Tag Archives: randy brososky

Fall 2025 Quick Takes

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What I’ve been watching, and haven’t made time to post about:

Nicole Moeller’s WILDCAT at Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre. The best thing about this play is the performers – Michelle Flieger and Maralyn Ryan as women a bit older than me, remembering their labour-activist past and frustrated in an increasingly-constrained present, Melissa Thingelstad as a lawyer daughter who works hard on taking care of her mum and not quite so much on figuring out what her mum wants, and Graham Mothersill as … well, as I said to a friend afterwards, Graham Mothersill pretty much has a lock on playing “nasty. ” Interesting and disturbing timely premise, with some points tweaked for the 2025 Alberta situation. I found the soundscape a bit intrusive, but that might be better for audience sitting further from the booth/back speakers. Heather Inglis directs. After a delayed start, WILDCAT‘s short run has two more shows, today (Saturday) matinee and evening, and tomorrow (Sunday Nov 9) matinee. Workshop West tickets and subscriptions continue to be 100% Pay what you will, online and in person.

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, part of the MacEwan University Music Theatre season and directed by Ellen Chorley. Like all the MacEwan shows, this one had a short run last weekend, and it sold out the Tim Ryan Theatre Lab space every night. It’s a good choice for a student show, with most of the young-adult performers playing children and a few playing adults (parents and competition staff). The set design was playful and functional, with an evocative representation of an American school gym, worn basketball-marked hardwood floor to wooden climbing frame, swinging doors full of photocopied notices, and old-school wall phone with the longest most mangled cord ever. Choreography was fun and energetic. Jack Hunting (Olive Ostrosky) and Kohen Foley (Leaf Coneybear) were particularly memorable as characters. In 2013 I saw a production of this musical by local company ELOPE. I’m a little embarrassed that I wrote in this blog at the time that I didn’t recognize the actor names, because now they’re all performers whose names would make me choose to go see something they’re in. MacEwan’s next show is Carrie: The Musical. It’s in the bigger Triffo Theatre space so some seats are still available, for Nov 26-30.

According to the Chorus was Walterdale Theatre’s October show. The Arlene Hutton script was directed by Barbara Mah, and set in the crowded female-chorus quick-change room of a Broadway theatre in the 1980s. Costumes – both the over-the-top concepts the dancers wear to perform, and the flamboyant neon warmup gear they arrive in – were splendid and funny and appropriately period, thanks to costume designer Karin Lauderdale. Walterdale’s next show is Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, directed by John Anderson, December 3-13. The talented cast includes Randy Brososky, the multi-talented actor/creator/improviser/director, along with 10 other performers, some new to Walterdale and some familiar. Advance tickets are here.

Die-Nasty is Edmonton’s long-running very-long-form improvised soap opera, this year tackling The Bible. Or rather, stories from those settings which didn’t make it into the versions we know, either the Torah or the New Testament. Die-Nasty’s company and guest performers create characters and the director (Jake Tkaczyk) gives them bare-bones scene descriptions to fill in on a moment’s notice. And somehow this turns into fascinating character development, plot points which could be excessive or nuanced or both, and moments of hilarity that are hard to describe afterwards. Last year they built a gold-rush town, complete with saloons and schoolmistress, doctor and explorers and a matriarch of many sons … Company members this year include Little Guitar Boy brothers Jason Hardwick and Lindsay Walker, who bear some resemblance to musical collaborators John&Paul as well as to various disciple origin stories, the aforementioned Randy Brososky who seems particularly suspicious, journalist Myrrh Incense (Kirsten Throndson), and others, and recent special guests have included Matt Baram and Naomi Sniecus (creator-performers of Big Stuff at the Citadel). Paul Morgan Donald provides live music and sometimes the characters sing! You don’t need to follow from the beginning, as they give recaps and character intros at the start of each show. Tickets for Die-Nasty are also 100% Pay What You Will now, at the theatre or online. Varscona Theatre, Monday nights at 7:30.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to fit in everything I want to see in November, but the list includes

Tough Guy, by Hayley Moorhouse, at the Arts Barns, two last shows today Saturday Nov 8th, advance tickets here.

Castle Spectre, an adaptation by Lauren Tamke who directed this production for her Paper Crown Theatre, at Gateway Theatre, Nov 21-30, tickets here.

Beehive the 1960s musical, at St Albert Dinner Theatre, directed by Caitlyn Tywoniuk and music direction by Dalton Terhorst, tickets here.

Teatro Live doing The 39 Steps, with Geoffrey Simon Brown as Richard Hannay, Nov 13-30.

Northern Light Theatre has a new play by Trevor Schmidt, How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold at the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, with Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, Nov 27 – Dec 13. Tickets here.

Vinyl Cafe: The Musical, at the Citadel, Nov 8 – Dec 7, tickets here.

Amadeus – according to Salieri

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Amadeus, by Peter Shaffer, was a play (1979) before it was a movie (1985 Best Picture Oscar).

The play, in the Psychopomp Theatre production directed by Jon Shields, starts with an angelic choir singing in opera style, surrounding a very old man huddled in a wheelchair and containing a hand tremor. He is composer Antonio Salieri (Randy Brososky), the narrator and the central character in the play, despite it being named for Mozart.

Salieri rises from his chair with difficulty and calls for house lights to see the audience he is addressing. He seems to be endowing us with powers of extra-human witnessing or perhaps divine judgement – are we the choir of angels? – as he promises to tell us the story of what he did to Mozart long ago and how he’s paying for it. He speaks to us in English, but he also speaks to God in what appears to be fluent Italian.

The scene shifts – Salieri morphs to an active 30 year old – and this is when he first meets his rival, the younger composer and former child prodigy Mozart. Salieri tells us that he wanted so badly to be famous for his music that he had made bargains with God. He had the position of Court Composer to Emperor Joseph (John Evans) in Vienna. He shows the audience his servants and his “venticelli” or gentle winds, flamboyant gossips he engages to bring him the latest rumours (Andrew Mecready and Randall MacDonald). The venticelli tell him that young Mozart is coming to court, so he arranges to eavesdrop and then to be introduced. But to Salieri’s disgust, in person Wolfgang Mozart (Drake Seipert) is vulgar and annoying and self-centred. Seipert portrays Mozart with the most irritating laugh ever.

Salieri is astonished and resentful that someone so vulgar can have the gifts of music and fame that he longs for himself. The quid-pro-quo that seems to be central to his relationship with the Divine launches him into resentment and the most disturbing portrayal of artistic jealousy that I have ever seen.

Brososky’s portrayal of Salieri is brilliant. His bitterness poisons his own nature as he goes further and further in trying to harm Mozart. Mozart’s wife Constanze Weber-Mozart (Cassie Hymen) tries to protect her husband and is also affected by Salieri’s schemes.

A cast of 14 plays many ensemble roles, nobles and servants and citizens. I was fascinated to encounter references to several of Mozart’s operas I recognized, including Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, and Marriage of Figaro. Costuming (Nancy Skorobohach) conveys the excesses of the period and provides clues to class and character.

I was also fascinated to see allusions to Mozart’s character traits which I had first learned of in Erin Hutchison’s Fringe musical Regression last summer – in particular his persistent scatological humour. I’d already encountered a portrayal of Van Gogh on the Shadow Theatre stage this winter, consistent with Hutchison’s characterization, so it amuses me that the third avatar of art in the musical Regression, Willliam Shakespeare, will be on stage in Shakespeare in Love at Walterdale Theatre this summer.

Amadeus has a short run (May 8-15 only) in the auditorium at Campus St-Jean, with tickets available here. The main entrance to the building is under construction, but there is labelled access through the main entrance to an elevator.