Emotional trip Amazing Race Canada winners' autobiographical show a moving ride Stage Door
By: Holly Harris Posted: 6:14 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 10, 2025 Last Modified: 7:04 PM CDT Wednesday, Sep. 10, 2025 Updates

When Broadway stars Catherine Wreford and Craig Ramsay bolted across the finish line for the TV hit reality series Amazing Race Canada in 2022, they were stunned to hear they had won the gruelling six-week competition, earning the top prize of $250,000.

“Winning the race changed my life on a cellular level,” Ramsay says over the phone, explaining that Team Broadway’s only goal was to improve each day and grow stronger.

“I believe manifestations are incredibly important, and that final winning moment became such a spiritual experience for both of us.”

That spirit of pure positivity takes centre stage Friday when the dynamic duo present their autobiographical production Behind the Curtain. Nothing is off limits as the triple threats share intimate stories, songs and dances culled from their careers at the epicentre of the theatre world, New York’s Great White Way.

“It’s our passion project, and everyone who sees it will laugh till their belly hurts, they’ll cry and they’ll learn,” says Wreford, 45, of the 140-minute (including intermission) mature-content cabaret featuring pianist/music director Robert Ollis.

The production garnered rave reviews for its raw, unflinching truth-telling after premiering in Palm Springs, Calif.

“We’re extremely vulnerable up there because we’re telling our own stories, but it’s how we’ve always lived our lives and we’ve never asked for permission to be ourselves,” Wreford says of her relationship with the friend she calls or texts multiple times a day.

Wreford, who honed her performing chops while growing up in River Heights, first met Ramsay, 48, at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet School during the late 1990s, where they discovered their mutual love for musical theatre.

Mentored by the late, great Arnold Spohr — Wreford would “pay” him in cashews — they equally revered then-principal dancer Tara Birtwhistle, who later coached them as Lord and Lady Capulet as they marked their company debut in the RWB’s 2019 production of Romeo and Juliet.

“Craig and Catherine were phenomenal, and know each other so well it became a very easy creative process,” Birtwhistle, now RWB associate artistic director, remembers over the phone.

“They both have this great authenticity, matched by a depth of passion and positive energy that is very special for a performer because you can go onstage and immediately connect with an audience.”

After packing his bags for the Big Apple in 1997, Ramsay lit up stages in 42nd Street, Hair, Cats and Fiddler on the Roof, among others. He’s also a reality star on hit shows Thintervention and Newlyweds: The First Year, which chronicled the LGBTTQ+ advocate’s marriage to husband Brandon Liberati, with whom he shares their 14-year-old son.

He now splits his time between Palm Springs and a custom-built home in the farming community of Harrow, Ont., where he was born, but he has a special place in his heart for the city.

“I spent such an important time of my life in Winnipeg, both personally and professionally. I fine-tuned my artistic craft there, and still have so many loved ones living in the city that I consider family” says Ramsay.

One of the highlights of the show promises to be his Cossack-inspired dance To Life from Fiddler on the Roof. Another will be his revelation of “secrets and truths” from his four productions of the Rocky Horror Picture Show; he quips that he’s spent “nearly 30 per cent of my career in gold lamé.”

Local audiences will recall Wreford’s transformation into Princess Diana in Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Casey and Diana in April, as well as her performances in Rainbow Stage’s Beauty and the Beast, A Chorus Line, Les Misérables and Mamma Mia, among others.

After being invited to join the Radio City Rockettes at age 19 — an opportunity that was thwarted at the last minute by a denied visa application — following her Stratford Festival premiere a year prior, the willowy performer enthralled in a host of Broadway shows including Oklahoma! and 42nd Street.

One of her solos in the show, Till There Was You, is addressed to her former fiancé, actor Jeff Goldblum, whom she met while performing in the 2004 Pittsburgh production of The Music Man. He proposed to her in a hot air balloon high above San Francisco, but the couple decided to mutually part ways.

“We had a great time and I think Jeff’s amazing. I have no regrets that I’m not with him anymore, and will always think of him as a lovely person,” she says of the Jurassic Park and Wicked star.

Behind the Curtain — currently in talks for a cross-Canada tour and potentially heading off-Broadway — doesn’t sugar-coat any of life’s grittier realities, including Wreford’s diagnosis of terminal brain cancer in 2013.

She credits Ramsay with insisting she seek medical attention after experiencing crippling headaches while living in Oklahoma City with her former husband and their two children, Quinn and Elliot (now 12 and 15, respectively). She had pushed pause on her performing career to raise her growing family, becoming a registered nurse during that time.

Shocked by her initial two- to six-year prognosis, delivered five weeks after giving birth to her daughter, she quickly returned to Winnipeg to be closer to family.

Now well past her “expiration date” and with nothing to lose, her new reality re-ignited her passion for the stage. She continues to defy all expectations, while remaining keenly aware of the illness that claimed the life of the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie in 2017.

She continues to serve as an advocate for brain cancer research and funding, and responds diligently to emails from those reeling from their own new diagnoses.

“I want to make sure that people always have somebody to talk to,” she says.

Audience members are advised to bring Kleenex for the show’s final number, a love song Wreford sings to the person she refers to as her “soul mate.”

“It’s a really special song, and I can’t even look at him because I’ll start crying. Craig knows exactly who I am, and I know exactly who he is. I respect him. I trust him and hold him in the highest place. And I know he does for me, too,” she says.

“The most important factor in my career has always been Catherine, and vice versa,” Ramsay adds. “She is an angel on earth who gives tremendous hope to others, and permission to live their own lives, and also do the impossible.”

In fact, her inspiration led to Ramsay co-authoring a book on Wreford’s life, titled The Cancer Dancer, based on 52 hours (and counting) of taped interviews that became the genesis for Behind the Curtain. The recordings will eventually be passed on to her two children, who will be able to hear their mother sharing tales of her life, and in her own words.

“This is a pretty special relationship, so it also feels like a celebration,” Wreford says. “I think we’re good by ourselves, but when we’re together, we’re magic.”

holly.harris@shaw.ca