Tony Munch and Marion Day in Rope's End by Douglas Bowie.
REVIEWED HERE
- Rope’s End by Douglas Bowie: 2.5 stars
- Early August by Kate Lynch: 3 stars
- At Blyth Memorial Hall on Tuesday in Blyth, Ont.
The Blyth Festival's August offerings include two very different Canadian comedies, and both are proving to be a big hit with the audience.
Blyth artistic director Eric Coates has to walk a fine line: The plays he chooses can never lose sight of the small-town rural base that is the festival's bedrock.
In fact, both late season openers do push buttons. Douglas Bowie's Rope's End has urbane dialogue and sophisticated cultural references. Kate Lynch's Early August features actresses stripped down to their bras and panties.
And so with these two plays, the Blyth audience does gets nudged a bit further down the road of daring while the plays remain within the safety zone.
Since Bowie's play premiered in 2006 at the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque, Ont., it has racked up a string of performances throughout the country. The big appeal of this two-hander is both the snappy dialogue and the story line.
Movie critic Toby Boone (Tony Munch) is at his rope's end. He's been fired from his job for panning Alexander Payne's sleeper hit 2004 movie Sideways, starring Paul Giamatti as a wine expert. Boone believes it's not realistic that a nebbish like Giamatti's character could find love and happiness. It seems he is also a loser in terms of life and romance.
Although Boone contemplates suicide, he does have one faint hope. When he was 13 years old at summer camp, he fell in love with a girl, and the two promised to meet on Aug. 31, 2011, 31 years in the future. The number signifies the 31 days they had known each other at camp.
Toby Googles Marisa (Marion Day) and so the adventure begins. To describe the plot twists would be unfair, but suffice it to say that this play is anything but predictable.
Director Lee MacDougall certainly understands character and the fine line between sentimentalism and poignancy. For her part, Day gives a sublime performance in the dual role of both Marisa and her daughter Zoe.
The problem here is Munch. The actor has uneven rhythm. He stumbles on lines or breaks up his speech patterns. He can be very good when he gets into the swing of the dialogue, but his performance is irritating for its lack of consistency.
This world premiere of Early August is Lynch's love letter to the Blyth Festival and its audience. As she says in her program notes, the theatre artists who come to Blyth are welcomed into the lives of the villagers and the community at large. With this play, she is returning the favour.
Lynch reveals the private world of actors by taking the audience into the female dressing room of a summer theatre. The title refers to the theatrical truism that by mid-summer, actors go squirrelly.
Blyth favourite Catherine Fitch has been given a plum role. She plays Teddy, the stage manager, who not only makes sure the play runs smoothly, she also organizes the private lives of her actors. And actors being actors, their lives are complicated indeed.
Gina (Sarah Orenstein) is the narcissistic, Toronto-based veteran and big-city sophisticate with expensive tastes. Stephanie (Tova Smith) is jittery about touring in Romeo and Juliet after the summer and is currently embroiled in a love affair with fellow actor Albert (Gil Garratt).
Chelsea (Haley McGee) is the tattoo-covered, punk newcomer, who has been billeted in a farmhouse that she thinks is infested with rats. As for Albert, the lone male in the cast seems to have problems with all the women including Teddy.
Director Shari Hollett has had great fun juggling her cast on two levels. Not only are they having problems on the personal front, they also have to put on the play, and so there is a constant coming and going from stage to dressing room.
Kudos to designer Victoria Wallace for her wonderful dressing room set and wild parade of costumes and wigs. We never find out what that play is about, but half the fun is watching the costume changes that don't make too much sense.
The cast is strong and there are a lot of laughs, although there is also a bit of overacting. Nonetheless, this production is immensely enjoyable and vintage Blyth.
Blyth Festival continues until Aug. 27.