![\"Shadow](\"https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/shadow-theatre-25-26-04-autumn-marc-j.-chalifoux-photography-02_302990397.jpg\" "\\"Shadow")
Two sisters. One, a divorcing diva who drinks. The other, perky and positive. Tensions emerge alongside plenty of puns when the two end up at the family summer home to plan a shotgun wedding on the cheap.
Sounds like a recipe for a few laughs, and an overall pleasant evening at the theatre, right? After all, dueling siblings — from the March sisters to the Bennet girls and beyond — have formed the spine of many a compelling and humorous tale.
Autumn — the season-ender at Shadow Theatre — is by the British playwright Peter Quilter, whose play Glorious! (about Florence Foster Jenkins, a celebrity soprano of dubious talent) was produced by Shadow nearly 20 years ago. Quilter has written dozens of plays but has had considerable success with Glorious! and another hit, End of the Rainbow (a look at the last few months of Judy Garland’s life that was later made into a movie starring Renée Zellweger.) Autumn (which appears on Quilter’s website as Two Sisters and a Wedding) was penned in 2023 and while press on the history of the production is elusive online, Quilter’s c.v. and the first few scenes of the show had me geared up to giggle.
The two-hander (which I saw on preview night) opens as older sister — the free-spirited and single-but-not-lonely Rose — and younger sibling, the once-rich Kathryn, share an awkward embrace after arriving at a family cottage vacant since their late parents departed five years earlier. Kathryn’s only child, Imogen, is well into her pregnancy and set to wed fiancé, Daniel. There’s no money for the event — Kathryn has been locked out of the house without her jewels as her third marriage crumbles — and so mother and auntie are charged with pulling together something festive, but frugal.
Kathryn is played with an acid edge by the popular veteran local actor Cathy Derkach, and she’s good at it. Approaching 60, Kathryn is spoiled, lazy, and downright nasty to her big sister. She fields calls from her divorce lawyer to avoid house work. She flirts in designer gumboots with the much-younger gardener. The audience tolerates her entitled attitude because, at the same time, she can also be amusing. When Rose asks if counselling might help Kathryn resolve her domestic discord, she drily states: “We don’t do therapy. We buy handbags.”
Karen Johnson Diamond is well-cast in the role of Rose, a placid peacemaker who fully inhabits her whimsical character but is still able to defend against her sister’s barbs. She also has a secret weapon: Imogen prefers her auntie to her mother, a source of pain for Kathryn even though she readily admits her limitations as a parent.
Directed by Lana Michelle Hughes (newly at the Shadow helm after John Hudson’s recent retirement), Autumn offers up carefully curated and impressive production values. The set by Even Gilchrist is delightfully drab, with sad shelves of board games and VHS tapes alongside dusty afghan blankets and prints of fish. Sound designer Lindsey Walker puts us right at the wedding (which takes places just off-stage) with a booming baseline of muffled music complemented by lighting designer Rory Turner’s flashes of disco dance-floor exuberance.
But Quilter’s script is a serious problem. Is it about failed dreams? Late-life sex? Though only a few years old, the play feels tired and dated and while the playwright has nothing to say, he takes 130 minutes (including intermission) to do it.
Occasionally, a decent one-liner appears. But Quilter has confused aimless, back-and-forth bickering with dramatic tension and there is nothing this able cast and crew can do about it. High hopes aside, it only takes about 10 minutes to realize that Autumn is nothing but a ping-pong match forced upon you by your aging, arthritic grandparent at a family reunion. The fragile plastic ball may go over the net once, okay, twice, but inevitably it falls to the floor and you’ll be the one left to dig it out from under the hassock.
Theatre: Shadow Theatre
Director: Lana Michelle Hughes
Featuring: Cathy Derkach and Karen Johnson Diamond
Where: Varscona Theatre 10329 83 Ave.
When: Until May 24
Tickets: Available online at shadowtheatre.org or by calling 780-434-5564