Press

  • "Standouts include Andrea Rankin who is devastating and captivating as the tragic Ophelia.

    Hamlet (2022) at the Stratford Festival; Lauren Gienow, Broadway World

  • "As Anne, the youngest of the three sisters, Andrea Rankin plays the role of baby of the family very well. She is close with Emily but they still playfully fight, and her emotional distance from Charlotte seems to come from a place of insecurity in her fear of being compared to her. Rankin brings humour to the role as Anne impatiently awaits Charlotte's return so that the three sisters can open a piece of mail and find out if a publisher has chosen to go forward with any of their books. She tugs at the heart strings as she desperately tries to carve her own place in history.”

    Lauren Gienow, Broadway World, June 25, 2018

  • "One of the play’s more important performances comes from Andrea Rankin as Lady Jane Grey. Mary’s visits with Jane are the points by which we can chart Mary’s growth as a leader as well as her decline from her high moral standards. Rankin’s Jane is like a child in her innocence yet fervent and unshakeable in her Protestant faith. Mary at first misunderstands Jane’s behaviour as defiant, but soon comes to realize that no deceit or ambition lies in Jane at all. Mary sees that Jane is a victim of others’ machinations for power just as she herself has become. One of the most powerful moments in the play is Mary’s realization of her similarity to Jane. One of the play’s more moving moments is when Jane accepts her death sentence without rancour or remonstration. Hennig uses Lady Jane Grey’s behaviour as the model of the fate that meets those who hold to their ideals in a corrupt world and Rankin with quiet dignity embodies that doomed idealist.”

    Christopher Hoile, Stage Door, June 20, 2019.

  • "Bard newcomer Andrea Rankin radiates purity and innocence in the role. She’s another Albertan and reinforces that honesty in her portrayal.”

    Christopher Key, June 26, 2015

  • "Rankin, who died so well as Desdemona earlier this season in The Shakespeare Company’s production of Othello, as usual, lights up the stage at Theatre Calgary — her scenes with Campbell are filled with feeling and the love and sometimes hate between a father and his favourite daughter.”

    Stephen Hunt, The Calgary Herald, March 14 2015

  • “Lady Jane Grey, gorgeously portrayed with saintly vision by Andrea Rankin."

    — on Mother’s Daughter at Soulpepper Theatre: Ken Steven, Large Stage Live , 2019

  • “Rankin captures Molly’s competitive streak — “it isn’t a contest, but if it was I’d win' — and the way her certainties about her superior skills and knowledge are always getting undermined by the human factor. Molly has a slightly preposterous upper-class accent, and an air of noblesse oblige that will make you smile, in a performance smartly created from the friction between pompous, and rueful.”

    — on Peter and the Starcatcher at The Citadel Theatre, Liz Nicholls, 12th Night, 2017

  • “As his daughter, Molly Aster, Andrea Rankin does a good job of bringing an adventurous and confident 13-year-old to the stage – walking the fine line between childishness and the confusion of being a teenager.”

    — on Peter and the Starcatcher at The Citadel Theatre, After the House Lights, Jenna Marynowski, April 2017

  • "Andrea Rankin's portrayal of Lady Jane Grey is fascinating in a different way. Like Rebecca Nurse in Arthur Miller's The Crucible, Jane "is one foot in heaven already; naught may hurt her more." Rankin plays this appealing character as a gentle woman of great faith, a mixture of naivete and worldly wisdom, of childlike simplicity and superhuman compassion. It's a contrast, both refreshing and dramatically relieving, to the cold heartlessness of so much else in this play.”

    on Mother’s Daughter at the Stratford Festival, Ken Stephen, Large Stage Live, Thursday June 20 2019

  • "Andrea Rankin’s stoic Jane Gray is quite heartbreaking to watch.”

    Stephen Lubin, Mooney on Theatre, 2019

  • "Cruelty is often a major component with respect to their adherence to political expediency, such as Mary’s handling of illegitimate cousin Jane Grey, played with tragically appealing innocence by Andrea Rankin.”

    -on Mother’s Daughter, Geoff Dale, Stratford Beacon Herald, 2019

  • "Rankin’s sweet vulnerability makes her demise especially moving.”

    on Mother’s Daughter, Debbie Fein-Goldbach, Now Toronto, Jan 19 2020

  • "Andrea Rankin is Anne, the lesser light and aware of it: there’s a charming coltishness to her characterization, even a high-spirited giddiness, as she strives to emulate her sisters, but there’s also an underlying pathos.”

    -on Brontë: The World Without, Jamie Portman, Capital Critics’ Circle, June 28, 2018

  • "While unquestionably a talented writer, though less acclaimed than either Charlotte or Emily, sister Anne is likely the Brontë posing the greater challenges for an actor tasked with the role of her portrayal. So Andrea Rankin deserves high marks for her oft-times boisterous and lively performance, exhibiting qualities befitting a younger woman."

    on Brontë: The World Without, London Free Press, June 25 2018

  • "Rankin may appear at times relegated to an easy chair off to the side and far from centre-stage activity, but her presence is nonetheless always felt."

    -on Brontë: The World Without, Geoff Dale, Stratford Beacon Herald, June 24 2018

  • "As Desdemona, Rankin is the contrast to all that plotting and scheming — she’s ill will free, someone who followed her heart and married the moor she loved, and damn the torpedoes.”

    -on Othello, Stephen Hunt, The Calgary Herald, October 7 2014

  • "As director Jenkins expertly hurtles Othello towards its gruesome finale at the speed of a love affair gone wrong — against a haunting musical backdrop (by Peter Moller) that makes the marital bed feel like it’s parked in hell — Desdemona awakens to the looming threat to her personal safety, and Rankin brings the character to rich, vibrant life, just in time for Othello to end it.”

    on “Othello”, Stephen Hunt, The Calgary Herald, October 7 2017

  • "For Edmonton native Rankin, The Comedy of Errors is the first half of a Calgary Shakespeare doubleheader: she’ll be back in the fall as part of the cast of The Shakespeare Company’s Othello. While she’s also a musician, songwriter and opera singer (she performs in two different Edmonton bands and has sung with the Edmonton Opera) Rankin still holds a soft spot in her heart for Shakespeare’s sheer revelry in language. “Watching television and things, you don’t get the lofty, poetic joy of talking (anymore),” she says. “He really loves words, so to be able to have someone who speaks for three minutes straight, it’s quite fun to work on that and try to keep it interesting for people.”

    “Bard bootcamp Andrea Rankin and castmates trained hard for Shakespeare by the Bow’s Comedy of Errors” , Stephen Hunt, The Calgary Herald, 2014

    https://calgaryherald.com/entertainment/theatre/bard-boot-camp-andrea-rankin-and-castmates-trained-hard-for-shakespeare-by-the-bows-comedy-of-errors