PREVIEW
Wedding Bells and Bombshells
Edmonton Musical Theatre
June 21 to 23, 28 to 29
Westbury Theatre
ATB Financial Arts Barns
Tickets: $20 to $25 at 780-420-1757 or at www.tixonthesquare.ca
Edmonton Musical Theatre has always turned its love of show tunes into a magical year-end performance.
This year's team of writers and musicians have adapted Broadway’s most romantic love ballads and timeless songs for Wedding Bells and Bombshells opening at Westbury Theatre on June 21.
Music director Randy Mueller has rifled through the musical theatre catalogue for a sweep of charts borrowed from Shrek and The Adams Family to Company and The Drowsy Chaperone.
“It’s from different decades, different musical theatres and genres. It’s really a full range,” said director Braydon Dowler-Coltman, a former St. Albert resident.
“But it doesn’t feel like a revue. We’ve adjusted the text and lyrics.”
Singled out for his intuitive and powerful acting chops, Dowler-Coltman first tried his hand at sitting in the director's chair three years ago directing Blarney Production's Subway Circus.
A year later Dowler-Coltman’s Fringe directed production of Scaramouche Jones won leading man Robert Benz a Sterling Award. Not bad for a 20-something actor still in the infancy of a directing career.
Many of Dowler-Coltman’s projects have carried a degree of heft and are best described in theatre lingo as “meaty.” But he cautions against equating heft with thought provoking.
“With something light-hearted you need to find the heart of the show. At face value this show may be light-hearted, but it has weight.” Dowler-Coltman explains.
The storyline starts the day before a wedding as Marcy introduces Bobby, her fiancé to the family. He was raised with unorthodox kin and is searching for a grounded family. But Marcy’s family is anything but conventional, and they are not quite what he expects.
“He’s trying to figure out if he fits in. He comes from a family that’s not normal and he just wants something different from weird.”
Scriptwriters and EMT alumni Meghan Schritt and Laura Blackwood pump up the original material with a parade of colourful characters. Sprinkled throughout the 35 cast members are hippies, country hicks, a glamorous stepmother and a grandmother in drag.
“It’s a riot. It’s so much fun. It moves along really well. There’s a clear story to follow and good songs. Regardless if I’m writing notes or not, I get caught up in the story,” says Dowler-Coltman
A cast of 35 is large by today’s theatre standards. The largest cast he directed prior to Wedding Bells consisted of 15 actors.
“With a big cast, the most important thing to focus on is that everyone in the show, whether in the back, at the side, or in front, – that their role is integral. Everyone’s reactions matter. They have to be 100 per cent in the story.”
Choreographer Marie Nychka takes actors through a time warp of dance moves varying from jazz and contemporary to the more emotionally expressive interpretive dance.
For more information visit www.edmontonmusicaltheatre.ca.
