Review: Rosebud's Dream proves second chances worth giving

Calgary Herald

12-06-2025

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Edmonton writer and musician Terry Bachynski's new musical, Dream, is very much at home in Rosebud.
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It's a deeply personal project that tells the story of how Bachynski's father, an orphan at age 15, was rescued from the streets and a life of crime and sent to a farming community near Toronto.
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In the musical's title song, the young hero Eddie says his dream is to have a room of his own with a bed and maybe two chairs, and people who care about him. It's his way of saying he wants a loving family. His father was a drunk who beat his mother, him and his brother. The foster farms he had been sent to previously were not the family he dreamed of. They made him sleep in the barn, eat leftovers, and the abuse was emotionally scarring.
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Gran, the widow he's sent to as a last resort, not only offers him her youngest son's room but also shares her meals with him. Eddie is grateful, but he's convinced his good fortune is going to come with strings, if not at Gran's home, then in the town.
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Eddie's greatest adversary is Mr. Mueller, the father of Joannie, the girl who befriends him at school and sees the damaged child beneath his streetwise facade. Eddie is able to create a new family there, but eventually must choose between them and his real family when his brother needs him to help pay off a debt to a local crime boss back in Toronto.
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Director Morris Ertman, who has been guiding this musical for almost four years, takes a page out of Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town and uses minimal set pieces and props, and an ensemble playing folksy characters to tell this very real and moving story. He even has a character called Songwriter, who is the omnipotent narrator of Eddie's story, much like the Stage Manager in Thornton's play.
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The Songwriter is underused. He plays the judge at the beginning of the show, and a town gossip called Rita, but he needs to play even more characters, and he needs to be much more of a presence. They've got a great actor in Christopher Hunt to play the manager of the local Co-op store, but this is a part the Songwriter should play, seeing how important he is to the romance that develops between Eddie and Joannie. Aaron Krogman is such a dynamic presence, he's definitely up to the challenge.
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The character of Gran is also underused. She's such a feisty woman and a real musical theatre staple. She needs a least a couple of solos, and again, in Annette Loiselle, Rosebud is only giving us a glimpse of what this actor can do.
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As Eddie and Joanne, Mark Kazakov and Karyssa Komar, have strong, expressive voices, so they do justice to Bachynski's songs and dialogue, but he needs to define the moment that liking turns to loving and, more importantly, their initial embrace. Eddie loathes to be touched because of something that happened to him, so when Joanne and Eddie do embrace, it should be a huge moment that deserves a song.