Rural charm
Harvest a true story of broken trust
DRAYTON — Calgary playwright Ken Cameron’s parents gave him one of the greatest gifts any writer could ask for: a hilarious and poignant true life story.
“Harvest” opened at Drayton Festival Theatre Thursday night, the story of how his sweetly naïve parents rented out their Elgin County farmhouse to a guy who, turns out, was running a marijuana grow-op.
This is a modern-day Green Acres story, with all the quirky neighbours and rural charm of the 1960s television series but modernized. Instead of fields of wheat, the farmhouse was ruined by walls covered in a crop of mould. Instead of rich manure being spread on the fields, the guard dog seems to have left a steamy pile of doo doo on the carpet.
Directed by Drayton veteran Marti Maraden, “Harvest” is an exhaustive bit of storytelling for actors Gabrielle Jones and Rob McClure, who play the unwitting couple Charlotte and Allan, as well as every other character including their Hungarian neighbour, a flaky real estate agent, an insipid insurance guy, gossipy church ladies and an overly laid back police detective. Now that’s acting.
This play has so much heart it practically drips with authenticity, particularly for anyone who has lived in rural Ontario and understands the unique way of life and how it’s quickly disappearing.
As Allan states, the farmers are selling off, packing up and leaving in droves, and those small-town businesses, the credit union, the insurance agent — well, it’s all being swallowed up by big corporations with little heart.
“Harvest,” aside from being a superbly written play, also serves as a vehicle to tell these stories. The days of sealing a deal with a handshake have long been replaced by legal contracts.
Even the main theme of the play, which is when Allan and Charlotte inadvertently rent out their farmhouse to a grow-op, shows the sweet, trusting and caring nature of many farm folk, something perhaps less common in a big city.
It all starts when the couple decides it’s time to stop working so hard for very little profit, sell off the land and rent out the farmhouse as both a source of income and a security blanket.
This is Allan’s family farm, with nearly 140 years of history, and he’s not ready to let it go, so Charlotte indulges him.
They have purchased a condo in the city and plan to travel, so when a young man comes along claiming to be an airline pilot, they think they have lucked out.
He wants a quiet rural retreat, and Charlotte is curious but not suspicious. She accepts his rent money and heads back to the city.
The couple are very careful not to show up to the farmhouse too often, not wanting to interfere or be nosy. They don’t know that the house has been transformed into a grow-op.
The whole deal crashes when they do finally return to talk to their tenant about a huge hydro bill.
Allan and Charlotte find the door broken open and the place empty. There is an odd, musty smell, the walls are covered in mould and there is that doo doo on the rug. The naïve pair has no idea what happened.
Not everyone is sympathetic to their plight. The police detective is unhelpful and explains that grow-ops are common in their region of Southwestern Ontario. The insurance agent, a myopic, whiny sort, said their coverage has been cancelled because they didn’t report having a tenant.
The couple does, however, get sympathy from four church ladies portrayed by four brightly coloured old lady hats placed on stands, with Allan doing the voices. It’s really a hilarious and clever bit of theatre.
Of course, with so much going on, the actors have to be perfectly on cue as they switch from character to character. They also both play the same character by switching a pair of aviator glasses, a hat or a scarf. Allan as the real estate lady is very funny, as is Charlotte’s portrayal of the police detective and the insurance agent.
“Harvest” is just the sort of play Drayton Entertainment does well: a simple plot told with a lot of emotion, using the best actors available.
This is storytelling at its best.