Live and in person at Theatre Orangeville, Orangeville, Ont. Playing until February 23, 2025.
Written by Barb Scheffler
Directed by Sheila McCarthy
Set by Beckie Morris
Costumes by Alex Amini
Lighting by Louise Guinand
Sound by Brian Bleasdale
Cast: Debbie Collins
Melanie Janzen
Mary Pitt
Blythe Wilson
Condo living can be pretty solitary. Everybody lives in their own space, not knowing their neighbours. Everybody keeps to themselves. But Karen (Blythe Wilson), a fastidious woman with lots of ideas and a stickler for punctuality, thought that solitary existence should change. So, she organized a get-together with some of her neighbours to come to her condo to create scrap books of memories, photos etc. and get to know each other.
Radiance (Melanie Janzen) is a loose-limbed free-spirit who’s has an adventurous past meeting lots of folks before they were famous (Andy Warhol, Steve Jobs), knows how to fix anything and is game for anything. Eunice (Debbie Collins) was born in Newfoundland but lives with her husband and kids in Toronto. She’s funny and forthright and her Newfoundland expressions are dandy. Yvette (Mary Pitt) is recently widowed and the other three are caring, compassionate and perhaps too overbearing in trying to cheer her up. In the course of the scrapbook creation the group learns that Eunice has been invited to go to her nephew’s wedding in Newfoundland but she’s reluctant. It’s expensive to fly. He husband can’t get away. How can she go? Simple, the ladies will go with her on a road trip. And they are off on their adventure each sharing the driving.
Director Sheila McCarthy has created a lovely production that illuminates the quirks and humour of each character. Four chairs are arranged and rearranged to suggest the car they are driving and the women’s placement in the car. Blythe Wilson as Karen is high-strung but trying to hide it. She has a very tight smile and an almost pathological fear of being behind schedule. She is fastidious to a fault. In one subtle gesture, she takes a perfectly placed item on the table and moves it just a touch out of habit. It is so small a gesture but is so brilliant in showing how obsessive Karen is about order. Blythe Wilson is a marvel as Karen.
Debbie Collins as Eunice is brassy, irreverent and open-hearted. Mary Pitt plays Yvette with a French-Canadian accent and a perfect sense of how to float a laugh-line. And Melanie Janzen plays Radiance who will always be a flower child no matter how much of a senior citizen she is. Nothing fazes her.
Barb Scheffler has written a sweet play about kind women getting together to help out a friend to get to a wedding. Secrets are shared. Laughs and tears are too. Beckie Morris has created a simple set with chairs, two tables and a map at the back with a red car that plots the trip. Charming, funny thoughtful work, all round.
Theatre Orangeville Presents.
Runs until Feb. 23, 2025.
Running time: 2 hours, approx. (1 intermission)