The Drowning Girls surfaces with 4 Calgary theatre awards

Alberta Theatre Projects' production of The Drowning Girls was the big winner at Calgary's Betty Mitchell Awards for theatre Monday evening.

The play, in which the cast is always wet, won four Bettys, including the award for outstanding production of a play.

The Drowning Girls, which opened this March as part of ATP's annual PlayRites Festival , tells the story of a Victorian serial killer who courted lonely women, married them for their dowries and then drowned them in their baths.

The story is told by his three victims, who arise sputtering from three separate baths on the stage to compare notes on their courtship and marriage.

Playwrights Daniela Valaskalic, Beth Graham and Charlie Tomlinson earned the Betty Award for best new play for the work and Tomlinson earned a second Betty for outstanding direction.

Tracy Dahl as Gilda and David Pomeroy as the Duke of Mantua in the November 2007 Calgary Opera production of Rigoletto. Dahl won a Betty Mitchell award for her performance. (Trudie Lee/Calgary Opera)

The play also earned the award for best lighting, sharing that honour with Theatre Calgary's The Wars and Calgary Opera's Rigoletto.

ATP had a strong showing at the Betty Mitchell awards, with Rabbit Hole, about a family's experience of grief, earning a best actor award for Curt McKinstry.

Judges were divided on the best choice for outstanding production of a musical and decided to award two Bettys — to The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Vertigo Theatre and to With a Twist by Lunchbox Theatre.

Edwin Drood, a period drama adapted from Charles Dickens' last novel, also earned the Betty for outstanding costume design.

Best actress in a drama was Shawna Burnette from Sage Theatre's Lion in the Streets and best actress in musical was Tracy Dahl, who performed in Calgary Opera's Rigoletto.

Geoffrey Ewert, who played Hedwig in Sage Theatre's production of outlandish musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch, won the award for best actor in a comedy or musical.

The Betty for supporting actress was a tie between:

Joyce Doolittle in Vigil at Theatre Calgary. Kate Newby in August, an Afternoon in the Country, by ATP.

And the Betty for supporting actor went to three talents:

Christopher Austman in The Wars at Theatre Calgary. Tyrell Crews of Our Town at Theatre Calgary. Grant Reddick in Half Life by ATP.

In addition to sharing the Betty for best musical, tiny Lunchbox Theatre, which presents one-act plays at a downtown location during the lunch hour, earned outstanding choreography and outstanding musical direction awards, both for With a Twist.

 

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