‘PRAIRIE PANTO’ HOMECOMING
Actor reprises role in Dancing Sky show
It’s like Frank Lloyd Wright renovating your kitchen. Like John D. Rockefeller filling your gas tank. Like Ray Kroc making your Big Mac.
Ain’t nothing like the real thing. And when it comes to Dancing Sky Theatre’s “prairie panto,” that means James O’Shea.
He’s back in the part(s) he originated in 2004, playing the greedy Monty St. Orange and the Widow Spriggins in Farmer Joe and the Money Trees, a tale inspired by Jack and the Beanstalk.
The remake, planned to coincide with the theatre’s 20th anniversary, also features original cast member Crispi Lord as Jack. Angus Ferguson oversees the menagerie of people and plucky chicken puppets.
It was a landmark play for the company, drawing on some of the traditions of English Christmas pantomime, such as cross-dressing — hence O’Shea as the widow and Lord as Jack.
“Angus and I both knew the style that we wanted, we just didn’t know how the audience would go for it,” O’Shea says. “But they certainly played right along. The audience is another character in the show. We speak to them, we interact with them all the time. There’s an improv element and, in this case, a really good story element, too.”
The first one was written and rehearsed in a breakneck three weeks. It was a hit, inspiring six sequels. “As soon as we got it in front of the audience, everyone loved it. They bought right in to the whole twisted reality of it,” O’Shea says. He’s been involved in most of them, but not the past two, so this is a homecoming.
He says he forgot how fun it was but also how exhausting. Back in Vancouver, he’s been doing carpentry for a custom- home builder but this takes a different kind of conditioning.
“You can lift plywood all day but there’s no mental strain. And here you’re, like, oh, man, I have to memorize this and act this part. At the end of the day, you’re drained, man, there’s no more neurons left in your brain.”
The play’s signature moment is an actor’s nightmare and an audience’s delight. O’Shea has to play both Monty and the Widow in the same scene.
“As soon as we started writing it, I regretted it instantly. Oh my God, no. But it’s so delightful, it was like, yup, let’s do it. That’s the whole joke of the thing, we might as well combine those two characters.”
Revisiting the script has allowed some improvements on things they just didn’t have time to revise before. The farmer puppets Fred and Ed are back. And there are changes, like more CBC personalities joining news anchor Avery Handsome-mansing. The cast also features Kent Allen and Caitlin Vancoughnett.
“Prepare to be unprepared, expect the unexpected,” O’Shea says. “It’s Christmas panto — we sort of invented our own style.”