Grindstone Theatre combines veteran talent with up-and-comers in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder

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'I'm pretty sure I saw one every day,' says the artistic director of Edmonton's Grindstone Theatre. 'It was somewhere around 40 shows. Like, it was a lot of shows. And there was one in particular that really stuck with me.'
That was A Gentleman's Guide To Love and Murder, which in 2013 was busy pulling in impressive crowds at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway and eventually winning multiple Tony Awards. If the name of the show doesn't ring a bell you might be familiar with the source novel from 1907, Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal. But if you're going to be honest and admit that you've never heard of that book until just this minute, it's still possible that you've watched or at least heard of the classic 1949 black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets, which featured a tour-de-force performance by Alec Guinness playing multiple members of the D'Ascoyne family as they're dispatched in various gruesome ways.

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From Fringe Fest to Broadway, Winnipegger ‘blown away' by Tony nomination

Rafaella Rosenberg poses with boyfriend Yuri Flaherty outside Radio City Music Hall at the 78th annual Tony Awards on June 8, 2025. (Rafaella Rosenberg) Less than 10 years ago, Rafaella Rosenberg was producing her first plays at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival. Sunday, she traded black box theatres for Radio City Music Hall as a Tony nominee for her first Broadway production. 'It was crazy,' the Winnipeg-born Rosenberg told CTV News Winnipeg from her home in New York. 'I don't even know if I've fully processed. I was pretty blown away.' Rosenberg is a co-producer of the smash Broadway play 'Oh, Mary!' Tony Awards Cole Escola appears during a Broadway performance of "Oh, Mary!" in New York. (Emilio Madrid via AP) (Emilio Madrid) Written and performed by Cole Escola, the dark comedy re-imagines First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln as an unhappy, alcoholic, aspiring cabaret performer in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln's assassination. 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