The Spitfire Grill warms the heart with folksy charm, sincere songs

It may not have set Broadway on fire when it opened in 2004, but The Spitfire Grill is a roaring good choice for Rosebud.

The musical’s folksy charm and themes of second chances and redemption feel very much at home in this beautiful hamlet a mere 85-minute drive from Calgary.

Director Morris Ertman has a knack for making the simple seem more profound; that approach is what made the 1996 film such a hit and goes a long way to give his production such heart and warmth.

We know we’re being manipulated but in a feel good kind of way.

The Spitfire Grill is the story of Percy Talbott (Alixandra Cowman), a young parolee who chooses the sleepy Wisconsin town of Gilead as the starting point of her new life.

Presumably she hopes it will heal her emotional, physical and psychological wounds as the balm of Gilead does in the Bible.

We’ll learn later why she was in prison, and it’s a bit of a shocker, which Cowman handles admirably.

Gilead is deep in a recession, so the only job Percy’s parole officer, Sheriff Joe Sutter (Travis Friesen), can find for her is as a waitress at the Spitfire Grill run by the town curmudgeon, Hannah Ferguson (Elinor Holt).

Hannah begrudgingly agrees to take Percy into her grill and her home, which turns out to benefit both women when Hannah suffers a fall that injures her hip.

Percy can’t cook, so Hannah asks her nephew’s wife, Shelby (Cassia Schmidt), to fill in until Hannah can resume her duties.

This doesn’t sit well with Shelby’s husband, Caleb (Paul F. Muir), who agrees a woman’s place is in the kitchen but not a restaurant’s kitchen.

It’s to Schmidt and Muir’s credit in developing this antiquated relationship that two of the biggest audience responses come when Shelby stands up to Caleb.

The audiences loves Schmidt’s transformation from the browbeaten wife to a much more inde-

pendent woman.

It doesn’t take anyone onstage or in the audience long to realize Sheriff Joe is developing feelings for this mysterious stranger, and that he is the kind of gentle man Percy needs and deserves, even though she rejects all of his advances.

We’ll learn why eventually and, once again, Cowman makes the revelation more sentimental than melodramatic.

There is a great deal of humour in The Spitfire Grill thanks in no small measure to Marie Russell as Effy Krayneck, the postmistress and town gossip.

The seventh character in the play is known as the visitor (Nathan Schmidt) because he visits the grill each evening to collect a loaf of bread Hannah insists be left for him. The visitor in turn chops the kindling Hannah needs for the grill.

Nathan does double duty because when he is not sneaking onstage in his ragged clothes, he’s playing the violin opposite fellow musicians Kaitlyn Sloboda and Julie Hereish.

Once again, Ertman makes certain the double duty works as an integral part of the action as when the visitor serenades Hannah near the end of the show.

The visitor is like Boo Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird, and the scene between Cowman and Nathan is genuinely heartfelt where it could have been corny.

The songs by the show’s adapters James Valcq and Fred Ally are gentle folk ballads and some bluegrass, and they are given some rousing and sincere renditions from the talented cast.

It didn’t take the capacity audience I saw The Spitfire Grill with to rise to its feet to give the show a rousing ovation, which speaks more for the production than the script and music themselves.