After a year-long hiatus, Torchlight Theatre is back with a brand-new production to open its latest season.
According to founder and artistic director Chelsea Restall, the company will perform Prescription: Murder, about a psychiatrist and his mistress who plot and commit a murder, and the detective who must solve the crime.
“It’s actually the play that the TV series Columbo was based on,” Restall said. “For the older generation, they’ll definitely know who Colombo was.”
The play is a murder mystery with a twist, Restall said. Unlike most murder mysteries, the audience witnesses the crime at the outset of the play and, while the murderer remains unknown to the detective, the audience knows right away who did it.
“You get to follow along to see if the detective can figure it out, or if the criminal is better, so to speak,” she said. “It’s kind of a murder mystery in reverse, I guess you’d say.”
The production is particularly exciting, Restall said, as it marks the first performance in Torchlight Theatre’s new home at the Polaris Centre for the Performing Arts, near CrossIron Mills mall.
“If you feel like you’re going into an industrial area, you’re going into the right place,” she said.
This latest show is the first after a year of uncertainty for the troupe. Restall said, after losing its previous home and taking a season off, the future of Torchlight Theatre was an open question.
“Last year, I kind of waffled back and forth between, do I shut it down…or do we, you know, start performing in pubs and church basements,” she said. “We were at turning point, for sure, whether the company would even exist anymore.”
Restall was tipped off to the new arts centre just outside of Airdrie, and after meeting with general manager Carlos Foggin and touring the facility, Torchlight Theatre took up residency in August.
A few months later, the cast and crew began preparing the latest production, which Restall said has been underway for about two months. The seven-person cast is comprised of about half returning actors and half new members, all from Airdrie and Calgary.
Prescription: Murder will run Nov. 21 to 23 and Nov. 27 to 30, with evening performances on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m. and matinees on Saturdays at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at torchlighttheatre.ca/prescription. Regular admission costs $25, and seniors and children’s tickets are available for $22.
The play does depict the murder, and because of the portrayal of violence, Restall advised the show may not be suitable for children under the age of 12.
“It’s not gory or gruesome, but in the story, the character does get killed,” she said. “We definitely wanted to give people a heads up."
Torchlight Theatre will mount two more productions this season – the Sparks Youth Program will hold perform The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in March, and then the company’s closing show The Rainmaker will take place in the spring.
