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The Bridges of Madison County – catch it this weekend!

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Vincent Roberts, Liam Lorrain, and Nicole Gaskell in The Bridges of Madison County. Photo credit @karalittlephoto.

You might be familiar with The Bridges of Madison County as a novel written by Robert James Waller in the early 1990s, or as a movie starring Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood, mid 1990s.

It’s also a musical – book by Marsha Norman and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown. The local musical-theatre company ELOPE is currently performing this musical in a short run at Varscona Theatre. If it sounds interesting to you, catch it soon – it closes Saturday night.

The Bridges of Madison County is a story of love, of longings and loyalties, and overwhelmingly a re-creation of a place and time. It’s set in farm country in Iowa, mostly around one farmhouse kitchen, in the 1960s. The main character, Francesca, (Nicole Gaskell) was a war bride who met her US serviceman husband Robert (Vincent Roberts) in Naples, and has lived in Iowa ever since. They have two children, Michael, 16 and restless (Liam Lorrain), and Carolyn, probably about 14, who loves 4-H and farm life (Cassidy Galba).

After an opening solo in which Francesca tells her story of moving to the US post-war, with hat, gloves, and suitcase, with a backdrop of black-and-white slide images, the action of the musical opens with family and friends bustling around Francesca in her kitchen, before she sends her family off to show a steer at the State Fair, looking forward to a few days of privacy and quiet. The first scenes show the affectionate and busy atmosphere, the co-operative farm community and the challenges of parenting teenagers. It’s easy to sympathize with the quiet woman wanting some alone-time.

But if you know the story, you know that while Francesca’s family’s away, she unexpectedly chooses a romantic liaison. National Geographic photographer Robert (Martin Galba) stops by looking for directions. She helps him out and finds out that he’s a solitary nomad who has photographed her hometown of Naples. They talk about the longings and losses in their lives, and find feelings for each other. I’m always a bit skeptical of instant-soulmate stories (even for teenage characters like Romeo and Juliet or Maria and Tony), so I tend to get stuck on this part of the plot. But I appreciated that the writers, director, and actors did not make Francesca’s husband Robert a caricature of unsympathetic husband either. Director Cory Christensen said “It was important to show that Robert isn’t stupid and mean, that he’s a good man, likeable.”

Details are elided, reproducing the novel’s feel as a poetic interlude, four days out of normal life. But the phone keeps ringing – Francesca’s husband, accustomed to sharing daily life with his wife, Carolyn and Michael, complaining to Mom about their lives, their father, and their future plans, and her neighbour and friend Marge (Erin Foster-O-Riordan) who has guessed what’s happening. We can’t forget that Francesca has loyalties and commitments, and neither can she.

It was clear that the story could not have a happily-ever-after ending for everyone. The ending it did have was honest and credible and poignant, although shifting time to show later-life outcomes for all led to a slower-paced ending. I was impressed by how the actors playing the teenagers shifted to being credible as 5-7 years older.

I thought all of the singers were very good, particularly Nicole Gaskell in the role of Francesca. Her program bio says that she’s recently returned to Edmonton from studying and working in the UK, and I hope to see her again on Edmonton stages. There were some ensemble musical numbers near the beginning where I found it hard to make out the words, possibly due to sound balancing difficulties. Joy van de Ligt, music director, led an orchestra of seven. Morgan Smith and Avery Neufeld completed the acting ensemble.

Design choices enhanced the storytelling in many ways, particularly the lighting design of Rebecca Cave, with spectacular Iowa skyscapes and kitchen-table intimacy. The kitchen was cleverly evoked in Leland Stelck’s set design, by a few moving pieces and a chrome-edged table and chairs. Director Christensen pointed out that the corn silhouetted against the sky was actually real corn stalks, obtained from a local corn maze.

This is the first time an ELOPE show has used the Varscona Theatre venue. The auditorium is smaller than the Westbury, and more intimate than Le Théâtre Servus Credit Union, with the audience closer to the stage and warm acoustics. The company has usually been doing one large musical a year (Rent, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat), but is expanding this season by adding this short run of a smaller-cast show. Their season will continue with a production of Amelie, June 26-July 5, 2025, at the Timms Centre, U of Alberta. Kristen Finlay will direct and Sally Hunt will be music director.

Shall I draw an analogy between Francesca’s impulsive grasping at her opportunity of connection with Robert, and a recommendation to book your ticket to this short run of The Bridges of Madison County before it closes Saturday night? Perhaps not – you have no reason to hesitate, and more chance of regrets if you miss it! Saturday also has a matinee. Tickets are available here.

Two flavours of playful dance

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In the last week or so I’ve seen two dance performances – both talented and creative, and neither of them taking themselves too seriously, but still very different.

Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo is the New York City-based all-male company that’s been around since the 1970s, doing the repertoire of a classical ballet company but with all the roles played by men.  I had wanted to see them since I first read about them in the Globe and Mail sometime in the 1980s.  When I heard that the Alberta Ballet was hosting them for a few days in Edmonton, I was excited.

I enjoyed the performance.  I think I would have liked it more if I was more knowledgeable about ballet, because I don’t think I picked up on all the inside-joke-y parody bits.  They performed part of Swan Lake, a piece from Les Corsairs, a Balanchine-esque piece called Go for Berocco,  a dying swan solo, and a Spanish-themed piece called Paquita, with variations.  The twelve performers were costumed suitably for male or female dancers for each piece (simple flowing dresses for the Balanchine piece, pancake tutus with Spanish-dancer decorations or matador-type jackets with white hose for the Paquita, classical outfits for the Swan Lake).  The performers dancing female parts danced competently en pointe and their male-dressed partners executed graceful lifts,  and they were all graceful and strong enough that it was clear we were watching talented dancers.  But they were also very funny, with facial expressions and little bits of stage business adding what the characters were really thinking about each other, and with all the dance gestures just dialed up to parody.  The scene-stealing curtain-calls were a good example of that.

Then at Canoe Festival this weekend, I enjoyed a dance/movement performance created by Jake Hastey of Toy Guns Theatre, called “Fortuitous Endings (What to do when you wake up drunk in a BBQ cover in your neighbour’s backyard)”.  This one had an ensemble of nine performers: Christine Lesiak, Celeste Tikal, Mark Sinongco, Robert Halley, Dario Charles, Richelle Thoreson, Rachel Gleiberman, Krista Posyniak, and Cory Christensen, along with singer Must Be Tuesday. It had a similar playfulness and natural sexiness to the Toy Guns pieces at the 2014 Fringe.  It was longer, running almost two hours with an intermission, but the pacing was good and it did not feel too long.   Between movements, various members of the ensemble read aloud the last paragraph of a variety of books, from Existentialism for Dummies to Le Petit Prince and Where the Wild Things Are. Couples connected, struggled, and parted, with regret, wistfulness, resentment, or anger. They made use of the aisles in the Westbury Theatre and sometimes slipped between rows of seats and engaged audience members directly.  The musical score included both Wonderwall and Nessun Dorma.   Costumes seemed both natural and beautiful, and good use was made of occasional nudity.  And parts of it were hilarious.

Several of the dancers performed compelling solo pieces.  As in the summer I was struck by Robert Halley’s grace and control making him stand out as a technically skilled dancer.

The closing piece involved each of the twelve performers setting up some solitary comfort on the stage and then engaging with it oblivious to the others, as if getting on with post-breakup life – making and drinking elaborate coffee drinks, working out, creating origami, sunbathing on a beach, and so on.

In the Ballets Trockadero show, the choreography responded to traditional expectations of rigid gender in dance by sending them up in an over-the-top way.  Although the performers were all male, they were performing as exaggerated versions of ballet character male and female, makeup, costume, and all.  Amusingly, the program contained not only twelve performer biographies under the performers’ real names, but twelve bios of the female personae and twelve of the male personae, with delightful pun-filled names like Nadia Doumiafeyva and Sergei Legupski.  Fortuitous Endings basically just ignored those traditional expectations, with couples of various genders and age differences expressing fluid sexuality in a natural way, and with female performers sometimes lifting male performers as well as vice versa.  And in 2015, I found myself preferring that treatment to the parodic stereotype-breaking of Les Trocks, which would have blown my mind in an earlier era.

Stories and songs

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After an early performance of Sonder at King Edward School, I saw four more shows yesterday, all of them with a focus on story.

Little Monsters, written and directed by Kristen Finlay at the Walterdale Theatre, is the subtle and familiar story of a mother who is determined to do the best for her child, and how that understandable conviction can lead to some imbalance and unhappiness.  It wasn’t quite the story that I was expecting and I liked it better for that.  Erin Foster-O’Riordan was very believable as the earnest mother, not overplaying or ridiculous.  Cory Christensen and Julie Sinclair as her husband and her best friend had smaller parts in the story, but each brought his or her own issues to the encounters, as we saw gradually.  Anne-Marie Szucs played the uncompromising preschool director with intimidatingly still body language.   The Fringe-style simple set and lighting cues created an office, a living space at home, a parent-viewing room at the preschool, and a park bench.   I loved the line about the expectant mother only feeling perfect until other people knew her secret and started giving her advice.

The one thing I didn’t enjoy about the experience of watching this play had nothing to do with what was unfolding on stage.  In choosing a seat near the action, I had unwittingly chosen one that squeaked with every small shift in movement, so my seat kept making noise and nearby patrons kept looking at me.  I wish someone would either fix that seat or discourage people from sitting in it.

Sundogs, by Michaela Jeffery, directed by Louise Large, is playing in the small proscenium space of the Telus Building.  Holly Cinnamon was compelling as a slightly-out-of-control woman living alone on a farm, first encountered wearing a white cotton nightgown and rubber boots.  Police officer Mike (Evan Hall, also in Letters to Laura) and book acquisitions editor Dan (Brendan Thompson, also in Kurt Man buyer and seller of souls) each visit her to discuss some disturbing events that happened recently, and as their visits occur we find out more about her life.  Something about the sequence of the various scenes did not fall into place for me until later in the story.  I can never decide whether that pleases me as the narrative catches me by surprise and suddenly makes a different kind of sense, or whether I feel foolish for not catching on earlier.  This play had the most convincing and horrifying example of the consequences of living surrounded by clutter and hoarded possessions that I have ever heard or read, and it made me think anxiously about the boxes I’ve moved to the edges of all my rooms to make space for actors to sleep this week.  I hope to be able to see Holly Cinnamon’s original solo performance This is the kind of animal that I am later in the week.

I had not seen Bruce Horak’s This is Cancer before, although it had played at Edmonton Fringe a few years ago.  It’s … disturbing but in an aesthetically satisfying way.  Bruce Horak plays the title role in costume and makeup that are both eye-catchingly sparkly and nastily damaged.  Dave Horak (director of Fatboy and Bombitty of Errors, actor in Kill Me Now, and Bruce’s brother) plays Cancer’s stage assistant.  There is some singing.  There is a very gentle poke at the cancer-fundraising industry.  There is a chance for a few audience members to insert obituaries for dead loved ones.  There are some other forms of audience interaction some easier than others.   As with most performances that have an actor personifying something horrible like Death or the Devil, I found myself torn between liking the personification and wanting him to have a bad outcome.  I wondered how the show would manage to reconcile those, and I was moved to tears by the way the ending put the narrative on the side of life and health.  Those whose cancer connection is more recent or ongoing might have found it a bit too facile for their truth, but for me it worked well enough to start breathing easily again.  There is a short question and answer period afterwards with the performers out of costume.

Going from This is Cancer to Off Book the Musical was a bit emotionally disruptive.  But the performance of Off Book was well worth the warm stickiness of a full house at C103.   Leif Ingebrigsten accompanied on piano as Matt Alden, Amy Shostak, Hunter Cardinal, Joleen Ballandine, Vince Forcier, and Kory Matheson created and performed an hour-long musical based on audience suggestions of “a wedding” and “a discount warehouse store”, using four rehearsal boxes as the only visible props.  The main characters’ problems were both compelling and amusing.  The mayor (Matt Alden) wants to marry Mary (Joleen Ballandine) as well as winning an election, but she’s been married four times before, avoided finalising any of the divorces, and considers herself unmarriable.  Side plots involve a discount warehouse going out of business (major improv points to Hunter Cardinal who tied up that loose thread of plot right at the end when I had almost forgotten it), and a little boy (Vince Forcier) asking his parents (Amy Shostak and Kory Matheson) how to respond to a proposal he’s received on the playground.  There was a little bit of dance, and songs created in a wide range of styles including rap.   Off Book also plays frequently at the Rapid Fire Theatre Saturday night CHiMPROV longform shows during the season, but if you like musical improv you should definitely try to catch a show at the Fringe.