Live and in person at the Capitol Theatre, Port Hope, Ont. A world premiere. Playing until Sept. 1, 2024.
Written by Briana Brown
Directed by Rob Kempson
Set and Costumes by Anna Treusch
Lighting by Jareth Li
Composer and sound by Jeff Newberry
Cast: Christy Bruce
Alison Deon
Deborah Drakeford
Darrel Gamotin
Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski
Mirabella Sundar Singh
An unfortunate muddle of ideas and themes that needs a lot of rethinking and re-writing.
From the website:
“Kringle, Ontario is in a rut. When the well-meaning town reeve devises a tourism development plan to celebrate Christmas all year round, the town thinks it’s a great idea. But two weeks and a heat wave later, they’re having second thoughts. Nora, whose convenience store (and gas station) is the centre of cultural activity, is suddenly desperate for a much-needed vacation. Throw in an anxious restauranteur, a sassy teenager, and a wide-eyed new resident, and you’ve got a recipe for a veritable blizzard of hilarity!”
That last part about a ‘blizzard of hilarity’ is wishful thinking. The play takes place in August. The reeve, Mary, (Deborah Drakeford) is dressed in a heavy red Christmas suit of pants, top etc. They find out from some officious department that Kringle has overstepped its bounds by posing as a Christmastown that celebrates Christmas all year. There are rules and protocols that must be followed to earn that title of “Christmastown” and Kringle has not followed them. Three inspectors will be coming to check them out and see that they are following the rules. The five characters involved are in a tizzy at the prospect. They are: Nora (Alison Dean) who runs the convenience store and gas station, Mary (Deborah Drakeford) the reeve and head organizer of the endeavor, Sam (Darrel Gamotin) the new guy in town who left his old life in Toronto to move to Kringle, Jeff (Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski) who runs the restaurant and is short staffed, expecting his adopted baby to arrive that he will parent with his partner, and is anxious about it all, and Adeline, (Mirabella Sundar Singh) Nora’s sassy teenaged daughter. There are various other characters wafting in and out of the action, all played by Christy Bruce.
Briana Brown’s play is billed as a farce. It isn’t. While the cast is valiant in charging around the stage with exaggerated energy and volume the humour is laboured. The result is unfunny. There are references to Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol”, Gogol’s The Government Inspector, “The Gift of the Magi”, religions of the world as also worthy of celebration, the film “It’s a Wonderful Life” many and various threads of philosophy as well as the individual stories of the five main characters. If all the dangling loose ends of the story were knotted together, they would make a nice throw-rug.
The cast works very hard to lift this work into the buoyant work it wants to be. Director Rob Kempson seems to have directed them to over react and overplay everything in a loud declarative voice.
Playwright Briana Brown needs to decide what story or two, three at the outside, she wants this play to be about and ruthlessly cut the rest of the stuff that does not serve that purpose. When there is so much dead air when there should be laughter, then the playwright and the director etc. have to rethink what is trying to be accomplished here and why it’s not working.
The Capitol Theatre presents:
Playing until Sept. 1, 2024.
Running time: 2 hours (1 intermission)