Laughs aplenty in Showboat’s nod to Hollywood’s golden age
Norm Foster is an admirer of the Hollywood comedy classics of the 1930s and ’40s, something that is evident in “Screwball Comedy,” the second show of Port Colborne’s Showboat Festival Theatre’s 2018 season, which opened to an enthusiastic full house Wednesday night.
Set in 1938, the play opens in a metropolitan newspaper, similar to the opening of “His Girl Friday.” Many of the same character types are there: the brassy fast talking female reporter, Mary (Mairi Babb) and the gruff editor, Bosco, one of four characters played by Stephen Sparks. The play also has the debonair seasoned reporter, Jeff (Adrian Shepherd), with a femme fatalelike character, Gloria (Melani Janzen) added for good measure.
Bosco feels Jeff has let his highflying lifestyle allow his once impeccable work to suffer and gives up and comer Mary a chance at a job by competing with Jeff in covering a society wedding.
“Screwball Comedy” is a relatively new Foster play, opening at last year’s Norm Foster Theatre Festival in St. Catharines. It’s easy to understand Foster’s attraction to the genre: The hyperpaced and stylized dialogue is perfectly suited to Canada’s celebrated playwright. Director David Nairn and the actors are clearly having a ball with the script, and that joy spreads to the audience, which was laughing non-stop. Babb especially stands out, in part because Mary is given many of the best lines, a good many of the double entendres which would have had a hard time getting past the Motion Picture Production Code of the time.
Repetition and referencing past jokes is one of Foster’s strongest suits, and much of the fun comes from Mary, breaking through the glass ceiling while at the same time demonstrating professional weakness: Her selfproclaimed perfect memory is perhaps not as strong as she claims.
Shepherd is given the actor’s gift of several roles, some shining brighter than others, like Chauncey, the dim-witted son of wealthy newspaper owner Delores (Janzen), who suspects Gloria’s feelings for her boy are not so genuine. Reginald, a longtime acquaintance and now fiancé of Delores, is perhaps not as fleshed out, though butler Peter generates many of the show’s laughs with her Eeyore-like rumblings about his lot in life. Interestingly, it’s Bosco, Shepherd’s no-nonsense editor, who opens and closes the play, and comes off as the most likable character.
The tag line to the Foster Festival and phrase often associated with his work is “Humour with Heart.”
Oddly, in “Screwball Comedy” some of that heart is missing, as there are few characters the audience truly identifies with and roots for.
However, in its place they are given the entertaining rat-tat-tat dialogue of the Hollywood genre that pairs well with Foster’s signature laugh-a-minute style.
And sometimes, that’s all you need for an enjoyable time at the theatre.
“Screwball Comedy” continues until July 28.