Norm Foster performs in his own work
Canadian playwright treads the boards
Hudson Village Theatre’s production of Norm Foster’s latest play, On a First Name Basis, boasts a bankable star in the lead role: Foster himself.
Foster, known as Canada’s most widely produced playwright (with special emphasis on the summer theatre circuit), has taken to the stage in his own works before, notably at the Piggery in North Hatley in his play Here on the Flight Path in 1997. But that was an already road-tested work.
This one, which had its Canadian première in April in Orangeville, Ont. (after trial runs in Bermuda and Jacksonville, Fla.), is still in the process of being tested — although Foster says the time for major rewrites has passed.
On a First Name Basis is a two-hander that tells the story of a successful but reclusive novelist named David Kilbride who suddenly decides to get better acquainted with the cleaning lady who has been working for him for almost three decades. The play is essentially a conversation between the two of them, with some surprising twists.
The tour of the current production of On a First Name Basis began, post-Orangeville, at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, Ont.
“Usually I don’t appear in the première production of my plays,” Foster said in an interview from Port Dover, where the show is completing a second run this weekend. “Usually when a play is premièring, I’d rather be on the outside than the inside.”
And when he acts, he’d just as soon be in someone else’s play. Foster actually got his start in radio. For many years he was the morning man at CIHI Radio in Fredericton, N.B. Then, in 1980, he landed the lead role of Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey with a local amateur theatre company. This lured him down the primrose path of theatre. From acting, he graduated to playwriting.
His plays were so successful that he eventually was able to give up radio in 1998 and devote himself to a fulltime writing career. “I just couldn’t do both jobs at once,” he said, “so I had to leave radio behind.
“When I started writing, I got away from the acting completely and really didn’t get back into it until we did Here on the Flight Path. Then I started acting more and more, doing quite a few pro- ductions every year. And not just my plays.”
In 2011, he won respectable praise for portraying Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at Sudbury Theatre Centre.
What inspired him to write On a First Name Basis was a request from an old friend and former colleague, actor Patricia Vanstone, best known as Ada Hubble on Road to Avonlea. She told him he should “write the Trish show” for her. So he did.
Vanstone had been the original Mary in the play widely regarded as Foster’s best, The
“Usually when a play is premièring, I’d rather be on the outside than the inside.”
NORM FOSTER
Melville Boys, back in 1984.
“When I got this idea of this wealthy recluse and his housekeeper, I thought of Trish,” Foster said. “And I thought it might be a good show to write for her. When I finished it and gave it to David Nairn (artistic director of Theatre Orangeville), he said: ‘You’ve got to play this guy because he is kind of like you.’ I didn’t know how to take that. But that’s how it came about. David directed it and we previewed it all over the place, and here we are.”
Although he still lives in Fredericton, Foster spends about six months of the year on the road, often in the summer when his plays are in hot demand. “I’m usually at home, sadly, in the winter,” he said.
On a First Name Basis, by Norm Foster, runs Wednesday to July 28 at the Hudson Village Theatre in Hudson. Tickets cost $29. Call 450-458-5361 or visit villagetheatre.ca.
Another summer theatre
item, The History of the Devil, presented by a local anglophone theatre company called Title 66, is about to surface at Place des Arts. It’s being presented as part of the Fantasia International Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday.
British playwright/novelist/visual artist/screenwriter Clive Barker wrote this satirical play about the devil being brought to trial by humanity back in 1980.
The Title 66 production, directed by Jeremy Michael Segal and starring Lucas Chartier-Dessert as a very charming devil, received positive reviews when it premièred here in March 2012. It’s a visually arresting production that features eight actors portraying 34 characters.
Barker’s plays include Frankenstein in Love and Is There Anybody There? As an author, although he wrote novels (The Damnation Game, The Thief of Always), he’s best known for his horror stories (The Books of Blood, The Hellbound Heart), many of which have been made into sequel-spawning films (Hellraiser, Candyman).
Theatre festivals often screen films, but it’s somewhat unusual for a film festival to present a live-theatre production. This could be the beginning of an interesting trend. The History of the Devil plays the Cinquième Salle of Place des Arts from Aug. 1 to 3. Tickets cost $24. Call 514842-2112 or visit pda.qc.ca.