ANNE GOES WEST
Regina Little Theatre tackles a classic
Elizabeth Booker’s favourite scene from Anne of Green Gables is a classic.
In the Regina Little Theatre’s upcoming production, Booker plays the ignorant young hostess who mistakenly gives alcohol to her friend Diana (portrayed by Emily Krieser).
“I think that I am giving her raspberry cordial, but I am giving her currant wine, so she gets drunk and I have no clue,” said Booker. “So I just am sitting there telling lots of these fun stories and her mother’s furious with me. Ah, that’s a great scene.”
As the beloved Can-lit character Anne, Booker will don a red wig and muster all the energy she can.
“It is an adventure. It’s a lot of fun to kind of act almost like I was when I was younger and I guess take bits from the movies and the books,” Booker said.
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel — which spurred seven sequels and various spinoffs — takes place on Prince Edward Island.
Marilla Cuthbert (portrayed by Marianne Woods) agrees to adopt a boy to help her kind-hearted brother Matthew (Dan Carr) with farm work at Green Gables. They mistakenly get a girl — a fiery tempered, starry eyed, red-headed orphan named Anne Shirley.
The most well-known Anne adaptation is likely the 1985 CBC miniseries starring Megan Follows. The current TV series, Anne with an E, has been renewed for a third season on CBC.
“I definitely feel pressure because I just feel like I have to get to that standard of Megan Follows and just the character that Lucy Maud Montgomery set for this character and her personality and all that stuff,” Booker said.
Although this is her RLT debut, 15-year-old Booker is accustomed to performing. She joined Do It With Class Young People’s Theatre when she was 10 years old.
Likewise, the play ’s director Bob Nicholls is well practised at directing a show — 40-plus and counting. This isn’t even his first time directing Anne.
“I’ve done it three times before,” said Nicholls, including twice as a director at Martin Collegiate and Regina Summer Stage and once as a music director (also with Summer Stage).
With DIWC, Booker usually does musicals. She was most recently part of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare in October. But this show is not the musical adaptation of Anne and that’s just fine with her.
“I think the story works really, really well as a play,” Booker said.
“A lot of the scenes, as fun as they would be with music, really, you get more out of them I would think with just having like a big conversation, just really getting a feel for the personality without bringing music into it. It just works really nicely.”
A break from DIWC and her flexible school schedule — Booker is home-schooled — means she has time to devote to the demanding role.
Nicholls said it hasn’t been easy co-ordinating the schedules of 16 actors, including seven teenagers, for rehearsal.
“The cast members are so busy and they have so many conflicts that planning rehearsals has been a real challenge,” Nicholls said.
The cast includes the most familiar characters of Avonlea with Mrs. Rachel Lynde (played by Brenda Tacik), Ruby Gillis (Hope Van Vliet), Josie Pye (Annika Danielson) and Moody Macpherson (Luke Melenchuk) among them.
Even if you’re new to the story of Anne, Nicholls believes you’ll recognize the characters.
“All of their characteristics are just like people you know. Some of them are nice and some of them are mean and some of them are sarcastic and some of them are super sweet and some have incredible imaginations and some have no imaginations and are very literal,” Nicholls said.
“So I think people will recognize the characters they see as like some of the people they know.”
They should recognize Gilbert Blythe in a scene as unforgettable as the cordial wine mix-up: Lochlan Mclaren plays the unlucky boy who gets a slate broken over his head.
Anne of Green Gables (the script adapted by Sylvia Ashby) runs Nov. 28 to Dec. 1 at the Regina Performing Arts Centre.
Shows are at 7:30 p.m. nightly, plus a matinee at 1:30 p.m. on Saturday.
Tickets are $23 for adults and are available online at reginapac.com or by calling 306-779-2277.