STAGE NOTES: World premiere of Trevor Schmidt’s Robot Girls

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Co-director Lana Hughes thinks people are in for a surprise with Shadow Theatre’s upcoming world premiere of Trevor Schmidt’s Robot Girls.

“Especially if they’re familiar with Trevor’s plays,” she says. “He’s wickedly funny and there’s a lot of humour in there, as well as depth, but it’s also slightly darker than some of his other work.”

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Robot Girls, which runs until March 31 at the Varscona Theatre, isn’t about actual robot girls. It’s a play about four students at Nellie McClung Charter School for Girls who join the science club and build a robot for an international student robot-building competition. While they work they make personal connections and find themselves as teenage girls.

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“Trevor’s character voices are so unique and so amazing,” says Hughes. “I think it’s hard not to fall in love with all of these girls. One of my favourite things about the play is it’s a really lovely depiction of young women. They’re just allowed to be themselves and there’s very little fighting, they get along. The story isn’t without conflict, but we really get an inside look of friendship, and trying to figure yourself out as a young woman without that sort of lens of negativity that I often find in media. I think that’s one of the reasons the show is really special”.

Hughes, who is directing Robot Girls with Shadow’s artistic director John Hudson, says working with cast members Abigail McDougall, Hayley Moorehouse, Jayce McKenzie and Larissah Lashley has been a joy.

“They’re a really fantastic group and they have great chemistry. They’ve nailed a pace in this play that I think will be familiar to folks who are Gilmore Girls fans. It’s a really quick, fiery pace and it just flies along.”

Tickets for Robot Girls start at $25 in advance from shadowtheatre.org or at the Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

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NLT’s new noir season

Speaking of Schmidt, the playwright and artistic director for Northern Light Theatre promises his company’s upcoming season will be very dark indeed.

“I consciously made that choice because I feel that in the economic and political times we’re in, so many theatres are playing it a little bit safe,” he says. “I don’t have a problem with commercially viable theatre, but I’m playing to our small but loyal, niche market with this.”

Monstress, which kicks things off Nov. 8, has Schmidt spinning the basic premise of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. At the centre are two characters, an arrogant female doctor and the young woman she brings back to life at the behest of the young woman’s father. As Stephen King and The Ramones have both observed, sometimes it’s best to leave the dead alone.

“The young woman begins to question why she was brought back without being asked. How do you know that I wanted to come back? It’s a lot about motherhood in some ways. Why bring me into the world if this is what it’s going to be? Maybe I don’t want to be here. There’s also the idea that if you revive someone from the dead, what do they bring back with them? And which one of them is the real monster?”

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Angry Alan by Penelope Skinner may well have been written a month ago, so closely does it mirror current social media trends. The play, which runs from Jan 24 to Feb. 8, follows a frustrated worker drone who finds rage rekindled when he stumbles on online activist Angry Alan, who verbalizes all of the humiliation and anger he’s been feeling. If the adherents of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson have been on your Twitter radar, you’ll know exactly what this is about.

“You watch as this character tells his story, slowly becoming seduced by that movement,” Schmidt says. “It seems to make sense for a long portion of the play, like of course he feels that way. You can totally understand how disenfranchised men buy into that moment — it’s kind of terrifying.”

Finally, the season ends with Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, which runs April 18 to May 3.

“It’s a satire on the housing market, greed and commercialism, and how far a young couple will go to have the dream life that they feel is almost within reach,” Schmidt says. “They just keep making these moral concessions in order to get the lifestyle that they desire and would have been out of their reach otherwise.”

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Let’s just say those moral concessions go a fair bit beyond cheating on their taxes. It’s pitch-black satire, and Schmidt is thrilled to be working in it.

“I don’t begrudge anyone else not doing this kind of work,” he says. “In fact, I’m quite happy to be working at the far end of a spectrum in town, because I think that that’s what makes it a healthy ecology. That way, there’s something for everyone!”

Tickets for NLT’s upcoming final production of its 2023 season, Candy & the Beast, as well as the 2024/205 season are available at northernlighttheatre.com. All shows take place at Studio Theatre, inside Fringe Theatre Adventures, 10330 84 Ave.

The Theory of Relativity

Darrin Hagen credits his musical director Cathy Derkach for the idea of staging The Theory of Relativity with a cast of drama and music students at Concordia University.

“I was looking at things like Heathers and Mean Girls, or maybe a jukebox musical, but she asked if I’d heard of (The Theory of Relativity),” the actor, playwright, musician and now director says. “The title didn’t exactly appeal to me, I’ll admit. I checked it out on YouTube and a couple of songs in I was hooked.”

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First staged in 2014, the musical has gained traction through the years, becoming the most-produced high school musical in the New York licensing agency Music Theatre International’s catalogue. Hagen describes it as a “love letter to people on the verge of stepping into a new life.”

“It’s accessible, poetic and philosophical without getting bogged down in it,” he says. “The characters are about to fly, they’re brand new humans in the process of changing the world.”

The Theory of Relativity opens Friday and runs through March 24 at the Al and Trish Huehn Theatre, 7128 Ada Boulevard. Tickets are $16 and up, available in advance from edmontonarts.ca

Broadway Across Canada’s new season

Beetlejuice, Riverdance 30 and Disney’s The Lion King are among the productions announced for Broadway Across Canada’s 2024/25 season.

Come From Away opens the six-show season followed by The Book of Mormon in November. Beetlejuice opens 2025 on Jan. 14, followed by TINA – The Tina Turner Musical in March, Riverdance 30 – The New Generation in June and finally Disney’s The Lion King making its way to town in July, 2025.

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All productions are at the Jubilee Auditorium and tickets for single shows or three-show packages are available at BroadwayAcrossCanada.ca.

In the meantime, the Tony Award-winning musical Hairspray will close out Broadway Across Canada’s current season. The musical comedy about 16-year-old Tracy Turnblad’s efforts to make it on TV will run at the Jubilee Auditorium March 26-31 and tickets start at $45 from edmonton.broadway.com.

Magic Michael XXS on the fly

Stripping routines based on audience suggestions, with music the actors have never heard before? You’d probably think this is something Rapid Fire Theatre would engage in, and you’d be right.

The fully improvised Magic Michael XXS runs until March 23 at Rapid Fire Exchange, 10437 83 Ave. Tickets are $10 and up, available in advance from rapidfiretheatre.com

Top Gunn: A Maverick Musical

Finally, food and fighter jets are on the menu for Top Gunn: A Maverick Musical, a spoof that envelopes both Top Gun movies at Jubilations Dinner Theatre, locate in West Edmonton Mall. Tickets are $$44.95 and up, with multi-course dinner, available in advance from jubilations.ca

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