Take a bow Some of the year’s best moments from local theatre productions By: Ben Waldman Posted: 3:00 AM CST Saturday, Dec. 23, 2023

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This article was published 23/12/2023 (997 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Year-end culture lists — the most noteworthy books, the most binge-worthy TV series, the albums we couldn’t stop listening to — give readers a chance to make up for lost time. To finally figure out what “Tom Wambsgans” means. To hop on the boygenius or Doja Cat train. To find out why grandpa is always raving about author David Grann.

That’s where theatre differs: if you miss a brilliant individual performance, a well-conceived set or a heartbreaking revival of a forgotten classic, the best you can do is imagine.

Before I started covering theatre for the Free Press last year, I only saw one or two productions per year, so you could easily count me among the dreamers. But in 2023, I had a seat in the audience for more than 40 local productions. It’s been a real privilege I don’t take for granted, especially given the troubles wrought on the theatre world by the global pandemic.

The performers and creators behind those 40-plus productions put everything on the line to entertain and enthral us, to enrich our understanding of both ourselves and the world around us.

Here are a few moments from 2023, each from a locally produced world première.

Best Architectural Demonstration

The Secret to Good Tea, Rosanna Deerchild’s remarkable playwriting debut, told the story of Maggie Mooswa (Tracey Nepinak) and Gwynn Starr (Kathleen MacLean), a mother and daughter struggling to communicate and cope with the realities of intergenerational trauma. It’s a heavy topic, but Deerchild treated it with a light, knowing touch; there were more laughs at the John Hirsch Mainstage on opening night than any other performance I saw this year, even the straight comedies.

But for all the chuckles, The Secret to Good Tea — developed in the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Pimootayowin Creators Circle — is ultimately a powerful living testimony to the strength of residential school survivors, of Indigenous people in general and Indigenous women in particular; a statement that, despite any attempts of erasure, tradition and culture will live on.

That was best exemplified late in the second act, as the performers — including offspring of survivors — erected a teepee on stage in silence. It was a sacred ceremony, graciously shared like a cup of chamomile.

The first play by an Indigenous playwright to have its première on the John Hirsch stage, The Secret to Good Tea certainly won’t be the last.

Most Tears Shed

Eric Plamondon was a bit shocked that Théâtre Cercle Molière agreed to put on his French adaptation of playwright Robert Chesley’s Jerker, a sensual, combative drama that told the naked truth about two gay men struggling to survive at the height of the AIDS crisis.

But the pioneering French-language theatre company, nearing its 100th year in operation, continues to defy expectations, giving Plamondon the green light when he fully expected to see red.

The result was a remarkably well-acted performance by David Bélizaire and Sébastien Bertrand, who never meet but transmit their love for one another over telephone wires.

Their relationship begins as purely sexual, but by their eighth conversation, Bertrand’s J.R. is telling Bélizaire’s Mike a fairy tale about an enchanted forest to calm his nerves and help him fall asleep — a gesture of care in lieu of a caress that will never come.

Best “Only in Winnipeg” Joke

Glad to Be Here, an immersive and sinister sales pitch by the folks at Theatre by the River, invited audience members beyond the fortress walls of New Winnipeg, the portion of the city that survived the great flood of 2045.

After sowing distrust, with some performers encouraging guests to drink the water and others insisting it was poisonous, cast members handed out slices of the city’s most divisive, love-it-or-hate-it baked good: Jeanne’s Cake.

I ate mine right down to its crumbly shortbread base, and then legitimately had to consider whether to drink a glass of the possibly impotable water to stifle my case of cake cough. Theatre by the River turned a piece of cake into a life-or-death situation. Immersive theatre at its tastiest.

Best Transition

At the end of the first act of Afterlight, the romantic vampire musical by Duncan Cox and Sharon Bajer, Razvan (Cox) and the 85-year-old Wanda (Bajer) climb into the body of a grand piano, where they presumably get it on after singing the raggy, sassy Vampire in My Piano.

Cox and Bajer, who produced the show for Walk & Talk and the Keep theatre companies, are two of the city’s busiest musical theatre performers, and clearly understand not just how to stop a show, but how to restart one after the audience takes a bathroom break.

To open Act II, Razvan and Wanda pop open the piano, with Cox proudly puffing on a pipe and a revitalized Bajer ashing a cigarette.

Then Razvan ditches his cape for a cardigan, switching from emo vampire into sitcom dad and setting up the next phase of the story.

Best Ad Lib

Playwright Daniel Thau-Eleff spent several years writing the layered Narrow Bridge, the triumphant, touching and riotous story of the religious journey of Sholem (Elio Zarrillo) produced in the spring by the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre.

Thau-Eleff’s writing is filled with jokes, both inside and otherwise, but on opening night, actress Rhea Akler, playing Sholem’s finicky mother, earned one of the biggest laughs after uttering two words that didn’t make it into the script.

In an anxious stupor, serving her children salad at the Shabbat table, Akler accidentally dropped the tongs. She could have said “Oh no.” She could have said “Whoops.” She could have said “Oh, gosh.”

Nope. Akler was in character, and said the only thing a flustered Jewish mother would: Oy gevalt!

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com