The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals. Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday. Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning. I'll be reviewing all the performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.
***** ***** *****
On a First Name Basis
by Norm Foster
Representing WODL (Southwestern Ontario)
Presented by Elmira Theatre Company
Directed by Rita Huschka
This first play of the Festival got the week off to a rousing start with a powerhouse performance of Norm Foster's 2013 script -- one of his very best.
This script represents one of the bigger challenges in theatre: two characters who have to hold the stage, and the interest of the audience, in what is essentially an evening of storytelling. There's a decided lack of overt dramatic action in this script, yet the stories of the two characters were told, uncovered, delayed, and dragged out in a totally beguiling fashion that captivated the audience right from the get-go.
Gord Grose's set consisted of a full-walled room, decorated in a pleasant neutral earth-toned colour scheme. The most unusual and intriguing aspect was a large, five-segment bay window upstage centre, which created a useful additional acting area that -- in actual fact -- was very underused.
The two large armchairs placed at stage left centre took up nearly half the width of the room, and the straight line from those chairs across the stage to the kitchen door ended up defining the most-used playing areas. Stage pictures as a result had a certain sameness through much of the piece. This troubled me far less than it would have done in many other plays. Both characters made excellent use of the swinging kitchen door in staging some of their comebacks. The running gag of moving the glass on and off the coaster on the table was well-staged throughout the show too.
This script represents one of the bigger challenges in theatre: two characters who have to hold the stage, and the interest of the audience, in what is essentially an evening of storytelling. There's a decided lack of overt dramatic action in this script, yet the stories of the two characters were told, uncovered, delayed, and dragged out in a totally beguiling fashion that captivated the audience right from the get-go.
Gord Grose's set consisted of a full-walled room, decorated in a pleasant neutral earth-toned colour scheme. The most unusual and intriguing aspect was a large, five-segment bay window upstage centre, which created a useful additional acting area that -- in actual fact -- was very underused.
The two large armchairs placed at stage left centre took up nearly half the width of the room, and the straight line from those chairs across the stage to the kitchen door ended up defining the most-used playing areas. Stage pictures as a result had a certain sameness through much of the piece. This troubled me far less than it would have done in many other plays. Both characters made excellent use of the swinging kitchen door in staging some of their comebacks. The running gag of moving the glass on and off the coaster on the table was well-staged throughout the show too.
Lighting was effective throughout. The music cues preshow and in the intermission were much more problematic. Yes, one of the characters mentions several times his love for classical music and the music chosen would ideally be of that type. But with classics, levels are a real problem since alternating loud and soft passages are often the rule. Swan Lake came booming at us out of the speakers and had to be hurriedly adjusted downwards in volume. The next cue brought quieter music that then had to be pumped back up. A better solution would be to go clear back to the Baroque era (Bach is mentioned by name in the play) and use something written for a solo instrument or keyboard which will maintain a consistent volume level throughout the musical selection.
Foster's script hits the ground running, with Lucy Hopperstaad (the maid) getting in her first sassy wisecrack at her employer in or about the third line. As written, this character shares a good deal of common ground with the pert, sassy maids of Molière's farces. David Kilbride, the novelist who employs her, is a sixtysomething man whose life has ground to a halt. Foster has written several characters along similar lines in various plays, and this one could become one of the less appealing due to his frequently sexist and ageist comments.
In practice, though, watching and listening as these two traded witty barbs while dragging each other's dark night of the soul out into the open became both engrossing and as funny as it could well be. That was because this performance, like the script itself, hit the ground running -- with both characters full-on from the moment the lights went up.
Gord Cameron played the role of David with "just enough" of the stodge, of the self-absorption, of the nose-in-the-air. Too much of any of those aspects would cause David to forfeit all audience sympathy, but Cameron balanced the ingredients in perfect proportion. His retelling of his worst moment of his life was beautifully underplayed -- I don't think I could perform that scene without bursting into tears every time -- with no hint of angling for the audience's sympathy.
Deb Deckert absolutely nailed the role of Lucy, getting in all the smarts, intuition, sass, and pain in the character. Again, restraint worked beautifully for her as she finally was able to snap -- convincingly -- at David because she had been so tactful for so long. Definitely a case where too much, too soon, would have undermined the piece.
There was one place where the pace of the performance slackened too much, and it came in the most challenging part of the script: the final "coda" of the goodnight when all the revelations were said and done. Foster goes out of his way to avoid writing conventional happy endings, but in the process sometimes writes final scenes that are incredibly difficult to play convincingly. This is one of them. I could have wished for fewer and more selectively chosen pauses and beats in the performance of this scene, just to keep the show moving along to its appointed end.
Director Rita Huschka helped her accomplished company of two actors find all kinds of nuances, along with many finely-tuned moments of light and shade. Apart from that final scene, and the stage movement problem mentioned earlier, she crafted an excellent staging of a play that is much more challenging than many might think at first reading.
Foster's script hits the ground running, with Lucy Hopperstaad (the maid) getting in her first sassy wisecrack at her employer in or about the third line. As written, this character shares a good deal of common ground with the pert, sassy maids of Molière's farces. David Kilbride, the novelist who employs her, is a sixtysomething man whose life has ground to a halt. Foster has written several characters along similar lines in various plays, and this one could become one of the less appealing due to his frequently sexist and ageist comments.
In practice, though, watching and listening as these two traded witty barbs while dragging each other's dark night of the soul out into the open became both engrossing and as funny as it could well be. That was because this performance, like the script itself, hit the ground running -- with both characters full-on from the moment the lights went up.
Gord Cameron played the role of David with "just enough" of the stodge, of the self-absorption, of the nose-in-the-air. Too much of any of those aspects would cause David to forfeit all audience sympathy, but Cameron balanced the ingredients in perfect proportion. His retelling of his worst moment of his life was beautifully underplayed -- I don't think I could perform that scene without bursting into tears every time -- with no hint of angling for the audience's sympathy.
Deb Deckert absolutely nailed the role of Lucy, getting in all the smarts, intuition, sass, and pain in the character. Again, restraint worked beautifully for her as she finally was able to snap -- convincingly -- at David because she had been so tactful for so long. Definitely a case where too much, too soon, would have undermined the piece.
There was one place where the pace of the performance slackened too much, and it came in the most challenging part of the script: the final "coda" of the goodnight when all the revelations were said and done. Foster goes out of his way to avoid writing conventional happy endings, but in the process sometimes writes final scenes that are incredibly difficult to play convincingly. This is one of them. I could have wished for fewer and more selectively chosen pauses and beats in the performance of this scene, just to keep the show moving along to its appointed end.
Director Rita Huschka helped her accomplished company of two actors find all kinds of nuances, along with many finely-tuned moments of light and shade. Apart from that final scene, and the stage movement problem mentioned earlier, she crafted an excellent staging of a play that is much more challenging than many might think at first reading.
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