![\"Mhairi](\"https://smartcdn.gprod.postmedia.digital/edmontonjournal/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/mg_1341.ej_303382670.jpg\" "\\"Mhairi")
Millions of dollars of maple syrup went missing in 2012 in one of the biggest heists in Canadian history. Local playwright Mhairi Berg saw the perfect fodder for her newest musical.
The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist: The Great Canadian Musical follows the people and personalities behind the biggest agricultural theft in the country’s history. Hers is one of five new plays being shown off at the Collider Festival at The Citadel, June 5 to 7.
“I was looking to write something that felt very Canadian, something that people maybe hadn’t heard of, but is actually a very big deal in Canadian history,” says Berg. “And what’s more Canadian than a heist about maple syrup?”
Pilfered from a strategic reserve in Quebec over the course of months starting in 2011, thieves would make off with almost 3,000 tonnes of maple syrup siphoned from barrels in a storage facility in Quebec operated by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers. The total value of that sweet pancake topping came to $18.7 million, making it the single greatest theft in Canadian history when accounting for inflation.
Berg said it feels natural to mix the theatre with the music, and to come back to it for this new show. She has played the piano her whole life and and combined her two interest the musical Morningside Road, which she starred in last November.
The syrupy musical was developed in her time in the Playwrights Lab at The Citadel, where local playwrights come together in a small cohort to develop new work. Her show will share the stage with Nicole Moeller’s new work, Come Hell or High Water. Col Cseke’s new work, An Agatha Christie Mystery A Comedy, will be read on Saturday night while Alexandra Lainfiesta’s new play Chula will hit the stage on Sunday afternoon.
It would be inaccurate to call these performances a debut; actors will perform the first act from The Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist off of music stands while stage direction will read instead of acted out. Some of the musical numbers will be performed, giving audiences a sense of the music that will be in the show.
Associate Artistic Director Mieko Ouchi, who organizes the three-day festival, said the festival is a way for The Citadel to support playwrights in the city. She compared it to research and development in other organizations, providing space for playwrights to see how their work lives on stage and how audiences react to the words they have been staring down for months at a time.
“Theatre is such a three-dimensional art form. And so it’s really about the air between the actors and the audience, that space, that air, and that sort of magic that happens,” says Mieko.
There’s also two workshops for local playwrights to attend, one featuring Nick Green talking about writing musical theatre and another from Mariló Núñez about the decentralized playwriting style of Maria Irene Fornes. Entry to the workshops are $50 and Mieko says they already sold out of space for musical theatre writing, adding more spots and tickets for sale.
But it’s also a chance for audiences to get a glimpse of upcoming theatre projects in their infancy, a glance behind the curtain of what’s being developed while also getting to learn more about what might be coming. In a theatre-crazed city, that can sometimes be just as important.
“I feel like this is a great opportunity to invite people into that process, and to let them get a little sneak peek behind the curtain of what happens before we get to the full production,” says Ouchi.
That connection between playwrights and theatre audiences is important for local playwright and actor Belinda Cornish, whose show Darcy & Wickham will be read on Sunday evening. Based on the book Follies Past by Melanie Kerr, it acts as a prequel to the ever-popular Pride and Prejudice.
“I’ve often found that people who are patrons who come to hear those readings are actually excited to see how the play moves forward,” says Cornish. “I have heard from patrons that they have a sense of excitement about having seen something or heard something read in its early stages and wanting to know where it goes next. And then if it gets read again or goes into production, they’re even more invested in seeing it, which is fantastic for audience engagement.”
Jane Austen’s work has remained popular in the two centuries years since it was first published, a satirist who found an audience even outside of the Regency period it was conceived.
Cornish has been working with Kerr to develop the new script, making adjustments to the original to make it fit for a stage piece. She said Darcy & Wickham only covers the second half of Kerr’s book, taking place months before Pride and Prejudice.
What audiences will love is both the familiar characters and situations alongside something new and fresh for Austenites and fans of the original.
“Those characters are very much ahead of their time. They’re very modern in their thinking,” says Cornish. “They have to adhere to certain social strictures, but they still have the same desires as us and there’s something about, wrangling those desires within that world and sort of railing against in a way or pushing against that whalebone corsetry that is incredibly exciting to watch.”
When: June 5 to 7
Where: The Citadel Theatre, 9818 101A Ave.
Tickets: Show readings are free, $50 for workshops, with tickets available at citadeltheatre.com
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