Fans of Shakespeare and musicals, make your way to Hawrelak Park — anon! — and do not let the rain dampen your enthusiasm to love and laugh at two of your favourite pastimes.
Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s production of Something Rotten! — playing in the Heritage Amphitheatre until July 12 — is at once a toe-tapping extravaganza and a gut-busting skewer. It posits questions you’ve always had (like why musicals sing the same song over and over again, and why Shakespeare puts words in the wrong order) and some you may have yet to ponder. (Did Shakespeare really have a cod-piece the size of a baseball cap?) The production, directed by Dave Horak, is also a celebration of the festival’s return to Hawrelak Park, and a symbol of the sheer pluckiness of a theatre troupe with the audacity to perform outdoors in July.
Opening Night Defies the Elements
The opening night production was delayed by 15 minutes when the sky threw daggers, and rain and thunder reverberated throughout the amphitheatre, as if to say “don’t you dare.” But dare they did. The opening number by Minstrel (you may remember Renell Doneza from the Citadel’s 2023 production of Prison Dancer and he is just as fabulous in Something Rotten!) puts the audience at ease immediately. While small puddles at the foot of the stage caused a wobble or two on the staircase leading up to the platform, cast members in tap shoes managed to skim back and forth with grace and agility all night long.
A Departure for Freewill
Something Rotten! is somewhat of a departure for Freewill, which went with Much Ado About Nothing for the first of its two-show season. But the two-and-a-half-hour musical (including intermission) had a successful run on Broadway when it debuted in 2015. It’s also been at the Stratford Festival twice (2024 and 2026), where critics have positively slathered over the work. Freewill doesn’t have Stratford’s $70-million-plus budget, but Horak has nonetheless created a show with the exuberant feel of a more expensive production. (Watch for wardrobe designer Karlie Christie’s adorable take on giant, dancing eggs in the second act of the show.)
Plot and Performances Shine
As Something Rotten! opens, the Bottom brothers, playwrights Nick (Stephen Allred, excellent) and Nigel (Eli Yaschuk, ditto) struggle to make a name for themselves in the shadow of that media hog, William Shakespeare (Brian Christensen). If only they could create something new, a form that would sweep the 16th-century stage and earn enough to supplement their meagre diet of recycled cabbage. Unbeknownst to his wife, Bea (Melenie Reid in a charming example of Elizabethan feminism), Nick lifts funds from the household money box to pay a soothsayer to predict what the next big thing is bound to be. Nostradamus (Nico Maiorana, who captivates with every line) is a distant relative of the famous prophet with the goofily rhyming name of Thomas. He predicts that something called a musical will soon appear, where songs advance the plot. Nick decides to create a musical about the Black Plague, but that doesn’t resonate with his financial backer. He returns to Thomas to glean Shakespeare’s greatest future masterpiece, so he can make a “star-lit, big hit, won’t quit” musical out of it first. Thomas lands on a play by the name of…Omelette? Maybe it’s filled with ham? Served with a Danish?
