Darkly suspenseful Yaga comes to Gateway Theatre stage October 24 to November 2

Touchstone Theatre production is part thriller, part comedy, part revenge play, and part nightmarish fairy tale

By Gail Johnson

Yaga.

Gateway Theatre presents Yaga from October 24 to November 2

THERE ARE WICKED old witches, and then there is Canadian playwright Kat Sandler’s interpretation of the Slavic folk figure of Baba Yaga. In Yaga, the titular character is indignant, in touch with her sexuality, and willing to question the assumptions people hold about her as an ogre, a cannibal of children, and an infertile wench.

Gateway Theatre is remounting the Touchstone Theatre production from October 24 to November 2. “It’s really about a woman who is retelling her story against the way men have told it for centuries, of the wicked old witch,” Sandler said in an interview with Stir when Yaga premiered in 2022. “That, historically, is scary to us….Women just don’t get to have as much fun [as men] traditionally as anti-heroes. The stories that we’ve been told about them are really interested in seeing women that are good and pure, and if they’re bad it’s because something terrible has happened to them. I’m interested in bad girls who are allowed to be bad.

“There are lots of reasons Baba Yaga is the way she is; she is the person that was envisioned by men as this ugly, old witch that lives alone,” Sandler added. “I know so many women—even my own mom!—who are in their 60s and up and who are so hot and cool, and there’s a whole generation of women that I think don’t need to go gently into that good night. We can write sexy, vicious, funny parts for women for that age group. This is about women telling women’s stories.”

Described as part thriller, part comedy, part revenge play, and part nightmarish fairy tale, Yaga is set in a small, isolated town, where a college bad boy and heir to a yogurt empire has disappeared. The town’s female sheriff reluctantly lets a big-city private eye help solve the case. The prime suspect is a seductive university professor—a forensic bone expert with a murky past and a hunger for young men. Things veer toward the supernatural, however, as the mythic Baba Yaga starts injecting her dark magic into the tale, the play speaking to female rage, pain, and power.

“Sandler reinvents the mythical figure for modern times, adding new dimensions of wit and humour and shifting her from a monster to a complex individual with agency,” Stir said in a theatre review of the 2022 show. “Given a comic treatment, the story is a whodunit with plenty of quips to enjoy amid a backdrop of empowered voices.”

Yaga is directed by Roy Surette, a recipient of several Jessie Awards. Jessie Award-winning actors Genevieve Fleming and Aidan Correia reprise their roles as the small-town sheriff and private eye, respectively, who collaborate to find a killer. Colleen Wheeler, who’s a multiple Jessie Award winner, returns as Katherine Yazov, the professor whose sultry intelligence and shadowy past land her at the top of the suspect list.

Prior to the October 30 show, viewers can attend a pierogi dinner to celebrate Ukrainian culture and heritage. Gateway is partnering with Old Country Pierogi, which will bring its food truck to the theatre.  

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