Heated Rivalry) that starts Oct. 23. Read all about YAGA and the rest of Hughes’ debut Shadow season as artistic director here.
Noam Tomaschoff in Our Little Secret, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Amanda Chieco. Set by BP Houle.
Opening at the Citadel tonight is a new, highly unusual solo Canadian musical. Our Little Secret: A True New Musical by and starring Noam Tomaschoff was a Fringe hit, first in Toronto and then in 2024 Edinburgh, and more recently it’s packed houses at the Segal Centre in Montreal. Directed by Adam Pascal (from the original production of Rent), it arrives at the Citadel (through Oct. 25) to tell the playwright’s true story, and launch to the Citadel’s Highwire Series. At 31 the playwright on impulse ordered up a 23&Me DNA ancestry kit — and discovered that his father isn’t his biological father and that he has 35 siblings around the world. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com.
Jorja Polischuk, Emma Reynolds, Jordan Empson in OH, ANNE!, Carter-Ryan Gallery and Live Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
Continuing its run at Theatre Network (through Sunday) is OH, ANNE!, Bridget Ryan’s original four-performer, all-female musical comedy adaptation of the beloved Canuck classic Anne of Green Gables. Ryan’s production, set to original Celtic sea shanties, arrives from sold-out runs at the Carter-Ryan Gallery and Theatre in Canmore, with a future that includes (so far) a run at Factory Theatre in Toronto later this season. Read all about its inspiration and creation in this interview with Ryan here. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.