An explosive satire about pop culture in a randomly violent society cleaned up at the Sterling Awards gala Monday night.
And in the process, the return of Bob Baker this past season to his home town to lead its biggest theatre was saluted, too.
If Ben Elton's Popcorn demonstrates, in its provocative and hilarious way, that blame sticks to no one in our society, credit attached itself everywhere to Bob Baker's Citadel production, honoured as the outstanding one of the year.
At the 13th annual edition of Edmonton's awards saluting excellence onstage, Popcorn was deemed outstanding production. It garnered best acting Sterlings for both Tara Hughes and Steve Pirot as a pair of white trash serial killers with irresistible logic on their side, and a supporting actress Sterling for Jan Alexandra Smith as an aspiring starlet who spent much of the show dying in an endless pool of blood.
Bretta Gerecke's stunning white set, which reinvented the Citadel's smallest house, and Bob Baker's direction were voted Sterlings, too.
The theatre community -- and I use the word "community" advisedly since it came up over and over in acceptance speeches -- strapped on its pumps and leopard-skin cowboy hats to whoop it up at the arts bash of the year.
And although the 500-plus voters selected a curiously small number of shows to award in 25 categories from amongst juried selections, the tone was genial and the general demeanour rowdy.
The "sealed envelope" festivities, presided over by glamorous actor Davina Stewart and the CBC's wry Peter Brown, happened at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre, which gave proceedings a certain oddball charm from the start, since sequined people in backless frocks kept appearing through the homespun set of that company's production of Oklahoma!.
It was Bob Baker's night, since he took home the "outstanding musical" Sterling for his production of the '50s-style spoof Little Shop Of Horrors, which garnered Sterlings for its choreographer (Krista Monson), its musical director (Janice Flower), and its homicidal dentist (Jeff Haslam). The absence of Northern Light and Workshop West from the Sterling gallery was striking, as was the sweep of Fringe awards (all but Jeff Page's as outstanding performer for his referee turn in PileDriver!) by The Drowning Girls, an inventive two-hander from the team Beth Graham, Daniela Vlaskalic and Charlie Tomlinson.
For the first time the Sterlings paid special tribute to a backstage player by reserving its "outstanding contribution" award for Albert "Monty" Montgomery, the 82-year-old head of a dynasty of lighting designers and technicians, in the earliest days of this great theatre town.
As newcomer Johnny Collins sang, from Leave It To Jane's nominated musical Violet, "two kinds of people make this world: those who say yes; those who say no."
It was the affirmative that rang out at the theatre party on Monday night.