Although the International Children’s Festival is folding its tents for the year, one show is a holdover.
The St. Albert Children’s Theatre’s production of Oink!, a Pig of a Tale is playing for one night at the Arden Theatre on Monday, June 15 at 7:30 p.m.
Based on the Three Little Pigs, it’s about Frank Trotter and his big greedy brothers Monty and Welly who are caught stealing the harvest feast and banished into the big, wide world.
“It’s campy, it’s vaudevillian. It’s very fast-paced and there’s lots of laughs,” says artistic director Janice Flowers.
Oink! was the only festival show sold out weeks in advance. As Flowers explains it, “We’ve built up a reputation and people want to see it no matter what we put on.”
Tickets for Oink! are $11 and available through the Arden box office at 780-459-1542. For additional news visit www.sact.ca.
Marianne Copithorne, artistic director of The Freewill Shakespeare Festival, just revealed the two-show line-up for this season. It rotates between the Comedy of Errors’ rollicking jests and Titus Andronicus’ bloody gore-fest.
In Comedy of Errors, director Jeff Page sharpens the verbal sparring with farce and slapstick as two sets of twins given identical names are in a collision course in Edmonton circa 1915. Nellie McClung, step aside.
And in Titus Andronicus, one of history’s earliest pieces of horror, prepare for a litany of spilled blood from rape, tongue slicing and insanity to hand choppings, beheadings and cooking an enemy into a pie.
While the characters’ blood runs freely, the audience’s blood runs cold. Although Titus Andronicus has been criticized for its wholesale slaughter, it asks serious questions about humanity.
The festival runs June 30 to July 26 at Heritage Amphitheatre in Hawrelak Park. For a complete schedule visit www.rivercityshakespeare.com.
Tickets are $20 adults, $15 students/seniors and children under 12 are free. Passes are $30. Call Tix on the Square at 780-420-1757.
