Lights! Camera! Curtain!

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/10/2015 (3652 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You’ve seen the play! Now see the movie!

Two or three generations ago, that was a common appeal to draw audiences to movie houses, dating back to when movies gained mass popularity and fledgling studios naturally went looking for plays to adapt to film. Theatre provided ready-made material for movies, from crime melodramas such as The Petrified Forest to any number of musicals, including Show Boat and West Side Story. Even Casablanca started life as an unproduced play, Everybody Comes to Rick’s.

The dynamic has since reversed. Now movies inspire plays, and if you don’t believe it, look to Broadway. Now showing: An American in Paris, Aladdin, The Lion King, Kinky Boots, Finding Neverland and Matilda, all of which were movies before they were plays.

In Winnipeg, the theatre schedule in 2015 is dotted throughout with dramas, comedies and musicals that first saw life on the big screen. (As a reporter jumping from the movie beat to the theatre beat, I am duly grateful.)

For example, the opener at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Oct. 15-Nov. 7), should be familiar to anyone who has ever cared about classic westerns. Jethro Compton’s stage play, adapted from the short story by Dorothy M. Johnson, may be seared into memory as a 1962 film starring James Stewart as a book-toting lawyer who challenges the amoral thug Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin) for the leadership of a town, with John Wayne’s laconic gunslinger holding the balance of power.

In the new year, RMTC goes to the movie well again with the Elton John-scored musical adaptation of the movie Billy Elliot (Jan. 12-Feb. 6) about a boy with a dream to dance in a troubled English mining community.

Rainbow Stage has actually established an annual movie-to-musical tradition, given past productions such as Sister Act (2015), The Producers (2014), Mary Poppins (2013) and Footloose (2012). In the summer of 2016, Rainbow maintains the custom with Shrek the Musical (Aug. 11-31), an adaptation of the cheeky 2001 Dreamworks cartoon.

In a couple of weeks, Wasteland Productions, the folks who gave us last year’s Evil Dead: The Musical, get more traditional with The Rocky Horror Show (Oct. 22-31 at the Park Theatre). Sure, it was cooked up in the London theatre lab, but it really sparked into the wider consciousness on the Hollywood studio slab, courtesy of the 1975 cult movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Dry Cold Productions also contributes. They’re staging Steven Sondheim’s costume musical A Little Night Music (May 18-20), a replay of the company’s first production from 2001. Yes, even Sondheim got into that act: the musical is an adaptation of the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night.

Also on the roster of Winnipeg theatres this season:

 

Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre

Alice Through the Looking Glass (Nov. 25-Dec. 19) is an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s surreal sequel by James Reaney, originally produced at the Stratford Festival in 2014.

Lucy Kirkwood’s drama Chimerica (Feb. 24-March 19) posits the 20-years-later reunion of the lone protester standing in front of a tank following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the journalist who took his picture.

Unnecessary Farce (March 30-April 23) promises to be an old-fashioned, door-slamming, saucy comedy about a corrupt mayor, a pair of investigators and a bagpipe-wielding hit man.

Boom (April 27-May 21) is a solo show by Dora-winning writer-performer Rick Miller encapsulating the quarter-century history of the baby boomer.

 

RMTC Warehouse

Seminar (Oct. 21-Nov. 7) is a sexy, rude comedy starring Tom McCamus in which four aspiring writers pool their money to hire a hard-drinking novelist to conduct a freewheeling master class.

Wiesenthal (Nov. 19-Dec. 5) is a drama by Tom Dugan that takes on the mammoth task of telling the story of Holocaust survivor-turned-Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

Things We Do for Love (Feb. 3-20) kicks off AyckbournFest, the 16th Master Playwright Festival, with a comedy about a single woman who unleashes hell in her home when she rents out her top floor to an old friend and her fiancé, sparking reaction from the man downstairs, who carries a torch for her.

Myth of the Ostrich (March 9-26) a discussion between two moms — one a traditional conservative and the other, not so much — about their children’s new romance turns bizarre in this fringe hit by Matt Murray.

 

Prairie Theatre Exchange

Little Thing, Big Thing (Oct. 15-Nov. 1). Heard the one about the nun and the ex-convict? This Irish comedy puts these two characters together on the streets of Dublin in a comic race to expose Big Oil corruption.

Butcher (Nov. 19-Dec. 6) is a dark drama unravelling a mystery surrounding an old man found in a police station wearing a foreign military uniform, a Santa hat and a meat hook around his neck, with a note saying “Arrest me.”

Mission: Munsch Possible (Dec. 18-Jan. 3) is the annual PTE Robert Munsch-inspired show, adapted by Debbie Patterson, featuring beloved stories including Thomas’s Snowsuit and Angela’s Airplane.

Spin (Jan. 14-31) is a musical/history show by Evalyn Parry celebrating the bicycle as “muse, musical instrument and agent of social change.”

Seeds (Feb. 11-28) examines the real-life court case that pitted Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser (Eric Peterson) against corporate giant Monsanto in a ruinous battle over genetically modified seeds.

Marriage: A Demolition in Two Acts (March 17-April 3). A kitchen renovation precipitates domestic dissonance in this comedy from Winnipeg playwright Rick Chafe.

 

Manitoba Theatre for Young People

A show with appeal for the wee ones, Peg and the Yeti (Nov. 5-14) is an energetic adaptation of the storybook by Kenneth Oppel.

James and the Giant Peach (Dec. 3-27) is a musical adaptation of the weird and wonderful story by Roald Dahl, in which our hero escapes from his despicable aunts via the titular fruit.

The Power of Harriet T. (Feb. 3-14) is the story of historic heroine Harriet Tubman and her work transporting slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, adapted by Michael Miller for pre-teens and teens.

Snow Angel (Feb. 24-March 5) uses big doughy masks for actors portraying a gentle story of a brother and sister exploring a winter wonderland.

The Adventures of Robin Hood (March 30-April 10) is a wild take on the Sherwood Forest merry men, courtesy of the Scottish theatre company Visible Fictions.

The teen drama In This World (April 20-30) explores the social and racial dynamics at work following a fight between a blond Toronto teen from an affluent family and her schoolmate, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants.

 

Winnipeg Jewish Theatre

Stars of David (Oct. 22-Nov. 1) is a musical adaptation of the bestselling book Stars of David: Prominent Jews Talk About Being Jewish, which included stories from the likes of Leonard Nimoy, Joan Rivers and Gloria Steinem.

So, Nu (March 9-19) is a program of 10 works by local playwrights, featuring the première of writer Cairn Moore’s Shiksa.

Buyer and Cellar (May 7-15) is a comedy about an actor who gets a job as shopkeeper in the underground mall Barbra Streisand maintains on her private Malibu estate.

 

Theatre Projects

Set against the backdrop of the banking crisis that derailed the country, Iceland (Nov. 5-15) sparks its darkly humorous tale with a confrontation between a real estate agent and his tenant.

Fraz vs. the Future and Village Ax (Jan. 7-17) is a double bill including Fraz Wiest’s fringe hit about one man’s battle with social media (among other things) and performer-writer Sydney Hayduk’s fantasy of life in a high-security village.

Reservations (March 10-20) by actor-playwright Steven Ratzlaff is another double bill of plays, one depicting a dispute between foster parents and the aboriginal CFS agency responsible for their children, and the other the story of a Mennonite farmer who gifts his land to the Siksika First Nation.

 

Manitoba Opera

The company gets classical with Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Nov. 21-27) and next year goes contemporary with an adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (April 23-29).

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca