For many, one of those deep, dark questions that lives in the recesses of the brain is who would show up at their funeral.
Would it be friends? Family? Maybe those lost after decades? But what if you could fake your own funeral and find out?
Those are the sorts of questions that are behind Alberta Theatre Projects’ latest production of Liars at a Funeral, which sees Grandma Mavis stage a bit of trickery and fake her own death at a small town funeral home to reunite her estranged family—but the trick is about to be flipped from a bit of lying of the family’s own.
The show has been audience and critically acclaimed during its stagings across Canada for the wit and humour of the Second City Award for Best New Comedy winner and playwright, Sophia Fabiilli.
The show’s director, Clare Preuss, said the humour comes from flipping the expectations and tropes of funerals upside down.
“It pokes fun at some of the ridiculousness of what the pressures we put on ourselves for important occasions, things like funerals, things like weddings, and how we expect ourselves to be our best selves. That can actually become quite funny in the circumstances,” Preuss said.
“What I also love about it is that it is looking at just human dynamics. So, a lot of the jokes are funny because we recognize them in our own families, or we recognize them in ourselves.”
Preuss said that the hidden desire to turn back time also comes up as a source of humour in Liars at a Funeral.
“It’s not only to see who would show up at your funeral, but also if you’re mourning somebody and you have things that have not been digested or you hadn’t had a chance to have a conversation about it. Now, all of a sudden, there’s a chance,” Preuss said.
Tickets are selling out to the hottest funeral in Calgary
Adding to the madcap antics of the show is a cast of five playing nine different characters.
The cast is headed by 50 year veteran of the stage and screen Maureen Thomas, alongside Tyrell Crews fresh from Blithe Spirit which just completed its run at Theatre Calgary, Grace Fedorchuk who was on the Calgary filmed shows My Life with the Walter Boys and Highschool, two-time Betty Mitchell Award winner Helen Knight, and veteran Calgary actor Joel David Taylor.
Taylor said that Fabiilli’s script does a great job of both being funny and also giving space for those quieter emotional moments that hook audiences.
“There’s a lot happening behind the scenes. It’s kind of like a duck with its feet kicking underwater. It’s calm on the surface, but everything is happening behind the scenes,” Taylor said.
“We’ve got a lot of really fun and quick costume changes, and I hope some changes that will shock the audience and via pleasant kind of surprise, or how fast they did it, and how fast we can get some of them done and there’s some great characters, too.”
All of which is set to a 1960s-inspired Googie architecture set, which also adds a first for any production yet staged of Liars at a Funeral—a instantly recognizable space-age vibes exterior light up sign that is as much at home in the Martha Cohen Theatre as it would be on the Las Vegas strip.
“We leaned into it with the music, too. It’s an incredible soundtrack that spans generations, but has everything from like Beach Boys to Simon and Garfunkel.”
Tickets for the production have been going fast, with an additional show added on May 6 as a result, said Haysam Kadri, Artistic Director for ATP.
“Seafarer was the best-selling show, single ticket show in the history of the company. Liars at a Funeral is rivaling the Seafarer on a three-week run, and so we’re actually running out of inventory right now,” Kadri said.
Liars at a Funeral runs from April 22 through to May 11. Tickets are on sale at albertatheatreprojects.com/whats-on/2024-25/liars-at-a-funeral.
Photos from Liars at a Funeral
