Wannabe has been thrilling audiences and blowing the roof of concert venues across North America for the past 10 years. With giant personalities, mega-watt singing voices, spot-on choreography, costume changes, English accents and platform shoes, these powerhouse women have brought Girl Power into the 21st century with their larger-than life epic shows.
Performing all the classics and favourites from decades of country music.
Love Hurts loves country music, and this 6-piece band of veteran Toronto musicians will make you love country music, too.
Established in 2022, Love Hurts has been breathing new life into bonafide country classics and forgotten gems, pinning heart wrenching 50s balladry alongside 70s outlaw swagger, and 90s honky-tonk revival with swooning 60s countrypolitan. From Patsy Cline to Linda Ronstadt, George Jones to George Strait, Love Hurts makes the cream of the country music songbook sound as fresh as the day it was made.
Fronted by two dynamic singers, Barbara Johnston and Lowell Sostomi, and back by a cracking band who eat country licks for breakfast, Love Hurts follows no guide but a great song: if the tune makes you weep, call your momma, drink 15 beers, or cuss out your ex, you just might hear it at Love Hurts’ next gig.
To license any of the musical theatre works below, please contact Colin Rivers at Marquis Entertainment.
To be sent copies of any individual songs, please contact Barbara directly.
When their annual musical is cancelled, a group of public school drama students set out to put up a show of their own. But in order to get funding, they have to make it about something Canadian. The result? ‘The Hadfield Follies: An Out of this World Journey Through the Life and Times of Astronaut Chris Hadfield’. One Small Step is a hilarious backstage musical comedy celebrating art and exploration from Dora-nominated writers Barbara Johnston and Anika Johnson.
The YES Theatre in Sudbury is currently producing this show as part of its 2024 program. For more details, click here
“Houston, we have an astronomically good musical at the Toronto Fringe Festival 2018”
- Mooney on Theatre
“...The show’s creators have proven time and again their knack for capturing the young Canadian’s experience through inventive musical works.”
- Sesaya
Most recently performed at the Heliconian Hall, “Jingle Babz: Tellin’ the Christmas Lies” tells the true story of Christmas with laughter, sparkles, a full piece band (including trumpet!) and lots of jingly good cheer. Move over Mariah. Babz is back in town!
Every year a portion of ticket sales are donated to Sistering - an agency for at-risk, socially isolated women and trans people in Toronto.
Jingle Babz: The Virtual Holiday Special
Anika Johnson and Barbara Johnston's new musical CHOIR! showcases a year-in-the-life of a children's chorus as they go through the ups and downs of choir camp and school, while dealing with raging hormones and raising money for the big end-of-year choir competition. Patron’s Pick of the 2023 Toronto Fringe Festival!
“Big-hearted and entertaining... expect to see them on small and big stages in the years to come.”
- Glenn Sumi
There’s very little in life that a bubble bath doesn’t make a whole lot better. In Bubble Babz: Songs from the Tub, Barbara is completely in her element, sharing stories and singing original songs with a little help from her friends. It’s bath time for adults.
“I’m not really a bath person; I’m more of a shower guy. But after watching Barbara Johnston’s marvellous bittersweet show Bubble Babz: Songs From The Tub, I’d be willing to light a few candles, sink into a soothing tub and contemplate (or forget about) life for a while. Especially if I could listen to her catchy songs (which she’s written with Anika Johnson and Suzy Wilde) while I’m in there.”
- Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine
Blood Ties is based on a true story of a bachelorette weekend gone horribly wrong.
Sheila’s uncle shoots himself in his bathroom on the eve of her wedding, and when her three best friends arrive in town for her bachelorette party they are instead charged with the task of helping her clean up the considerable mess left behind. But in the process of mopping up blood and brains, disturbing details are uncovered, and it becomes clear that Sheila isn’t telling the whole truth.
A hit at the Edinburgh Fringe and Toronto’s Summerworks Festival + Next Stage Festival and featured on Season 2 of the BBC America show ‘Orphan Black’.
“Pulse pounding…blows all of its contemporaries out of the water.” (5 stars)
- Brett Herriot, Broadway Baby
“Musical perfection.” (5 stars)
- Thos Ribbits, Musical Talk UK
The Breakfast Club meets Peter Pan meets Lord of The Flies in this innovative and ground-breaking pop-operatic musical about a group of high school students who find themselves stranded between worlds after a bus accident.
Summerland is an elaborate and beautiful metaphor for the transition from childhood into adulthood and that feeling of wanting to hold on to your last vestiges of innocence.
“Summerland also soars on the strength of its music. Johnson, Johnston and Wilde’s pop-inflected songs feature pithy and poetic lyrics and are effective, affecting and often hopelessly catchy. If there were a cast album available, I’d buy it.”
- Wayne Leung, Mooney on Theatre
5 N's - Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine
Now Magazine winner for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Ensemble
Judy Blume meets High Fidelity in this coming-of-age, folk/pop musical about a misfit teen and future cinephile ‘Deirdre’ who struggles to re-invent herself while working at a floundering local video rental store/bait shop in a Northern Ontario cottage town in the summer of 1995.
“Johnston and Wilde’s songs are all terrifically catchy, whether they’re about big box stores, sisterly love or wearing a new bathing suit.”
- Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine
Inquiries:
Colin Rivers, Marquis Entertainment
Inquiries:
Penny Noble, Noble Caplan Abrams Talent Management
Inquiries:
Barbara Johnston