Vignettes of small-town life shared on stage
Small-town life is the shared theme of plays showing at Lunchbox Theatre, Fire Exit Theatre and The School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.
When Lunchbox Theatre presented Joe Landry’s live radio-show version of the classic holiday story It’s A Wonderful Life in 2016, it played to enthusiastic, capacity crowds and went on to win the 2017 Betty Award for best ensemble acting.
It certainly won me over, and I’m happy to report this remount has lost none of the charm and honest sentiment that director Craig Hall and his dynamite cast bring to this story that reminds us no life is insignificant.
Kevin Rothery, Devon Dubnyk, Arielle Rombough, Katherine Fadum, Neil Minor and Connor Pritchard play a group of actors doing a live radio presentation of Philip Van Doren Stern’s Christmas fantasy about George Bailey (Dubnyk), a man who sacrificed most of his dreams so others could have theirs.
George has to be taught how many of the things he did instinctively affected so many people, and who better to teach him than Clarence (Rothery), an angel second-class who has been waiting 200 years to earn his wings.
It’s Christmas Eve 1946 and the gregarious radio announcer Freddie Filmore (Rothery) warms up the Lunchbox audience as if they are in the radio studio, welcoming them to the small town of Bedford Falls.
A large part of the fun is in watching the actors create the sound effects even as they play multiple roles, often switching characters in a heartbeat.
The genius in all of this is that the heart of the story is never lost, which is a testament to the talent on stage and behind the scenes.
Anton de Groot has created a most convincing radio studio, and Deitra Kalyn some beautiful 1940s costumes which, with the help of Aidan Lytton’s sound designs, help transport the audience to a bygone era.
It’s A Wonderful Life runs at Lunchbox Theatre until Dec. 22, and it’s 75 minutes of four-star entertainment you’ll be fortunate to share with them.
FINDING, LOSING AND RECORDING LOVE
Fire Exit Theatre has a real treat for Calgary audiences in Adam Szymkowicz’s sweetly sentimental Kodachrome, which looks at the many facets of love through a photographer’s lens.
First presented in 2016, Kodachrome has been called a contemporary version of Thornton Wilder’s classic small-town drama Our Town. Set in the sleepy New England town of Colchester, Kodachrome offers audiences the opportunity to find themselves in these people.
The photographer’s camera catches a young couple nervous about their impending marriage and also an older couple grappling with the burden that marriage can sometimes bring with it.
There’s a mourning widower robbed of his loved one, and hapless unrequited romantics smitten with someone who is smitten with someone else.
The scenes in Kodachrome play out like snapshots, offering brief glimpses of what occurred just before they were taken, but leaving it up to the audience to decide what might happen next.
Fire Exit’s Kodachrome is directed by Heather Laubenstein and stars Michael Burritt, Kendra Hutchinson, Caylie Kornelson, Jacob Lesiuk, Chelsea Restall, Shelby Reinitz and Randall Wiebe.
It runs in the Arts Commons Engineered Air Theatre Nov. 28 to Dec. 2 with Wednesday to Saturday performances at 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday.
Tickets can be reserved by calling 403-640-4617.
EUGENE IONESCO’S RHINOCEROS GETS A MAKEOVER
Written in 1959, Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros was a parable for the rise of fascism. All but one of the inhabitants of a small French village begin morphing into rhinos as they fall under the sway of Nazi Germany.
Constantine X. Anastasakis, an MFA student at the University of Calgary, chose Ionesco’s absurdist drama for his final project, intending to stage it in a traditional fashion emphasizing how mob mentality leads to conformity. That all changed when Anastasakis spent his recent honeymoon in Greece.
“I was struck by the graffiti expressing anti-fascist sentiments on the ancient ruins in Athens. I saw the graffiti as the stifled voices of a discontented generation of youth rather than an act of vandalism. It inspired me to rethink and reinterpret Ionesco’s rhinoceros,” says Anastasakis.
“There is such unrest in Greece over the financial crisis, which began in 2008, and the austerity measures it has prompted. There have been so many protests and the graffiti is an extension of that.
“My rhinoceros have become the people who are taking action and who are opposing the power structure in Greece.”
To achieve his vision of Ionesco’s play, Anastasakis had to make substantial cuts to the text but the dialogue remains much the same. It has a cast of nine actors and two dancers, and audiences can expect a show full of Greek elements, including music, dance and famous Greek locations.
Rhinoceros runs in the University’s Reeve Theatre Nov. 30 to Dec. 8 and tickets, which are $21 for adults and $16 for students and seniors, can be reserved at scpa.ucalgary.ca/events.