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EVELYN STRANGE wins Best Production at the 2010 Betty Mitchell Awards!

Vertigo Theatre is also proud to congratulate Andrew Blizzard for being recognized for Outstanding Sound Design or Composition for his work on WOMAN IN BLACK.

Read coverage:

Calgary Herald

Calgary Sun

CBC

Calgary Herald advance article "Betty Than Ever"

REBECCA

ACTRESS STRIPS AWAY MYSTERY OF BURLEQUE'S APPEAL

Bob Clark, Calgary Herald May 20, 2010

OK, so diversity is a given in the role-playing lives of most successful actors.

But how many can say they go from portraying the starring role of the painfully shy and awkward Second Mrs. de Winter in the adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, currently on view at Vertigo, to taking off their clothes with great self-assurance, and on a more or less regular basis, in skits about, among other things, a 1950s housewife discovering her, uh, sexuality . . . with a vacuum cleaner?

Twenty-five-year-old Arielle Rombough can.

MANDERLEY COMES ALIVE ONSTAGE

Vertigo’s production of Rebecca is almost perfect

Published May 13, 2010  by Kathleen Renne in Theatre

Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel, Rebecca, opens with these famous lines: “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” For Vertigo Mystery Theatre’s final show of its season, artistic director Mark Bellamy has made the enigmatic, haunting world of Manderley come alive with Clifford Williams’s adaptation, which he based on du Maurier’s own stage adaptation of the novel.

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REBECCA IS A HAUNTING ROMANCE

by Louis B Hobson, Calgary Sun  May 8

Within months of its publication in 1938, Daphne du Maurier's gothic romance Rebecca became an international sensation.

Two years later, Alfred Hitchcock turned it into an Oscar-winning film.

Seven decades have done little to diminish the haunting effect of this ghost story, as is evidenced by Mark Bellamy's deliciously creepy production running at Vertigo Theatre.

BEYOND HITCHCOCK

by Bob Clark, Calgary Herald May 6

Forget Hitchcock. The famous Sir Laurence Olivier-Joan Fontaine-Judith Anderson-as-Mrs. Danvers film version was far from uppermost in mind when artistic director Mark Bellamy programmed Rebecca as Vertigo Mystery Theatre's season finale.

"To me, it's more than a Hitchcock movie," Bellamy says, pointing out that Daphne du Maurier wrote her own stage adaptation of her 1938 novel.

"It was a huge hit in London, and that's what inspired Hitchcock to make the movie," says Bellamy, who directs the Vertigo production.

ACTOR DOUBLES UP

by Louis B. Hobson, Calgary Sun May 2, 2010

Iam Coulter is considering cloning herself and she just might need to.

On Tuesday, Coulter opens in Vertigo Theatre’s production of the classic psychological thriller Rebecca playing Beatrice Lacy.

When the curtain falls on that preview performance, Coulter will have to dash over to the Arrata Opera Centre to see how the dress rehearsal of The Shakespeare Company’s production of Love’s Labor’s Lost went.

That play opens Wednesday and Coulter is the artistic manager of the company.

“It’s crazy but it’s definitely a wonderful crazy,” says Coulter, who is in her seventh year at the head of The Shakespeare Company.

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THE POSEUR'S GUIDE TO: REBECCA

Thanks to Vertigo Theatre's final production of the season, Calgarians won't have to dream they're going back to Manderley.

EVELYN STRANGE

Quirky play mixes Alfred Hitchcock and hilarity

by Stephen Hunt

Calgary Herald, March 20

4 1/2 Stars

Imagine Alfred Hitchcock in an Oilers jersey, and you begin to get the germ of an idea that inspired Evelyn Strange, the wonderfully weird new production of Edmonton playwright Stewart Lemoine's comic murder mystery that opened at the Vertigo Theatre on Thursday night.

That jarring image is just a way of trying to articulate the blend of satire and suspense Lemoine unleashes in Evelyn Strange, a play that if it recalls anything, is one part Hitch's Rear Window, a classic featuring Grace Kelly and Jimmy Stewart, and another part Blue Velvet, David Lynch's camp mystery that turned Dennis Hopper into a cultural icon.

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Mystery at the Met

4 stars

You don’t need to be familiar with the films of Alfred Hitchcock to enjoy Stewart Lemoine’s Evelyn Strange, but it definitely helps.

Lemoine’s comic mystery currently running at Vertigo Theatre is a homage to Hitchcock’s film noir thrillers and to his icy blond heroines.

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Press + 1 review

4.5 stars

If a beautiful stranger came up to you, presented herself as Evelyn Strange and stated “sense has ruled my life in place of passion?” What would your reaction be? Would it be one of intrigue? Perhaps flattery? Or that this Evelyn Strange is quite literally strange? Whatever the case or reasoning may be, first impressions and the first words out of someone’s mouth can lead to unexpected conclusions, adventures, and mystery.

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Playwright's latest inspiration is no strange mystery

For Edmonton playwright Stewart Lemoine, the story of Evelyn Strange arose not out of an idea or a theme, but rather out of the availability of a certain Edmonton actress.

She was involved, back in the mid-1990s, with Lemoine's Edmonton-based Teatro la Quindicina, a theatre company that's been producing original work in that city for over two decades now.

"I was writing it for a particular cast of four people," Lemoine says. "I wanted to feature this one actress in a particular way."

Lemoine didn't have a whole lot of play in mind, but he did have a location, a time period and an affliction: 1950s New York and amnesia.

Avenue Magazine On-Line Review

The Man About Town in Culture Snacks on Mar 19 2010

When you attend a performance by Vertigo Mystery Theatre you tend to come in with certain expectations. You expect that the script will take some twists and turns, you expect to not really know the full story of what is unfolding untill the end of the play.

This is what good mystery theatre is all about, part of the fun is trying to figure out how the puzzle of the plot is put together before things are fully revealed. And Vertigo always delivers.

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The Poseur's Guide to: EVELYN STRANGE

Vertigo's latest offers a little opera, a few cocktails -- rum flip, anybody? -- and plenty of snappy dialogue. Oh yeah, there's also a corpse.

Edmonton playwright Stewart Lemoine is a bit of an opera nut. He's also a fan of old movies. These facts come as manna from heaven for the poseur. With a little study, you can marshal any number of arcane facts to wow your fellow patrons at Vertigo Mystery Theatre.

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THE WOMAN IN BLACK

SPINE TINGLING THEATRE

The Woman in Black began as a novel by British author Susan Hill. (Incidentally, Hill also wrote a sequel to the Daphne du Maurier classic, Rebecca, titled Mrs. de Winter). Stephen Mallatratt adapted the work into a successful play; The Woman in Black has been running in London’s West End for 20 years.

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LITTLE WOMAN vs THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Literary Origins: The Woman in Black is a novel by British writer Susan Hill, published in 1983. The story centres on a ghostly apparition that haunts an English village following the death of a lonely old woman.

Not To Be Confused With The Woman in White, the 1859 novel by English author Wilkie Collins that is considered among the first mystery novels ever written.

Adaptation Cred: Hill's novel was made into a TV movie in 1989 and a stage play in 1987; the latter has been running at a London West End theatre since 1989. Calgary director Kelly Reay says Vertigo Mystery Theatre's production of the play sticks fairly true to the original; the set is creepily sparse and designed to allow audiences to "engage their imagination."

The Tag Line: "Mad With Grief and Mad with Anger and a Desire for Revenge." In other words, think twice before passing this gal on the right on Deerfoot Trail.

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Woman Haunts Vertigo Theatre

Stephen Mallatrat’s stage version of Susan Hill’s horror novel The Woman in Black features just two actors, but at least 10 characters.

Kevin Rothery plays seven of these characters who haunt or are haunted by the recently deceased widow Alice Drablow.

“My basic character is Arthur Kipps, the solicitor who enlists the help of a young actor played by Christian Goutsis to help him sort out the event surrounding the mysterious woman in black,” says Rothery.

“There’s a play within the play and that’s where I end up playing multiple characters.”

Rothery is no theatrical novice having acted for more than three decades, but he readily admits “there’s something very weird about Mallatrat’s play. It’s incredibly theatrical, but it has some moments where it becomes really natural.

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MURDER ON THE NILE

- Marilyn Potts, CBC Radio

Click here to hear the review (opens in RealPlayer)

 There's Nothing Like a Dame

It seems everyone except the ship's steward (Wekamot Oneka) harbors resentment to Kay, her father or her family.

That's the fun of a Christie whodunit.

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Murder on the Nile

one Hal of a show

Stage whodunits are all about keeping the audience in suspense as long as possible, according to Hal Kerbes.

Kerbes should know.

As the managing artistic director of Shadow Productions for decades, Kerbes wrote thousands of interactive mini murder mysteries.

"During our peak years at Shadow, we were doing as many as 300 different shows a year, so I've lost track of exactly how many whodunits I wrote," says Kerbes, who put Shadow Productions to rest last year.

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Blood Relations

Blood Runs Deep, True

Well, judging from both Pollock's play and the exceptional production accorded it by the entire Vertigo Theatre cast and creative team, we did.

And we can be very glad of it.

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Spinster axidentally made theatre history

Sharon Pollock's Lizzie Borden drama Blood Relations won the Governor General's Award for English-language drama in 1981.

The production currently running at Vertigo Theatre is a testament to just how much Pollock deserved it.

Blood Relations is fraught with drama, suspense and nail-biting tension.

Borden was eventually acquitted of the brutal 1982 axe murders of her father and stepmother but that hasn't stopped people speculating about her guilt or innocence for more than a century.

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Lizzie Borden is Hot Stuff

Between the Twilight movies, HBO's True Blood, and The Vampire Diaires, pop culture is full of bloodsuckers these days. But who knew that Lizzie Borden, who was accused of murdering her father and stepmother 117 years ago, would be the theatrical woman of the moment?

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Lizzie Borden took an axe…

Asking why in Sharon Pollock’s Blood Relations

With the exception of Agatha Christie, it’s hard to think of a woman whose name has become as synonymous with murder as Lizzie Borden. The unmarried daughter of Andrew Borden, a well-to-do patriarch of Fall River, Massachusetts, her alleged involvement in the brutal murders of her father and stepmother — they were hacked to death with an axe — haunted her. Her guilt was never proven but the suspicion was never dispelled.

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Actor Relates to Blood Relations

Valerie Planche has been haunted by Sharon Pollock's psychological murder mystery Blood Relations since she read it as a student.

Because Lizzie Borden's friend, the actress Nance O'Neil, keeps asking Lizzie whether she killed her parents or not, Lizzie creates a game in which Nance becomes Lizzie.

Lizzie wants Nance to decide what she would have done given Lizzie's predicament.

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I fell in love at the age of 10, curled up in a big armchair, ruining my eyes as I consumed The Murders in the Rue Morgue by the dim light of a 60-watt bulb in a shaded floor lamp. I don't remember anyone else being at home. I do remember feeling alone in the dark and shadow with no one but Edgar Allan Poe and me in a small circle of light. I remember a delicious combination of terror and suspense contained by the security of the armchair, and the feeling of repletion as I turned the last page. While C. Auguste Dupin did not replace Clark Gable as the man of my dreams, the murder-mystery genre shot to a special place in my heart from which it has never been dislodged.

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Media contact:
Keith Callbeck, Director of Marketing & Communicationsat (403) 221-3707 ext. 4757 or via email at: keith.callbeck@vertigotheatre.com