Tag Archives: clarice eckford

Four Plays

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Abby Krushel and Shyanne Duquette as the two Hannah Morgans in Fetch. Photo provided.

It was odd to get several days into Fringe and realize that I hadn’t yet spent time viewing traditional multiple-actor plays, except for Matt & Ben. I missed them, while still enjoying performance art, improv, and solo shows. But now I’ve seen a few more dramas and comedies.

Fetch, by Cat Walsh, was originally a 2018 Fringe production with the playwright and Lora Brovold on stage. I didn’t see that one, The 2026 production, directed by Steven Sobolewski, stars Shyanne Duquette and Abby Krushel. The two actors burst onto the small stage of Acacia Hall in near-identical dresses, carrying identical suitcases, speaking over each other and with each other to each insist “I am Hannah Morgan.” And each begins to narrate the story of her life – one tragic, one less so – but with suspiciously similar details. Each recounts the events of a big family vacation to an amusement park – as the youngest of a big family, six-year-old Hannah resents the vacations she missed out on being born last, and the way that siblings moving out to university and on to extracurricular activities and jobs signify the end of the family-adventures era. Krushel’s Hannah recounts her grievances with the age appropriate self-centredness of a loved youngest child, while Duquette’s character drops hints of bitterness and bereavement. Were there two families in the same reality whose lives had intersected that week? Were these two Hannahs embodying different multiverses, different outcomes? The Hannahs allude to the Schrodinger’s cat paradox – a cat in a box might be either alive or dead, until the box is opened. The weirdness ratcheted up along with the excruciating tension, as horror approached. I was reminded of Walsh’s 2015 Sterling-Award-nominated script The Laws of Thermodynamics . One of my favourite bits was when Duquette’s character is reminding the audience of the required ritual of speaking to a grieving person, the I’m sorry and Thank you shifting into taking the exchange as a given. It’s very well done.

Seanchaí, by young local playwright Gavin Bradley, isn’t marked in the program as New Work – I guess because it had a successful entry at StageStruck! and the provincial one-acts festival last year. But this is its first longer run, and it’s being well received by Varscona Theatre audiences. Susan Sneath, an Edmonton Fringe artist since the festival’s first summer, plays a retired seanchaí (storyteller and oral historian in the Irish tradition), and Mark Guerrero a young person who’s been retelling the traditional stories for TikTok. The grudging respect and growing affection between the two unfold as they tell the stories to each other, correcting and challenging. Its poignant and relatable and also affectionately funny. Knowing bits of Irish language means getting to laugh at a few lines first, but definitely isn’t required to follow the story. Knowing the folklore (Cú Chulainn, Children of Lir, Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge) is also not necessary, as both storytellers provide compelling versions. Amanda Goldberg (recent Sterling Award winner for directing Jessy Ardern’s Cyrano) directed, bringing an understated delicacy and allowing the characters to show their quirks without being stereotypes.

Another small story of a gentle interaction between two isolated characters is Being Norwegian, David Greig’s script directed by Amy De Felice at the Holy Trinity Anglican basement space. The 45-minute play is set in Sean’s (Cody Porter) barely-unpacked apartment, late at night, as he brings home new acquaintance Lisa (Clarice Eckford). Both characters have Scottish accents, but Lisa explains that her name is short for Liselotte and she’s Norwegian. And they’re both awkward. Likeably awkward. The audience is sighing in sympathy as Sean tries to find a bottle of wine and can’t find glasses. His visitor assures him that mugs are better anyway, takes a sip, and manages to communicate to the audience that the wine is terrible without letting Sean see that. Porter and Eckford are both very good at this kind of nuanced portrayal of ordinary people – I’m remembering Eckford as caregiver daughter in The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble and Porter in Angry Alan, Betrayal, and others.

Queens of Romance, by Trevor Schmidt, is sillier than any of the above, and an audience favourite. Three romance writers are on a panel at a convention – the usual moderator is unavailable due to some whispered family scandal, so fan Missy (Schmidt) gamely takes the podium and the clutch of cue cards and tries to carry on. The panelists embody the range of romance-writing styles. Jason Hardwick portrays the Barbara Cartland-type Dame Nausea with smugness and pathos and dignity (but not all at once!) wearing the most over-jewelled caftan I’ve ever seen. Michelle Todd’s Janet writes about contemporary celebrity infidelities with luxurious descriptions – there are probably throbbing members in her stories. And the youngest of the writers, Karen (pronounced Karin), (Jake Tkaczyk), writes erotic suspense, with unapologetic kink and brutal imagery. Each of the writers is critical of the others’ choices, naming some of the problematic issues with women’s agency, racism, classism, transactional sex, and women feeling shame about their desires – all while conducting snappy repartee with each other and the ill-equipped moderator (and possibly with audience members). While I was admiring the pre-set before the show started, I was amused to see Schmidt’s anxious moderator character peeking out from the side curtains looking worried.

Trevor Schmidt, as Missy the moderator, peers out at audience before the show starts.

Another family at a cusp, in The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble

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Beth Graham’s play The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, directed by Bradley Moss at Theatre Network, explores a familiar family crisis time with some refreshing new thoughts.  In my adult acting classes, we’ve studied scenes from Daniel MacIvor’s Marion Bridge and from The Attic, The Pearls, and Three Fine Girls by Jennifer Brewin, Leah Cherniak, Ann-Marie Macdonald, Alisa Palmer and Martha Ross, both of which are stories about adult children who return to the family home when a parent is dying.  I’ve been through similar experiences, twice, so I can understand why such crisis times work well for a playwright, with all the characters having old baggage and resentments with each other, all stuck in a current high-stakes situation.  And because I remember what it was like sharing our childhood home with my siblings while we spent our days at the hospital and our evenings scanning through Mum’s television channels and filling up her fridge with fast-food leftovers while the neighbours’ casseroles went uneaten, stories of interesting characters going through similar struggles resonate and appeal to me.

The first exciting difference about Bernice Trimble was that the widowed mother, Bernice (Susan Gilmour, recently seen in Drowsy Chaperone and in Spamalot), was a character on stage, rather than an invalid in an offstage bedroom.  She turns out to be a fascinating character too, honest and determined and accepting of each of her children’s differences.   Having the mother on stage interacting with her children made this a rich fascinating story of earlier stages of illness and aging than the stories I alluded to in the first paragraph.  It also helped to illustrate the title.  “Gravitational pull” is the playwright’s expression for how, for better or for worse, an extended family is often drawn together by one specific person (maybe a parent or grandparent).  Astronomical metaphors were used throughout the narrative but not in a contrived way.

The story is told mostly from the viewpoint of Iris, the middle child (Clarice Eckford) on whom Bernice depends for the most difficult requests.  The narrative jumps back and forth between one later important day and a series of scenes of family members interacting over several months.  Iris frequently addresses the audience, narrating what happens between the scenes from her point of view.  The set represents both Iris’s kitchen and their mother’s.  It is generally clear which location is being presented, even without narrator Iris’s clue of setting out salt and pepper shakers every time the set is her mother’s house.   Many family traditions and customs are referred to and repeated, from Bernice’s habits of embracing her children and her endearments for them, to the rituals of family meeting and  making a classic 1960s-style casserole.  As Iris tells the story, she often uses the expression “That was that … only it wasn’t” as a transition.

The other two siblings, older sister Sarah (Patricia Zentilli) and younger brother Peter (Jason Chinn), respond to the mother’s announcement that she has Alzheimer’s disease in their own fashions, Sarah with denial and plans for second opinions and treatments, and Peter with awkward taciturn acceptance.  Sarah and Iris are also caught up by disputing who is “last to know” important family business, another familiar touch.  I thought that Peter’s small role was presented effectively and with sympathy by the playwright and the actor, because his quiet avoidance and flashes of kindness could so easily have been overplayed into humour, and they were not.

The audience gets only a single disturbing glimpse of the progression of Bernice’s illness before she enlist’s Iris’s commitment to be accessory to her suicide.  And Iris, the one who might appear least successful or least mature by some of her family ‘s measures (chatty and scattered, still single, no children, working as a temp) is the one who accepts and supports her mother’s right to make that choice, despite the pain it causes her.

I found it emotionally evocative and not manipulative, a believable portrait of a family and an illness.  The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble continues at Theatre Network until November 23rd, with tickets available here.