The QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together
community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario
in a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living
the art of theatre. This year there are four productions entered.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
Hilda's Yard
by Norm Foster
Presented by Sault Theatre Workshop (STW)
Directed by George Houston
On Friday night, the tone of the Festival changed yet again with the coming of a script by Norm Foster, who now reigns unchallenged as the most often produced Canadian playwright ever.
Some theatre people are inclined to sneer that Foster simply panders to popular taste, but nothing is ever quite that simple. The real secret of his success is that he has an uncanny knack for creating the most real and human people in the most interesting situations, and then setting the audience laughing while he quietly slips some significant social lessons in under our guard, as it were. I'll get back later to what I felt was the significant lesson in this script.
As can only be expected of a man who has had over 50 plays staged professionally, the quality of his output can be uneven. But at his best, he's a force to be reckoned with. And Hilda's Yard certainly ranks as one of the best Foster scripts which I have seen staged.
The Fluck family's conventional 1956 backyard, complete with wheelie clothesline (out over the heads of the audience), neat shrubs, and springy steel lawn chairs was lovingly re-created on the set. The house, and the small wooden deck to access the clothesline, closed in the downstage and upstage right and centre, and a vertical board fence flanked by shrubs closed the upstage left. Sides were widely angled to create perfect sightlines from all parts of the auditorium.
The house itself looked like a very typical 1940s-vintage home with wooden siding and wooden window frames. The siding was a bit dingy and dirty.
Catharina Warren opened the show as Hilda Fluck, hanging out her laundry and talking over the invisible back fence at the front of the stage to her neighbour. In all of her back-fence monologues, Warren conveyed by slight nudges of this or that word the underlying meaning of many of her seemingly innocuous statements.
Ron Bird swaggered on as her husband, Sam Fluck, puffed up with his own self-importance and excitement about buying a beautiful new console TV set. After all these years, it's easy to miss the significance of the three-hundred-and-some dollars price tag which is so repeatedly mentioned, so it's worthwhile to remember that this play is set firmly in the time of the candy bar, bag of chips, or bottle of a soft drink each selling for a nickel.
Bird did a fine job of showing us, one degree at a time -- through voice and face -- how Sam's assurance is all a big put on and in fact he is rather uncertain of getting away with skipping work to go and buy a TV.
The fat is well and truly in the fire when son Gary (Jarrett Mills) climbs over the fence, throwing his kitbag into the yard ahead of him, and dragging a tale of woe behind him. Mills used his expressive face to good effect, both in telling his mother all about his troubles, and equally in describing his various get-rich-quick schemes. Foster's gift for throwaway comic laughs is on fine display here, and Mills rode it for all it was worth.
Next over the fence was daughter Janey (Wendylynn Levoskin), with further tales of woe. Levoskin gave a most believable portrayal of a young woman with a head full of fantasies and dreams, a head easily turned by any compliment. Her funniest moments came at the two points when she found out that her parents told each other about what she had told them. Picture-perfect vignettes of 14-year-old disgust from a character who is actually in her twenties.
Gary's two-week girlfriend, Bobbi Jakes (Leah Frost), was the next one over the fence, bringing her devil-may-care attitude to life and love to vivid reality -- certainly vivid enough to scare the daylights out of both anxious parents. Her flirtatious moments with Gary were both believable and entertaining.
And finally -- Ryan Geick in the role of Beverly Woytowich, the bookie to whom Gary is in debt for nearly $400, climbing the fence to collect.
It's at this point that the whole story begins to veer sideways into sheer improbability. It's very much to the credit of this company that the ridiculous nature of the events didn't really become apparent until the utterly absurd denouement at the end.
Along the way, though, the following highlights occurred. Geick managed a fascinating transition from oily bookie to gentleman caller (for Janey) and then, on a turn of a dime, to murderous thug out for Gary's blood.
Mills became almost a windmill, like a caricature of Cary Grant, during his ridiculous yet touching proposal to Bobbi.
Levoskin developed some amusing nuances as the story of her troubles oozed out of her, bit by bit, making her much less a caricature and more of a full person.
And we had plenty of good laughs as first one person, then another, picked up the "with it" slang which Bobbi brought into the yard.
One observation I made in this production was that several of the characters seemed to have trouble knowing what to do with their hands. In real life, many (most?) people have characteristic hand gestures, motions, and habits. (I, for instance, prop my chin on my left hand when sitting and shove both hands into my pockets when standing.) Among all the other details, it's a useful trick to invent some kind of hand habit for a character.
Now, what about that social lesson? It came at the moment when Janey let slip that her husband slapped her across the face, hard enough to leave a mark, and that was why she left him. When she tells her father, his response is authentic 1950s daddy -- trying to justify the unseen hubby's behaviour, and even trying to order Janey to go back to him, all because her husband has a good job and prospect for a good future.
I heard several people around me making sounds of disgust at this moment, as one would expect. But here's the lesson I took away. Don't judge too harshly people from other time periods who acted according to the accepted morality of their time, and above all don't mock them because.... most of us will never know what parts of our accepted morality today will become the laughing stock or the touchstone of disgust in sixty or a hundred or two hundred years from now. The one thing we can know for sure is that our ideas and attitudes will be mocked or despised in the future -- in some way, shape or form. Call it a lesson in humility.
Some theatre people are inclined to sneer that Foster simply panders to popular taste, but nothing is ever quite that simple. The real secret of his success is that he has an uncanny knack for creating the most real and human people in the most interesting situations, and then setting the audience laughing while he quietly slips some significant social lessons in under our guard, as it were. I'll get back later to what I felt was the significant lesson in this script.
As can only be expected of a man who has had over 50 plays staged professionally, the quality of his output can be uneven. But at his best, he's a force to be reckoned with. And Hilda's Yard certainly ranks as one of the best Foster scripts which I have seen staged.
The Fluck family's conventional 1956 backyard, complete with wheelie clothesline (out over the heads of the audience), neat shrubs, and springy steel lawn chairs was lovingly re-created on the set. The house, and the small wooden deck to access the clothesline, closed in the downstage and upstage right and centre, and a vertical board fence flanked by shrubs closed the upstage left. Sides were widely angled to create perfect sightlines from all parts of the auditorium.
The house itself looked like a very typical 1940s-vintage home with wooden siding and wooden window frames. The siding was a bit dingy and dirty.
Catharina Warren opened the show as Hilda Fluck, hanging out her laundry and talking over the invisible back fence at the front of the stage to her neighbour. In all of her back-fence monologues, Warren conveyed by slight nudges of this or that word the underlying meaning of many of her seemingly innocuous statements.
Ron Bird swaggered on as her husband, Sam Fluck, puffed up with his own self-importance and excitement about buying a beautiful new console TV set. After all these years, it's easy to miss the significance of the three-hundred-and-some dollars price tag which is so repeatedly mentioned, so it's worthwhile to remember that this play is set firmly in the time of the candy bar, bag of chips, or bottle of a soft drink each selling for a nickel.
Bird did a fine job of showing us, one degree at a time -- through voice and face -- how Sam's assurance is all a big put on and in fact he is rather uncertain of getting away with skipping work to go and buy a TV.
The fat is well and truly in the fire when son Gary (Jarrett Mills) climbs over the fence, throwing his kitbag into the yard ahead of him, and dragging a tale of woe behind him. Mills used his expressive face to good effect, both in telling his mother all about his troubles, and equally in describing his various get-rich-quick schemes. Foster's gift for throwaway comic laughs is on fine display here, and Mills rode it for all it was worth.
Next over the fence was daughter Janey (Wendylynn Levoskin), with further tales of woe. Levoskin gave a most believable portrayal of a young woman with a head full of fantasies and dreams, a head easily turned by any compliment. Her funniest moments came at the two points when she found out that her parents told each other about what she had told them. Picture-perfect vignettes of 14-year-old disgust from a character who is actually in her twenties.
Gary's two-week girlfriend, Bobbi Jakes (Leah Frost), was the next one over the fence, bringing her devil-may-care attitude to life and love to vivid reality -- certainly vivid enough to scare the daylights out of both anxious parents. Her flirtatious moments with Gary were both believable and entertaining.
And finally -- Ryan Geick in the role of Beverly Woytowich, the bookie to whom Gary is in debt for nearly $400, climbing the fence to collect.
It's at this point that the whole story begins to veer sideways into sheer improbability. It's very much to the credit of this company that the ridiculous nature of the events didn't really become apparent until the utterly absurd denouement at the end.
Along the way, though, the following highlights occurred. Geick managed a fascinating transition from oily bookie to gentleman caller (for Janey) and then, on a turn of a dime, to murderous thug out for Gary's blood.
Mills became almost a windmill, like a caricature of Cary Grant, during his ridiculous yet touching proposal to Bobbi.
Levoskin developed some amusing nuances as the story of her troubles oozed out of her, bit by bit, making her much less a caricature and more of a full person.
And we had plenty of good laughs as first one person, then another, picked up the "with it" slang which Bobbi brought into the yard.
One observation I made in this production was that several of the characters seemed to have trouble knowing what to do with their hands. In real life, many (most?) people have characteristic hand gestures, motions, and habits. (I, for instance, prop my chin on my left hand when sitting and shove both hands into my pockets when standing.) Among all the other details, it's a useful trick to invent some kind of hand habit for a character.
Now, what about that social lesson? It came at the moment when Janey let slip that her husband slapped her across the face, hard enough to leave a mark, and that was why she left him. When she tells her father, his response is authentic 1950s daddy -- trying to justify the unseen hubby's behaviour, and even trying to order Janey to go back to him, all because her husband has a good job and prospect for a good future.
I heard several people around me making sounds of disgust at this moment, as one would expect. But here's the lesson I took away. Don't judge too harshly people from other time periods who acted according to the accepted morality of their time, and above all don't mock them because.... most of us will never know what parts of our accepted morality today will become the laughing stock or the touchstone of disgust in sixty or a hundred or two hundred years from now. The one thing we can know for sure is that our ideas and attitudes will be mocked or despised in the future -- in some way, shape or form. Call it a lesson in humility.
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