Nothing holds this spring’s theatre season together—no theme, no form. And that’s its beauty. We’ll get a processional piece about animal abuse (Cat Killer), an ironic Chekhovian musical (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike), and an openhearted exploration of gender from a Ghanaian-Canadian playwright (Obaaberima). If you want a whiff of just how gloriously malleable reality is, breathe in the wildflower scents of this spring’s theatre bouquet.

Miss Caledonia

(March 5 to 14 at the Gateway Theatre)

Toronto comic Melody A. Johnson becomes her mom, a teenager in the ’50s in rural Ontario who decides to make herself into a movie star the Debbie Reynolds way: by winning a beauty pageant. Her talent is baton-twirling.

The Draw: Well, really: baton-twirling. We cannot let the art die out. The Gateway Theatre, which is presenting this Lunkamud production, clearly knows that.
Target Audience: Perky people, including the closeted perky disguised as ironists.

Cat Killer

(March 5 to 15 at Presentation House Theatre)

In this coproduction between Presentation House Theatre and Germany’s Theater Wrede, audience members go on a walk. Using handheld cameras, they explore the perspective of a video gamer suspected of killing hundreds of cats. (The show was inspired by real events that took place in Ottawa in the ’90s.)

The Draw: It’s so weird.
Target Audience: Adventurers.

Iceland

(March 18 to 29 at Presentation House Theatre)

Capitalism: in Canadian playwright Nicholas Billon’s quirky take on the world’s dominant economic system, we meet a real-estate agent, a conservative Christian, and an Estonian student working as a prostitute in Vancouver.

The Draw: This show from Dirt Road Productions is a remount from last year, so I can state with absolute confidence that Lindsey Angell’s performance as Kassandra, the student hooker, will knock you out.
Target Audience: We’re all prostitutes. Buy tickets and show some solidarity.

Elbow Room Café: the Musical

(March 21 to 29 at Studio 58)

Playwright Dave Deveau, whose drag alter ego is Peach Cobblah, knows a thing or two about local colour. Elbow Room is inspired by the Vancouver café where the gay hosts serve their food with side orders of banter.

The Draw: The marriage of form and content. It’s gay. It’s a musical. Oh my god!
Target Audience: Light-loafered toe-tappers and their posses.

Obaaberima

(March 24 to April 4 at the Cultch’s Historic Theatre)

In Tawiah M’carthy’s solo show, Agyeman, a Ghanaian guy imprisoned in Canada for a violent crime, reveals himself—including his female persona, Sibongile—to his cellmates.

The Draw: Obaaberima, which won ecstatic reviews and rapturous audience response in Toronto, promises a heartfelt and sophisticated look at the complications of otherness and inclusion.
Target Audience: Anyone anywhere on the male-female and hetero-homo continuums.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

(March 25 to April 19 at the Arts Club’s Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage)

Absurdist playwright Christopher Durang says, “My play is not a Chekhov parody.…I take Chekhov scenes and characters and put them into a blender.” So the characters are privileged, listless, and living in the country—with a cherry orchard they’d like to sell. (But everybody who’s seen this comedy says you don’t need to know a thing about Chekhov to enjoy it.)

The Draw: The script for this Arts Club production. It won the Tony for best new play in 2013.
Target Audience: People who know their lives have no meaning—and think that’s kind of funny.

The Book of Mormon

(April 7 to 12 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre)

In this musical satire of religion from the creators of South Park and Avenue Q, Mormons eager to spread the word of God arrive in a Ugandan village and are disappointed to find that it’s nothing like The Lion King. This musical sensation is being brought to Vancouver by Broadway Across Canada.

The Draw: Nine Tony Awards in 2011, including best musical. Nine.
Target Audience: The humourlessly devout. Only kidding.

Farewell, My Lovely

(April 8 to May 2 at the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage)

Vancouver playwright Aaron Bushkowsky goes all Raymond Chandler in this copro between the Arts Club and Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre.

The Draw: Word has it that this homage, which features Vancouver talents Lucia Frangione (as a torch singer whose torch is going out) and Emma Slipp (as a broad who knows too damn much), is stylin’—and witty.
Target Audience: Dames. Dicks.

Blasted

(April 11 to 25 at Performance Works)

In Sarah Kane’s 1995 play, Ian, a tabloid hack, sets up a sexual encounter with his former mistress, Cate. Cate’s intelligence is limited and Ian may have been using her since she was a girl. He has a gun. They hurt one another. Then a soldier enters their hotel room and things go to sodomizing, eye-gouging hell.

The Draw: Theatre history. The play’s exploration of the relationship between personal violence and war is extreme, but Kane made her name with this piece, which Pi Theatre is presenting.
Target Audience: People who think Quentin Tarantino is a wimp.

Freud’s Last Session

(April 24 to May 23 at Pacific Theatre)

An atheist and a rationalist, Sigmund Freud invites the Christian C.S. Lewis into his office—if not onto his couch. It’s 1939. Could a loving god allow war?

The Draw: Complexity. Pacific Theatre, which is producing this show, starring Ron Reed and Evan Frayne, is a smart, Christian company. If you think that “smart” and “Christian” don’t go together, prepare to have your head twisted.
Target Audience: Flexible thinkers.