SMALL TOWNS AND OPEN MINDS
Putting out welcome mat at Centaur
Looking to get away now that the weather’s turning, but don’t fancy getting snarled up in the inevitable traffic? You could always try checking into Brett and Drew’s guest house for that authentic tourist town experience, and all without hitting the 10 or the 401.
Bed and Breakfast, a homegrown comedy about a gay couple who opt for the service industry out in the sticks, puts up its Vacancies sign at Centaur Theatre next week after a successful run at the Thousand Islands Playhouse. Played out on a bare stage with just two actors clocking up more than 20 characters between them, the show seems to have connected with its original tourist town audience, among whom was Centaur director Roy Surette, who immediately snapped up the show.
“The story’s fast-paced scenes and actors’ versatility keep spectators engaged and highly entertained,” enthuses Surette in the news release.
Bed and Breakfast is the brainchild of Toronto-based actorplaywright Mark Crawford, who first got the idea for the show while touring similar areas to the one depicted in the play.
“The town could be anywhere, really,” he explains over coffee before the day’s rehearsals. “We premièred the play in Gananoque, which ticks all those boxes, but there are a lot of towns that tick those boxes in Ontario — places with the one cool coffee shop, the antique shops and so on. I was really inspired by the audiences who live there.”
Joining Crawford for the interview is his life partner, Paul Dunn, who originated the role of Drew in 2015, opposite Andrew Kushnir. (He and Dunn also worked on another multicharacter piece, The Gay Heritage Project, which toured with Toronto’s Buddies in Bad Times.) Kushnir has moved on to other commitments, so Brett’s role is now being filled by none other than Crawford himself.
Dunn, also an actor-playwright, and Crawford seem to have smoothly negotiated the tricky bumps inherent in two ambitious theatre people sharing life and work together. It also no doubt helps their stage dynamic that they are of strikingly different heights: Crawford stands well over six feet tall, Dunn comes up just to his shoulder.
The premise of a gay couple setting up shop in a remote, tightknit community sets up all kinds of expectations. To be sure, Brett and Drew do encounter incidences of homophobia, whether in the form of veiled looks or screamed abuse at the gas station. But Bed and Breakfast certainly doesn’t aim to be a strident Gay Activist’s Guide to Surviving in the Sticks.
“I feel that writing this play at this time, showing this kind of
couple, the fact that it’s a comedy, all that’s political in itself,” Dunn says. “In its very gentle way, it’s quite revolutionary.”
Crawford agrees: “I think it’s rare to see a play about a gay couple that doesn’t end tragically. The choice to tell the story in this way can be seen as political.”
Crawford, who grew up on a beef farm before moving to Toronto to study theatre, has this to say about the perceived conservatism of small towns: “Part of what I’ve tried is not to fall completely into the idea that small towns are these closed-minded places where it’s impossible to be out and gay, and that you have to go to the big city in order to live your life. Most small-town folks are, in a weird way, really openminded, because there’s only this small amount of people in the community, and everybody knows everybody’s business and foibles.”
If Bed and Breakfast’s strategy of enacting multi-faceted smalltown life on a bare stage, with props being mimed into being, sounds reminiscent of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Crawford has other playwrights on his mind when it comes to influences: Alan Ayckbourn and Neil Simon, for instance, or closer to home, Hannah Moscovitch and Daniel MacIvor. He also cites Duncan Macmillan’s two-hander Lungs (which recently played in French at Théâtre La Licorne).
“I was still writing Bed and Breakfast when I saw Lungs in Toronto. My play doesn’t work in quite the same way, but it was exciting to see a story told in a similar bare-bones way using just two actors.”
He hesitates for a moment before saying: “This is going to sound so poncey, but I also think a lot about Shakespeare when I’m writing, especially about the comic form and about people going from a place of chaos and isolation to a place of unity and love.”
Perhaps needlessly worried that Crawford’s citing of Shakespeare might sound “poncey,” Dunn quickly jumps in: “Also, I just want to throw in there that I’m very happy that Fawlty Towers has a huge influence on one section of the play. So all those episodes we watched over and over again hasn’t gone to waste.”
Dunn and Crawford won’t confirm which particular episode of John Cleese’s classic hotel-set sitcom has influenced that section, but insist that fans of the show will instantly recognize it when they see it. So in the interest of avoiding spoilers, let’s not mention the war.