Last year, Kate Story and Ryan Kerr of The Theatre on King (TTOK) hosted a murder mystery at the McDonnel Street Activity Centre, which proved to be a great success. On Friday, November 17th, they’re again rounding up the usual suspects for their second murder mystery luncheon, Murder on McDonnel 2: Murder Must Fool!.

Written by Simon Turner and directed by Kate Story, Murder on McDonnel 2 features a new dead victim and a new crime that can only be solved by one woman: local real estate agent Marianne Vandelinde of RE/MAX Eastern Realty.

Last year’s event saw a stable of regular TTOK players leave their King Street home to entertain a luncheon crowd at the McDonnel Street Activity Centre. As well as exposing their brand of theatre to a new audience, the event doubled as a fundraiser for TTOK.

“Last year’s show went really well,” says Ryan. “It was a fun show and the cast had fun and everybody left feeling really happy, so we decided we’d do it again.”

“We have the same cast as last year and even some of the same characters,” Kate points out.

“Some of the characters that got killed off aren’t in it,” Ryan adds, “But the same actors are playing new characters.”

Last year’s fundraiser helped support the theatrical work of TTOK and also allowed them to purchase a used computer to create posters and programs in-house. This year, proceeds from the luncheon will be used to purchase a street-front sign for TTOK.

Located off of the back parking lot of the building at 159 King Street, right next to the back entrance of The Wolf studios, TTOK is sort of a hidden gem without any street-front presence except for a sandwich board placed on the sidewalk on the night of an event at the theatre. Although TTOK is a popular spot in the Peterborough arts scene, for people not familiar with the location it can be difficult to find.

“People on their first visit to the theatre will often come in looking a little wild eyed and saying it’s really hard to find this place,” Kate explains.

“I’m sure there are people who haven’t been able to find it, or who have shown up late to a performance because they haven’t been able to find us,” Ryan says.

With a great cast of TTOK heavy hitters, Murder on McDonnel 2 is once again being written by Simon Turner, and takes place exactly one year after the last show.

“We’re back in the theatre world and a year has passed, and there is another murder,” Kate says. “Simon does a charming job of working in the genre of the murder mystery, but also within the world of the theatre community, with the bickering and egos.”

“Even though this show is a continuation, I have done it in a way where we explain a little bit of last year’s show at the beginning so that everybody is up to speed,” Simon explains. “So people can come into this year’s show without seeing last year’s, and it won’t matter at all. This is a new adventure and a totally different mystery.”

At the head of the show is Marianne Vandelinde, who is also a sponsor for the event. Although not an actress, she receives high praise from both Kate and Simon for her involvement in the show.

“The nice thing about Marianne is that she is a great performer although she is not an actress,” Kate says. “She’s a real estate agent, so it’s very brave that she does this. She’s great to work with, but she is also an outsider to the theatre scene. So, like her character as an amateur detective, in real life she is really an observer of the cultural weirdness of the theatre scene.”

“Marianne is wonderful at coming in to take the role of a sort of alternate universe version of herself, where she is experienced in solving mysteries,” Simon adds. “She’s been trained by a London detective named Shemlock Jones. Shemlock Jones was mentioned last year, but this year he makes an appearance and he is played by Matt Gilbert.”

The rest of the world of Murder on McDonnel 2 is created by a who’s who of TTOK talent, taking on the stereotypical stock players one would expect in a murder mystery taking place within the theatre world.

Dianne Latchford plays pompous theatre director Frida Hitchins, Naomi DuVall plays misunderstood playwright Samantha Beck, Dan Smith plays bitter actor Gregory Peychaud, Hilary Wear plays callous theatre critic Regina Ebner, and Lindsay Unterlander plays prima donna Meredith Margo.

Between the three-course meal, Marianne will interrogate the suspects, expose the twists and turns, and solve the case in this light and entertaining show. The afternoon will also feature live music by Chester Babcock, and prizes will be awarded to lucky audience members who solve the mystery in advance.

Tickets are $60 and include a three-course luncheon, a complimentary glass of wine (there is also a cash bar), and the performance from some of Peterborough’s most popular entertainers. It’s a perfect team-building activity for the office, or a way to spearhead your holiday celebrations while supporting one of Peterborough’s most beloved local theatres.

Tickets can be purchased at Black Honey (217 Hunter Street W), by calling 705-930-6194, or by emailing rkerr@cogeco.net.

When you think of Europe, you probably don’t think about traditional American folk music.

The Kruger Brothers will change your mind when they perform at the Market Hall in Peterborough at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, November 15th, at a special benefit concert presented by Kawartha Cardiology Clinic — with all proceeds from ticket sales supporting emergency shelter programs for women and children fleeing violence.

Born in Germany and raised in Switzerland, brothers Jens and Uwe Kruger — along with American Joel Landsberg — are highly regarded within the world of acoustic music in North America, especially by other musicians. The legendary Doc Watson once said, “The Kruger Brothers are just about as fine a band as I’ve ever played with … I love to play music with them.”

While The Kruger Brothers began by playing the traditional American folk and bluegrass repetoire, they have since turned to original songwriting and composition to reflect their personal experiences, and have infused the music with elements of other genres such as classical and jazz.

VIDEO: The Kruger Brothers perform at Carter Vintage Guitars in Nashville

Before Jens and Uwe Kruger came to the U.S. in 1997, they developed their musicial skills while growing up in Switzerland in post-WWII Europe. Part of a very musical family, they began started singing and playing instruments when they were very young. They would place a guitar on the floor between them and play it together, with one brother taking the upper three strings and the other the lower three.

“My mother was a kindergarten teacher and she had a song for everything,” Uwe recalls. “We sang a lot at home. We mainly sang old German folk songs. She was from Germany—East Prussia. My dad was from Northern Germany. For them, music was a way of keeping our culture alive. In Switzerland, German music was not very highly regarded.”

Their father, who would bring folk music records when he returned to Switzerland from business trips to the United States, introduced them to North American folk music. They were particularly inspired by recordings of Doc Watson, Flatt and Scruggs, Bill Monroe, and other American country, bluegrass, and folk musicians. Jens took up the banjo and Uwe the guitar.

“When you’re a boy of eight, nine, or ten years old, you think Western,” Uwe says. “The American West was a dream world for us, a place where everything was better. So, we learned to play American folk music. The melodies sounded really like German music to us, but with different words. One of the first songs I learned was ‘Tom Dooley’, the Kingston Trio version.”

VIDEO: “Forever and a Day” – The Kruger Brothers

Then the two brothers discovered bluegrass and there was no turning back.

“The first time my brother heard ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown,’ he went nuts,” Uwe explains. “He started spinning around like a Tasmanian Devil all around the living room. He said, ‘That’s what I want to do!’ He was playing a tenor banjo then, so he put a thumb-screw on it and added a fifth string so he could play bluegrass.”

By the time they were 11 and 12 years old, Jens and Uwe were performing regularly. They began busking on the streets of cities throughout eastern and western Europe. When they were still teenagers, they secured a recording contract with CBS Records and soon were hosting a radio show on Switzerland’s public broadcaster. In the early 1980s, Jens went to the U.S. to study with bluegrass musician Bill Monroe.

Several years later, the two brothers teamed up with bass player Joel Landsberg, a native of New York City who began playing classical piano and then turned to bass. He moved to Switzerland in 1989 to perform with various country/rock and jazz groups based throughout Europe, where he met the two brothers.

VIDEO: “Carolina in the Fall” – The Kruger Brothers

The Kruger Brothers began performing as a trio in 1995 and then oved to the United States in 2002. They are based in Wilkesboro in North Carolina — the home of MerleFest, an annual fundraising music festival in memory of Doc Watson’s son, the late Eddy Merle Watson.

In the trio, Uwe performs on guitar and lead vocals, Jens on banjo and harmony vocals, and Joel on bass and harmony vocals. Their musical style is perhaps best described as “new” American folk music — roots music enhanced with new and innovative compositional and thematic elements.

There are a few important hallmarks of The Kruger Brothers’ sound. One is the honesty of their songwriting and another is Jens’ melodic banjo playing and composition. While it originates from three-finger style popularized by musicians like Earl Scruggs, Jens’ playing has a more complex compositional style, often borrowing from jazz, classical and world music themes and techniques.

“Composers have been incorporating elements of folk music into classical compositions for over 150 years,” Jens explains. “As a musician and composer, I have always admired how masters such as Bartok, Smetana, Brahms, Dvorak, and Tchaikovsky incorporated folk music into their classical compositions.”

Since they began performing as a trio in 1995, The Kruger Brothers have released 19 records. Most recently, their music has ventured even further into the themes and forms of classical music, such as in their 2011 record Appalachian Concerto and their 2017 release Roan Mountain Suite.

In September 2013, The Kruger Brothers appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman with the Kontras Quartet and Steve Martin, who played clawhammer banjo. Jens subsequently received the Steve Martin Prize for Excellence in Banjo and Bluegrass Music.

VIDEO: Steve Martin and the Kruger Brothers on The Late Show with David Letterman

In addition to performing, The Kruger Brothers are strong proponents of musical education. They’ve instructed thousands of students through individual instruction, workshops, and master class presentations.

In 2011, they launched The Kruger Brother’s Music Academy, which hosts a weekend of master class workshops held each spring in North Wilkesboro.

Check out The Kruger Brothers at the Market Hall for innovative but unpretentious acoustic roots music, while supporting women and children in our community who are fleeing violence.

The Peterborough Folk Festival has announced its fourth annual Winter Downtown Folk Festival, running March 6th to 10th in downtown Peterborough, with headline concerts at Showplace Performance Centre featuring The Sheepdogs and Randy Bachman.

The expanded five-day winter folk festival will feature more artists and venues, to be announced in the coming months, including the lineup for Saturday, March 10th which will include free pop-up concerts at various downtown businesses.

“It’s really exciting to have two of Canada’s biggest artists perform at this year’s winter festival and support the downtown businesses at the same time,” says Ryan Kemp, organizer and artistic director of the Peterborough Folk Festival. “We are always trying to find ways to improve Peterborough culturally, economically and socially. Supporting our local musicians, music venues, restaurants, and business is very important. ”

The festival kicks off at Showplace with Juno Award winning band The Sheepdogs — featuring their newest member, Bailieboro’s own Jimmy Bowskill — on Tuesday, March 6th. Special guests will be rockers Sam Coffey and The Iron Lungs.

The Sheepdogs will be releasing their new album Changing Colours on February 2, 2018. Tickets for the all-ages show are $40 plus fees, and each ticket includes a download of the new album. Tickets for The Sheepdogs go on sale at Showplace at 10 a.m. on Thursday, November 16th.

Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman will be performing at Showplace the next evening, on Wednesday, March 7th.

Few artists can claim to have made a bigger impact on popular music than Bachman, whose list of hits with Bachman-Turner Overdrive and The Guess who include “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet”, “Taking Care of Business”, “Looking Out for #1”, “Let It Ride”, “American Woman”, “No Sugar Tonight”, “Undun”, and “These Eyes”.

Tickets for Randy Bachman will be $61.25 and go on sale on Friday, November 17th.

Tickets for both shows will be available in person at the Showplace box office (290 George St. N., Peterborough) or by phone at 705-742-7469 (box office hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday), or online anytime at showplace.org.

On Saturday, November 18th, join New Stages Theatre Company as they present their popular annual cabaret at Market Hall Performance Arts Centre.

Produced by Randy Read, “Hits & Misses” is hosted by Canada’s leading cabaret artist Sharron Matthews and features the talents of Kate Suhr, Shannon McCracken, Beau Dixon, Linda Kash, Deborah Kimmett, and Steve Ross in a light-hearted evening of music and comedy.

In bringing first-class performers to Peterborough, Randy’s cabarets are always a treat. With this year’s “hits and misses” theme, Randy will be featuring his performers’ favourite memorable — and not so memorable — music.

“There are always those great musical numbers that everybody knows, but every show has those great songs that don’t become hits,” Randy explains. “I’ve asked everyone to bring me some of their favourite songs they really love to sing.”

Well-connected throughout Ontario theatre circles due to his years in the business, Randy says that there is an art to choosing the right talent for his cabarets.

“I’ve been around for a long time and I’ve worked as a casting director and a director,” he says. “I’ve known these people for years. I tend to bring people who I admire, and also there are certain people that I know work well in a cabaret situation. Not every theatrical entertainer can do cabaret, because they need a role to hide behind and are extremely shy otherwise.”

Hosting the night is comedian and actress Sharron Matthews, who has been named Best Cabaret Performer by both NOW Magazine and Broadway World, and Queen of the Mash Ups by the Toronto Star.

With an impressive list of movie (including Mean Girls and Odd Squad), stage, and television credits to her name (most recently in the CBC TV original series Frankie Drake Mysteries which premiered this month), Sharron has also taken her act across Canada and throughout other parts of the world, most notably Scotland’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival where her solo show sold out three years in a row, and where she won Best of the Fest in 2011.

While in previous years Randy has brought a lot of outside talent into Peterborough for his annual cabaret, this year he has chosen performers that live in or have a strong connection with Peterborough: Linda Kash, Kate Suhr, Beau Dixon, and Shannon McCracken.

“I decided to not bring more people from out of town because we have enough material without going over two hours, and I’m really big on not going over two hours,” tells Randy.

While Kate, Linda, and Beau are still considered a strong part of our community, Randy acknowledges that their current successes have taken them away from Peterborough.

Kate has starred in the Toronto productions of The Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, and The Secret Garden, Linda was in Calgary for her role in the Emmy award winning series Fargo, and Beau just finished his run in Guys and Dolls at Stratford.

“I like the idea of bringing people home who have gone on to have success elsewhere,” says Randy. “It’s like we are bringing them back to celebrate their success.”

Although she’s appeared less frequently on the Peterborough stage, singer/actress Shannon McCracken has also had a successful career throughout Canada. Locally she’s become a favourite of mine for her spellbouding performance as Mimi in Art for Awareness’ 2015 production of Rent, and this summer as Shannon the bride in Globus Theatre’s immersive theatrical comedy Raising the Barn. She also played Galinda in the Toronto Fringe production of Wicked and will be appearing in the upcoming independent film For Ruthie.

Randy has brought comedian Deborah Kimmett into the show to give the audiences something more beyond the musical performances. One of Canada’s most successful female standup comics, Deborah has performed in Peterborough numerous times, most recently in June when she brought her one-woman show The Year of the Suddenly to Catalina’s. Deborah will be doing two of her stand-up routines in the first and second half of the show.

“I like to think of our cabaret as a variety show,” says Randy, “I’ve discovered that people really enjoy the comedy as much as they do the music.”

Last but not least is Randy’s husband Steve Ross, a fixture at the Stratford Festival where he has performed for an incredible 14 seasons. Most recently, Steve has just come off of Guys and Dolls, where he played Nicely Nicely Johnson.

Although reluctant to be specific about what he is performing during the cabaret, Randy has revealed Steve will be testing material for next summer’s cabaret at the Stratford Festival.

“For two years Steve has put together the Stratford cabaret and they’ve asked him to do it again this coming summer,” Randy says. “Steve will be testing that material for that cabaret, so people will be getting a sneak preview.”

While the lineup of music was not sealed at the time of my talk with Randy, he did reveal that there will be songs performed from shows such as Into the Woods, Hamilton, Baby, and The Pajama Game, as well as a performance of Gershwin standards and something called “Beauonce,” — we can make some strong guesses what that means.

One of the most fun and fabulous nights of entertainment in Peterborough, New Stages annual cabaret is always a memorable night with a touch of class. Randy has the ability to bring the best of the best to his stage, and his shows always deliver. They are a hit every time.

New Stages’ “Hits and Misses” cabaret begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 18th. Tickets are $30 ($15 for students and art workers or the underwaged) and are available at the Market Hall box office in person (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough) or by phone at 705-775-1503 (12 to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday), or online anytime at markethall.org.