Dearest Diary
Mamma Mia! is a blast!. A wonderful escape just when the news is so awful globally and even locally. It’s so dry here – brown grass and not a drop of rain in the forecast – and there’s a woods travel ban BUT – thank heavens! – all the outdoor theatre is still happening.
But first to indoor theatre. As you know I’ve played the Mamma Mia CD so much it now skips and I’ve already seen the stage show and the movie. Well, I was over the moon at Neptune’s Mamma Mia!
The energy starts high and keeps on going, the pace is excellent, the cast is totally into it. This production has the pulsating energy of summer love, the group dances are like beach parties. Wish I could bottle up that energy.
Even though the show has some dramatic conflict – who is Sophie’s father? She invites all three potential dads to her wedding much to her mother Donna’s horror – it’s really a fantasy and a celebration of life, love and community on an enchanted Greek island with beautiful red sunsets, as lit by Leigh Ann Vardy.
Most of all the music honours the original songs with a rocking live band beneath the stage. Julie Martell, who was Donna in Neptune’s 2018 production, has a voice like a cascading waterfall – natural and effortless – and she’s an excellent song crafter, getting emotional truth into the familiar words and tunes. Martell’s Donna ranges from worried and mature to having pure fun.
While the big splashy numbers like Dancing Queen are great, some of my favourites are the quieter moments. There is a powerful duet between Donna and Sam (Brad Hodder), who, unlike Pierce Brosnan in the movie, can really sing. He brings the pain of human experience and a raw romantic energy to the one man Donna truly loved and lost.
The poignant mother/daughter moments are truly touching. As you know, my daughter is out West so I respond super strongly to Donna’s wistfulness at accepting the reality, as all parents must, that her child is all grown up and must leave the nest. Martell gets a real ache into “Slipping through my fingers.” But then later on she blasts it out for a super-charged, deeply emotional take on The Winner Takes it All.
Dominique Leblanc as Sophie has a sweet and confident voice and mines the depths of Sophie’s confusion and conflicted feelings about her mother.
It’s wonderful that both stars of this show are from Nova Scotia. Martell, as she writes in the program, was first cast as Sophie in the Mirvish production of Mamma Mia! She went on to do nine seasons at the Shaw Festival.
She writes: “One of my most transformative roles, however, has been navigating my own cancer journey. To be back on stage – singing these iconic songs, in this beloved theatre, with this extraordinary company – after not knowing if it would be possible again, is profoundly humbling.”
Folks who saw Neptune’s Kitchen Party will know Leblanc, an Acadian performer who was Maria in The Grand Theatre’s The Sound of Music and has been in several Neptune productions.
Director Jeremy Webb goes for all the comedy within the three possible dads with the exception of Sam. Ian Gilmore, in his 17th production at Neptune, is the final potential dad, Harry, a former punk rocker who has settled for a businessman’s life. He’s comic and dressed as a fool BUT the duet between he and Martell, Thank you for the Memories, is honest and tender, filled with a warmth that is key to this show.
Jeff Schwager plays the Australian potential dad Bill like Crocodile Dundee and one of my favourite songs, Take a Chance on Me, with Rosie (Bridget Bezanson) is more comic than steamy.
However, there’s lots of steam heat in Kirstin Howell’s powerhouse performance as the much-divorced, sensual Tanya in Does Your Mamma Know, well directed by Webb and choreographed by Stephanie Gaudet, whose movement creation is different, thoughtful and outstanding in this show.
What’s Mamma Mia! without its ensemble off 13 triple threats? Kih Becke as Lisa and Ryan MacDougall as Allie are very campy and full-on as Sophie’s friends, which takes some getting used to, but suits the tone of the show. Also in the ensemble are: Kade McCloud, Keenan Smits, Noah Tran, Henna Matharu, Katrina Phillip, Natasha Strilchuk, Felix Turgeon, Dorian Fournier, David Light, Kendall Ackland and Robyn Esson, also dance captain.
Set designer Geoff Dinwiddie alternates between a basic sky/beach scenery to busy, storybook interiors for the Taverna bedrooms
Mamma Mia! has been extended to Sept. 14. I went as a girls’ night out with our “recovering arts journalist” club. What better show for a girls’ night out! Tickets are at http://www.neptunetheatre.com or the box office at (902) 429-7070.
PART TWO:
Luckily Premier Tim Houston’s ban on travel in the woods is not affecting outdoor summer theatre, though Shakespeare by the Sea did have to cancel one show which is a revenue loss. I know you can’t go to the theatre Dear Diary but if you could there are lots of choices. I’m telling you about the outdoor ones first because it’s so important people know they are still on.
First off, Shakespeare by the Sea has been granted a permit from the province of Nova Scotia and the department of parks and recreation to continue operating with some conditions (stay on marked main path, do not enter the woods, do not leave performance site, no smoking or vaping).
The shows are:
Robin Hood: The Legendary Musical Comedy, starring Matt Lacas as Robin Hood (folks may remember Lacas as Robin Hood in FAST’s outdoor production during COVID-19) and Rachel Lloyd as the ever-popular Sven, to Aug. 30; As You Like It, to Aug. 29; The Unrehearsed Romeo and Juliet, Aug. 31 (just about sold out). (https://www.shakespearebythesea.ca/)
Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, near Canning: Don Quixote! runs to August 16, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 4 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. The night time By Fire show this year is The Haunting of Sleepy Hollow, adapted from Washington Irving’s 1820 short story, with music and lyrics by Allen Cole, book and lyrics by Ken Schwartz, who writes in the program: “Our adaptation imagines a very different Sleepy Hollow. One where nothing is as it seems and where a single outsider, one Ichabod Crane, is lured by the bucolic beauty of the little village without realizing that he is there to serve a very different purpose from the schoolteacher position he arrives to fill.”
It runs at 85 minutes without intermission to August 16, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 9 p.m.; Two Planks has found a non-wood burning substitute for the fire; (https://artscentre.ca/two-planks/).
Eastern Front Theatre, in the third year of its Summer Field Trips series, is taking people to The Haunting of Sleepy Hollow Saturday, Aug. 9. The trip from 4 p.m., departing from Alderney Landing, to 12 a.m., includes a stop at Hennigar’s Farm Market, the Blomidon Lookoff, a picnic lunch at Ross Creek as well as an artist chat and the performance. Tickets are $125; visit http://www.easternfronttheatre.com/field-trips or call the box office at 902-466-2769.
Gale Force Theatre: Icarus, Falling of Birds: Aug. 22 to 24, created by Halifax’s Gale Force Theatre, designed by North Barn Theatre, an outdoor performance adapted from the book of poetry and photography of the same name by Harry Thurston and Thaddeus Holownia, who was inspired by the tragic death in 2013 of thousands of migratory songbirds killed by a hundred-foot-high flare at the Canaport Liquefied Natural Gas plant in Saint John, N.B. This show features a reading by the poet, large-scale puppetry, a string trio composed by Blue Lobelia and a youth ensemble of performers. The audience walks from scene to scene.
Shows: Friday, Aug. 22, 6 p.m. (preview), Halifax venue York Redoubt; Saturday, Aug. 23, 6 p.m., Halifax venue York Redoubt; Sunday Aug. 24, 6 p.m., Ross Creek Centre for the Arts. Tickets link : https://www.zeffy.com/ticketing/icarus-falling-of-birds.
Zuppa: The Sipu Tricksters, in association with Zuppa and hosted by Shakespeare by the Sea: Metu’na’q (Caliban’s Version), an outdoor, community-driven production that weaves Mi’kmaw culture into scenes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Aug. 10 (preview) to Aug. 17. This production was first created by community members from Sipekne’katik First Nation and is performed in Point Pleasant Park where Cambridge Dr. and Arm road meet. Lower parking lot recommended. Trigger warnings include: colonial violence, consumption of alcohol, racism and racial slurs. Tickets at: https://linktr.ee/zuppaworks
Festival Antigonish: The Secret Garden of An Sìthean, by Andrea Boyd from the novel by Frances Hodgdon Burnett, reimagined for Cape Breton with wild folk and live Gaelic music, to Aug. 23. (festivalantigonish.ca)
Ship’s Company Theatre, Parrsboro:
Coal Bowl Queen, a premiere by Halifax-based, Cape Breton-born playwright Richie Wilcox, produced in collaboration with HEIST and Eastern Front Theatre, a basketball tournament, a pageant queen and a decades-long mystery, at The Ship Aug. 13 to 24; and at the Eastern Front Theatre Sept. 11 to 21. This is Heist’s biggest production to date with nine performers and a four-week run; the company is looking to raise $5,000 for in donations received through Theatre Nova Scotia.
Musical events at the Ship include Nova Scotia Songstresses hosted by Charlie Rhindress, Aug. 29, Anne Murray; Aug. 30, Rita MacNeil. (https://www.shipscompanytheatre.com/)
Theatre Baddeck, now at 98 Twining St.: Mary Colin Chisholm’s hit, He’d Be Your Father’s Mother’s Cousin, featuring Chisholm as Grandma, July 11 to Aug. 29; Ed’s Garage, by Dan Needles (creator of the Wingfield plays), July 18 to Aug. 30. (https://www.theatrebaddeck.com/)
CONGRATULATIONS TO 2B:
2b theatre’s production of Hannah Moscovitch’s Red Like Fruit, starring Michelle Monteith and David Patrick Flemming, is getting rave reviews and has received a Scotsman Fringe First Award as it takes the Edinburgh Festival Fringe by storm.
2b theatre company is one of only five companies at the Fringe to be awarded in the first week of the festival. The Scotsman’s prestigious Fringe Firsts are the longest running awards at the Edinburgh festivals; 2b has toured five shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest performing arts festival and won a Fringe First for its biggest ever touring hit Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story during its UK premiere run in 2017.
“This recognition means a lot,” says 2b artistic director and the play’s director, Christian Barry, in a press release. “For us, the Edinburgh Fringe is kind of the centre of our universe for original creation, touring companies. There are over 3,800 shows here this month. So many worthy shows by so many remarkable colleagues from around the world. So to be recognized with this prize is significant.”
If you happen to be in Scotland, the play runs to Aug. 27 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.
- For Love Nor Money: Unexpected story of feminism and the pursuit of dreams set in 19th century N.S.
- Metu’na’q’: Intriguing Indigenous spin on The Tempest in Point Pleasant Park.
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NS reviews 
thank you for this fantastic review and important information- This column can be such a gift!
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