SPIRITED THEATRE
With a production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, Langham Court marks 90 years of lively plays
ON STAGE
What: Blithe Spirit Where: Langham Court Theatre, 805 Langham Ct. When: Tonight through Oct. 13 Tickets: $23-$25 (adults) and $17-$23 (seniors/ students) through langhamtheatre.ca or by phone at 250-384-2142
Atotal of 3,000 performances since 1929 featuring 4,000 actors with help from more than 27,000 volunteers tells you a little bit about the legacy of the Langham Court Theatre. But it doesn’t tell the whole story of Victoria’s longest-running theatre, a staple of the Rockland neighbourhood for the better part of a century.
The quaint 177-seat community theatre has been held up over the years by a combination of community patronage, volunteer support, and charitable donations, with oldfashioned gumption let’s-put-on-a-show spunk entering into the picture now and again.
The Langham Court Theatre Society, which owns and operates the theatre, has staged more than 500 plays to date, averaging six productions annually. Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, which runs through Oct. 13, opens the theatre company’s 2018-19 calendar of programming tonight, its 90th consecutive season.
Directed by Toshik Bukowiecki, the comedy of manners about a novelist (Alan Penty) and his wife (Kate McCallum Pagett) who are being haunted by a temperamental ghost (Jackie Rioux) summoned by an eccentric medium (Elizabeth Whitmarsh) couldn’t have been better timed.
Blithe Spirit has been an audience favourite in the past, and has been staged several times after its 1964 debut at Langham Court Theatre.
“This is the fifth time we’ve done Blithe Spirit,” said Michelle Buck, general manager of the Langham Court Theatre. “About every 18 years or so we do it. For a play as old as it is, I’m pleasantly surprised by how well it has aged.”
In another tribute celebrating the theatre’s lasting legacy, Sham and The Boy Comes Home — two of the first plays ever staged at the theatre — will be resurrected as Readers’ Theatre productions on Oct. 27. They were both originally staged in 1930. The remainder of the upcoming season includes: Goodnight Mister Tom (Nov. 7-24); The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Jan. 16-Feb. 12); That Elusive Spark (Feb. 27-March 16); Quartet (April 17-May 4); and Noises Off (June 5-22).
Nothing comes easy to a community theatre that receives very little in the way of government funding, but Langham Court Theatre productions always punch above their expected weight, Buck said. It amazes some in the audience when they discover it was brought about a team made up of almost exclusively volunteers, she added.
“When you go and see one of our shows, everybody — from the director to the choreographer to the set designer — is a volunteer. Everybody is there for the same reasons, which is to put on a great show and tell a story. That gives us a different level of buy-in. It’s very much of the people, for the people.”
A skeleton staff of six — Buck is the only full-time employee — is employed to make the sure things run smoothly. With the size of each production numbering nearly two dozen, that’s a lot of comings and goings over the course of a season. “At the end of the year, when I send out invitations to the end-of-season celebration, it’s to 400 people,” Buck said.
A much-discussed aspect of the theatre itself is the intimate nature of its seating plan. No one can hide in Langham Court, it has been said, but that adds to the atmosphere. And when a show is humming, there’s nothing like this 1876 venue, which was constructed to be the carriage house of the home of the Robert Ward family.
“When we did Urinetown [in January], we had 30 people on stage, and they all knew someone in the audience,” Buck said. “It was amazing to see.”
Buck is already looking ahead to the next 10 years, and what a potential 100th birthday celebration would bring. She already has an inkling of what could transpire. At a recent neighbourhood open house, she heard first-hand from residents, who have grown to love what the theatre brings to the historic Rockland neighbourhood.
Character was mentioned more than once, Buck said.
“It has to do with the chemistry of the people involved. You have to figure out how to bring new people into the theatre, but you also have to have a community and a culture, and a balance between those two.”