HUNCBACK Review
Graham Hicks

It's at shows like Hunchback you want to throw back your head and howl: Why doesn't the entire theatrical world – West End, Broadway, Bollywood, Hollywood – rush to Edmonton to see what's going on here?

On the one hand, the brilliant Jonathan Christenson, born 'n' raised 'n' living in Edmonton. With cohort Bretta Gerecke, creating through Edmonton's Catalyst Theatre some of the most wondrous musical theatre of the 21st Century – shows like Frankenstein, Nevermore and Hunchback: Shows that refuse to die – touring for years all through Canada and the USA, showing up at various theatre festivals, being presented on the B circuits of the global theatre centres of the world.

But Catalyst has always been of cult status. Those in the know wouldn't miss a Catalyst show, but the theatre is probably better known outside Edmonton than in.

Enter the Citadel Theatre and its equally creative artistic director Bob Baker. Baker recognizes Jonathan's brilliance, not to mention the fact his shows also have broad appeal. Bob took the unprecedented step of inviting another Edmonton theatre company to stage an original show on the Citadel main stage ... as an integral part of the 2010/11 season. Not only integral, but probably one of the biggest shows – in cast and production costs – of the season as well. On an original script that hadn't been written, on a musical that hadn't been scored!

Oh ye of little faith! Baker knew what he was doing, knew that the Catalyst team would deliver a product fully deserving of the Citadel stage and an knowledgeable theatre audience that would be thrilled to be introduced to Christenson's work.

So what's so special about the Catalyst work? Mood, mood, mood. Christenson isn't about raw physical reality, but about raw emotional reality – and to make his emotional reality by stretching and elongating reality. His characters are part Kiboki, part the rock band KISS, but always, always, always for a reason. The priest doomed by a love that overwhelms him is in sci-fi robes and on enormous platform shows. Quasimoto's deformed back is a curved external skeleton. Christenson and Bretta love huge skeletal hands – they hang from half the characters' sleeves, more than naked. The make-up is garish, other-worldly ... because it is the world of emotion, not reality.

The brilliance also lies in Chrstenson's abilities. He's not only an adaptor, but a musician, a composer and director, whose designer Gerecke understands his every nuance, as does his choreographers. So all in Hunchback is tightly intertwined, from the poetic script – his characters' speech is always lyrical, rhythmic and usually rhyming – to Bretta's sparse sets that use lighting as much as props, to the songs that flow without interruption from spoken to singing.

For those that know Christenson's work, especially those who have come to him through Frankenstein and Nevermore, Hunchback is a much "bigger" show than he's done in the past – longer, more involved, more layered. It's fascinating to see his work expanded, decompressed as it were, to a much bigger stage. And it's wonderful to have a live band at the back of the set, very much a part of the show.

It's a beautiful, flowing, wondrous show, that stays in the mind for weeks afterwards forming new thoughts and textures in the appreciative mind days after the fact.

Thank you Citadel, for taking Christenson to a bigger Edmonton audience. Thank you Bob Baker for recognizing genius in our midst, not being threatened by that genius, but instead collaborating and encouraging it flourishment.

This may sound like a broken record ... but in Edmonton we continue to see the best theatre on offer in North America.

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