OH, ANNE! puts four women in charge of Avonlea
Emma Reynolds as Anne Shirley in OH, ANNE!, Bridget Ryan’s musical adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, now playing at Edmonton’s Roxy Theatre through Oct. 18.
Photo credit: Marc J Chalifoux
Four women populate Avonlea in OH, ANNE!, Bridget Ryan's musical adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables. Emma Reynolds plays Anne Shirley, while Jordan Empson, Jorja Polischuk and Abby McDougall join her in a company that takes on dozens of characters from Montgomery's novel, accompanied by Maritime-inspired music and staging designed for actors to move rapidly between people and places.
The Carter-Ryan Productions musical is now at Edmonton's Roxy Theatre in a co-production with Theatre Network, running in the Nancy Power Theatre through Oct. 18. Ryan adapted and directs the approximately 90-minute production, with Lisa MacDougall as music director and Jason Carter as set designer and producer. Emma Ryan is the ensemble swing.
Ryan's decision to put four women in charge of the story extends beyond casting Anne herself. Speaking with Edmonton theatre writer Liz Nicholls ahead of the Roxy engagement, Ryan described OH, ANNE! as a tribute to strong women and talked about Anne's optimism, hope and willingness to take up space. Her description of the adaptation also made clear where one familiar Avonlea relationship sits within her version.
“Gilbert is not the star!” Ryan told Nicholls.
The musical retains the characters and story of Montgomery's 1908 novel but changes the means available to tell it. Four performers create the larger community around Anne, while traditional sea shanties are among the music incorporated into the production. Ryan told Nicholls that putting those songs into women's voices was part of the original conception of the show.
MacDougall comes to OH, ANNE! with previous experience inside another part of Anne's Canadian musical-theatre history. Her Theatre Network biography lists five years as music director of Anne & Gilbert, the Prince Edward Island musical based on Montgomery's later Anne books.
Carter's set also had to make the move from the production's original scale in Canmore to the larger Nancy Power Theatre. Carter-Ryan operates a 51-seat professional micro-theatre at its gallery on Main Street in Canmore, where it launched its first full professional theatre season in 2018. Nicholls reported that Carter redesigned the OH, ANNE! set for the dimensions of the Theatre Network stage ahead of the Edmonton engagement.
Carter, a member of Little Red River Cree Nation in Treaty 8, runs Carter-Ryan Gallery and Live Theatre with Ryan and has built a career as a visual artist alongside his theatre work. His credits on OH, ANNE! combine those practices: he designed the set and is a producer on the show.
The musical itself predates the Edmonton run. OH, ANNE! was first produced in Canmore in 2025, with Reynolds, Polischuk, Empson and Emma Ryan listed as its four performers. In the current Edmonton production, McDougall is part of the four-person ensemble and Ryan serves as swing.
The move to the Roxy also returns Bridget Ryan to an Edmonton theatre community where she has an extensive history. A MacEwan University graduate, she has worked as an actor and director with companies including the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton Opera and Mayfield Dinner Theatre. She and Carter subsequently established their Canmore gallery and theatre operation, where OH, ANNE! was developed.
Its Edmonton run comes during a period when Canadian theatres continue to commission and stage different theatrical versions of Montgomery's best-known character.
The longest-running example remains Anne of Green Gables—The Musical, which first appeared at the Charlottetown Festival in 1965. Confederation Centre of the Arts presented it every summer until the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the 2020 festival; it has since moved to an every-other-year schedule and returned to Charlottetown in 2026.
Anne & Gilbert has taken another route through Montgomery's books and is in its 22nd season in Charlottetown in 2026. Stratford Festival has also commissioned a new adaptation of Anne of Green Gables by Canadian playwright Kat Sandler, presenting its world première in 2026.
Ryan's adaptation sits alongside those productions while working at a deliberately small scale. Its four performers carry Anne and the people around her, and its music draws from Maritime traditions rather than a conventional original musical score. The production began inside Carter-Ryan's 51-seat Canmore theatre before making its way onto the larger Roxy stage.
OH, ANNE! continues at the Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy in Edmonton through Oct. 18.
