encoreNOW is a bi-weekly column by Paul Rellinger where he features upcoming music, theatre, film, and performing arts events and news from across the Kawarthas.
This week, Paul highlights the Highly Likely festival at Take Cover Books in Peterborough, the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s Midnight Madness, Tom Thomson’s Wake at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope, Craig Cardiff at Peterborough’s Market Hall, Séan McCann at Bancroft Village Playhouse, and a screening of We Lend A Hand: The Forgotten Story of Ontario Farmerettes at Bancroft Village Playhouse.
Music and literature come together at Take Cover Books in Peterborough
VIDEO: “Ever Since You’ve Been Gone” – Rachella Wred (2024)
In addition to co-owning Take Cover Books in downtown Peterborough, book-loving brothers Sean and Andrew Fitzpatrick are musicians whose past organizing and promoting of grassroots shows is yet another shared attribute.
Now the brothers are combining their two loves and, with Miracle Territory, are hosting “Highly Likely” at their 59 Hunter Street East book store over four days starting Thursday (February 26).
Billed as “a festival of music and literature,” the event will feature 18 musical acts and writers, with a number of music and literary genres represented.
On Thursday, starting at 7:30 p.m., Intimidators (unplugged), Caged Animals, Rachella Wred, and Jessica Bebenek will perform followed on Friday by Niko Stratis, Saline, Backseat Dragon, HitnRun, and DJ Purdon, also starting at 7:30 p.m.
On Saturday, there are two free shows, starting at 12:30 and 7:30 p.m. respectively. The former will feature Brooklin Stormie and King Spatula’s Rubber Band, and the latter will see Burs, Newberry, and Anna Fitzpatrick perform, along with Avery Brown, Erica Richmond, Jessica Westhead, and Kayleigh Mochan reading their new work from Give a Sheet Press.
The festival wraps up March 1 from 4:30 p.m. with Fragmented Forms, Markus Floats, Wax Mannequin, and Claire Foster closing things out. During the festival, attendees can also experience a special sound art installation by Garrett Gilbart.
A festival pass costs $100, while tickets to any one of the three ticketed shows cost $30 ($15 for students). Visit takecoverbooks.ca/highly-likely-festival to order.
Dave Carley’s “Midnight Madness” takes to the Peterborough Theatre Guild stage
The Peterborough Theatre Guild has mined familiar and celebrated talent for the fifth production of its 2025-26 season.
Midnight Madness, a comedy written by Peterborough native Dave Carley, will open on Friday (February 27) for a 10-show run at the Guild Hall at 364 Rogers Street in East City.
Directed by Jane Werger, the play is a fast-paced exploration of the unexpected turns that can change a life.
It’s set at Bloom’s Furniture, where manager Wesley (Eddy Sweeney) is closing the doors of the store and on his career. In walks Anna (Carling Dulder), a former high school classmate, who has returned to town to start a career as a lawyer. As the pair recall the humiliating events that drove them both of them from high school before graduation, they reconcile with their past and find a spark of romance.
And then there’s Mr. Bloom (Jack Burke), whom the audience won’t see but who plays a key role as the store manager whose voice booms over the store P.A. system.
Carley, who will be attending a performance of his play, is no stranger to the Guild. Way back in 1979, when he was a student at the University of Toronto, he wrote Susanna! — a musical spoof based on the life of 19th-century English-born Canadian author Susanna Moodie — for staging by the Guild. Six years later, his play Hedges also took to the Guild stage, and subsequently represented Canada in Japan at an international theatre festival. To date, Carley’s work has been produced hundreds of times across North America and around the world.
During a recent sit-down with kawarthaNOW, Werger said Carley’s story “touches your heart.”
“There’s the comic situation of meeting after high school, and chatting about things that happened, and Mr. Bloom coming over the intercom, but then it gets to bad stuff that happened in high school. It’s a laugh-at-life comedy, but there are tears too.”
Midnight Madness will be staged at the Guild Hall at 364 Rogers Street in Peterborough’s East City with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on February 27 and 28, March 5 to 7, and March 12 to 14, with 1:30 p.m. matinee performances on March 1 and 8.
Assigned seating tickets are $30 for adults, $27 for seniors, and $20 for students and are available by phone at 705-745-4211 or online at www.peterboroughtheatreguild.com/upcoming-plays/midnight-madness.
Remembrances of Tom Thomson at the heart of new musical at Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre
VIDEO: “Tom Thomson’s Ghost” – Shipyard Kitchen Party (2020)
John Eaton, Sacha Law and Jason Murphy are returning to Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre in March to shed some light on what is an enduring Canadian mystery.
Known collectively as Shipyard Kitchen Party, the talented trio’s staging of its musical Tom Thomson’s Wake is set two years after the renowned painter’s 1917 death at age 39.
To this day, debate lingers around whether Thomson’s drowning death on Algonquin Park’s Canoe Lake was the result of foul play or a suicide. Fuelling that debate is the fact that Thomson was a seasoned canoeist. As such, an accident seems a remote possibility.
The three cast members, portraying Thomson’s friend, mentor, and lover, come together to share memories of him. As they do, one question emerges: Did any one of them really know the man?
Tom Thomson’s Wake features East Coast-style music derived from an original score, along with high-definition images of Thomson’s art and that of the famed Group of Seven, of which he remains considered an unofficial member, having died before its formal establishment.
Those who enjoyed Shipyard Kitchen’s Party stagings of its popular The Newfoundland Songbook will find much to like here.
Curtain is 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 6 and Saturday, March 7, with matinee performances at 2 p.m. on March 7 and Sunday, March 8. Tickets cost $55 ($45 for those under 30) and are available at capitoltheatre.com.
Folk/roots music storyteller Craig Cardiff is Market Hall bound
VIDEO: “Dirty Old Town” – Craig Cardiff (2020)
As a singer and songwriter in the Canadian folk/roots music realm, Waterloo-born Craig Cardiff has rightfully earned his high standing.
With numerous albums to his credit dating back to 1997, the Juno and Canadian Folk Music Award nominee is a master storyteller whose live performances are known as much for the quality of the music as they are for his engagement with his audience — something accentuated by his “Book of Truths” initiative, which sees a notebook circulated at his shows for attendees to anonymously share stories, confessions or secrets. That’s about as intimate as it gets.
While Cardiff has appeared at many major festivals, he has habitually performed wherever there’s an audience for his music. As such, he has made it a habit of performing in the homes of fans across the country. Add in his activism related to a number of causes, and his leading numerous workshops, and we’re left with a man in perpetual motion.
On Saturday, March 7 at Market Hall in downtown Peterborough, the audience will be treated to the full Cardiff experience in the form of two shows: a 4 p.m. “family-friendly” concert followed by an 8 p.m. all-ages performance.
Tickets cost $24, $14 for youths aged 13 to 18, and $9 for kids aged 4 to 12, and are available at www.markethall.org.
Séan McCann bringing Great Big Sea memories to Bancroft
VIDEO: “Stronger” – Séan McCann (2022)
With 2026 marking 33 years since the founding of renowned Canadian folk rock band Great Big Sea, co-founder Séan McCann is marking the anniversary the best way he knows how: bringing the band’s iconic music to the masses.
That effort includes a performance on Wednesday, March 11 at the Bancroft Village Playhouse that will see McCann not only run through a number of Great Big Sea favourites but share stories of his native Newfoundland and, no doubt, his 1993 founding of the band with Alan Doyle.
From 1996 to 2016, Great Big Sea was the 16th best-selling Canadian artist in Canada, and the sixth best-selling Canadian band in Canada. The band called it a day in 2013, setting the stage for successful solo careers for both McCann and Doyle.
McCann has recorded and released five solo albums, and in 2019, his impressive body of work, both with Great Big Sea and on his own, saw him named a member of the Order of Canada. Billed as “Séan McCann Sings The Great Big Songbook,” his Bancroft show is sure to check all the right boxes for fans of the band and its high-spirited co-founder.
Tickets to McCann’s 7 p.m. performance cost $42.50 (plus tax) at www.villageplayhouse.ca.
Ontario farmerettes’ inspirational story comes to the big screen in Bancroft
VIDEO: “We Lend A Hand: The Forgotten Story of Ontario Farmerettes” trailer
Those who enjoyed 4th Line Theatre’s 2024 staging of Alison Lawrence’s adaptation of Shirleyan English and Bonnie Sitter’s book Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of Ontario’s Farmerettes, but still want more, will be glad to hear an acclaimed film version of the story is headed our way.
On Thursday, March 12, again at the Bancroft Village Playhouse, the documentary We Lend A Hand: The Forgotten Story of the Ontario Farmerettes will be screened as part of the venue’s presentation of TIFF Film Circuit screenings.
Not unlike the 4th Line Theatre production, the film centres on the largely overlooked contribution of the 40,000-plus teenage girls and young women who toiled on Ontario farms during the Second World War, replacing the labour of men who had headed overseas to fight.
Via archival footage, photographs, and first-person interviews, the film relates how farmerettes harvested crops, operated machinery, and sustained Canada’s food supply while gaining independence, skills, and confidence at a pivotal time in their lives.
If you took in the 4th Line Theatre production, this film will no doubt be of interest. If you didn’t, this is an inspirational chapter of Canadian life during the war years that’s well worth taking in.
Screenings are at 2 and 7 p.m. Tickets cost $13 ($6.99 for youth 18 and under) and can be ordered at www.villageplayhouse.ca.
Encore
- A tip of the hat to my friend Phil Jolicoeur, whose organizing and producing of the 1980s music-themed Harmony For Healing sold-out concert last Thursday (February 19) at the Market Hall added to the thousands of dollars raised for the Canadian Mental Health Association Haliburton, Kawartha, Pine Ridge’s assertive outreach suicide prevention program since the annual concert’s inception in 2024. The show was founded by Jolicoeur in memory of his mom Karen, who was a big music fan. The final Healing For Harmony concert will be held next year, with music of the 1990s featured. It’s anticipated that show will meet, or surpass, the goal of $50,000 raised via all four concerts. Having organized and produced Peterborough Performs: Musicians United To End Homelessness since 2020, I well know how much work Jolicoeur puts into this. Hence my full admiration.
- No doubt fans of The Weber Brothers — of which there are many — are thrilled to hear Ryan and Sam have recorded a new album and are set to debut it right here in Peterborough at the Market Hall on Friday, May 1. The boys have reinvented their sound over and over, and this new offering will surely offer yet another side of their abundant talent. The Market Hall album release concert will be the first of a few local shows during which the Weber Brothers will debut their new music. They’ll do likewise on May 14 at Lindsay’s Academy Theatre and on June 28 at Havelock’s Stone Hall. Watch for show details on kawarthaNOW as those dates draw nearer.
