Tag Archives: jason duiker

13 actors play clerks and customers in an old-style perfume shop

She Loves Me

Leave a reply

A busy day in Maraczek’s Parfumerie, with Georg Nowack (Russ Farmer, downstage right) gatekeeping job applicant Amalia Balash (Ruth Wong-Miller, in cream figured dress) Photo Nanc Price Photography.

The pre-set for She Loves Me, at Théâtre Servus Credit Union (La Cité Francophone), is simple. A storefront with a bench in front of it, a backstage orchestra visible over the top. But as the stories unfold, the set (Leland Stelck) unfolds more literally, revealing the main set of a parfumerie in 1930s Budapest, and later shifting quickly to create a romantic cafe, a hospital room, and whatever else is needed. The counters, shelves, displays, and stock convey a store filled with luxuries and needs. It felt like it would be interesting to browse more closely – like going to Lush (without its overpowering mix of scents).

The show focuses on the parfumerie’s owner, Mr Maraczek (Brian Ault) and its employees (Andrew Kwan, Russ Farmer, Scott McLeod, Brendan Smith, and Christina O’Dell) along with job-applicant Amalia Balish (Ruth Wong-Miller). Like a Maeve Binchy novel, the script (Joe Masteroff) and clever direction (Melanie Lafleur) convey that all the characters have interesting stories that we want to hear more about. And not just the principal characters – the ensemble makes up a store full of recurring customers, a romantic cafe full of – romances – and other intriguing bits which I won’t tell you.

My two favourite ensemble bits of this show were “Twelve Days to Christmas” – putting a familiar retail spin on the Advent season – and the whole scene in the cafe. The cafe scene made good use of the depth of stage available to them, and with the raked auditorium seating of the Théâtre Servus, the audience could appreciate the performances upstage of the three women dining at the bar-counter and their server. Not having looked at the show program before the show started, I was surprised to see that this white-jacketed cafe server was Brendan Smith, whom I’d enjoyed on local stages since his appearance in Walterdale’s Light in the Piazza. I had been impressed by the enthusiasm and voice of the young shop delivery boy but with costuming and posture I hadn’t identified him as Smith! Other romantic couples are also enjoying drinks and dancing, and playing out their own narratives, while Amalia waits alone at a centre table for her mysterious pen-pal sweetheart. Aaron Schaan and Julia Stanski, spotted shopping together in earlier scenes, seem to have a proposal accepted. Real-life couple Trish van Doornum and Michael McDevitt are snuggling at a side table. Side flirtations are suggested in a fun dance number involving peeping from behind menu folders.

The premise of having couples meet through a newspaper Lonely Hearts Club correspondence column, getting to know each other through letters without revealing mundane life details, was updated to email for the 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail. Dating app experiences in 2023 encourage providing photos early on, so the plot-device of accidentally falling in love with a co-worker based on their text communication seems less timely, but the story is still easy to relate to.

I was pleasantly surprised at the range of sexual/romantic lives accepted among the main characters. Ilona, the woman who spends time at her lovers’ apartments (Christina O’Dell), is not vilified for it. Her co-workers as well as the audience are genuinely rooting for her to find a nice man who deserves her – or to have a nice evening at the library if that’s where she finds happiness now. Georg Nowack (Farmer) is single, so the boss assumes he must be spending his evenings at cabarets and nightclubs with a different woman every night, but no, he prefers quiet evenings at home.

I also appreciated that this story didn’t follow the trope of an independent woman being attracted to a cranky rude man despite herself, and then winning him over. Instead, Amalia is openly critical of Georg when he is being rude, only begins to appreciate him when he does something thoughtful (bringing her vanilla ice cream when she is sick), and then we see them gradually building trust and then affection over the days of a busy Christmas retail season.

White man dressed in 1930s overcoat, hat, and scarf sings joyfully.
“She Loves Me” – Russ Farmer as Georg Nowack. Photo by Nanc Price Photography

The songs and instrumental music (Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock) enhance the experience throughout. Elizabeth Raycroft directs an orchestra of 11, and the performers all have good songs for their voices. I particularly enjoyed “Vanilla Ice Cream” and “Try Me” and the harmony in “I Don’t Know His Name”.

Two women with ornately curled hair and form-fitting business wear wrap small presents while chatting.
Ruth Wong-Miller and Christina O’Dell in “I Don’t Know His Name”, She Loves Me 2023. Photo Nanc Price Photography

In 2015, Foote In The Door did She Loves Me as their first mainstage production ever. Since then, Broadway audiences have also had another chance to appreciate this musical, and there’s a cast recording of that 2016 Broadway production – I was delighted to discover that Christina O’Dell’s role of Ilona was played by Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock.

The company has been producing musicals ever since, at the Fringe as well as in their mainstage seasons. I attended opening night of that first production, so it was a treat to watch this one and recognize many familiar names of people who had been with the company from early days or who have joined Edmonton’s musical theatre community more recently. The deeper proscenium stage and more sharply raked seating at Théâtre Servus for this production supported different choices in directing and design to connect the audience intimately with the performers and allow interesting ensemble play. Costume choices for this production (Viola Park) were more subtle than in the 2015 show, with the parfumerie clerks mostly in well-fitting understated grey suits rather than plain green shopcoats, and glimpses of colour being added gradually, particularly in Amalia’s garments and accessories. As is current practice for many local companies now, some program information is displayed on a projection screen before the show starts, with the full program available via QR code. (I don’t have a good system for saving my online programs, the way I have boxes of hardcopy programs for everything from Fringe shows to Broadway.) And of course, in 2023 some of us attend the theatre wearing masks.

She Loves Me is playing Wed-Sat evenings and Sunday matinees until November 26th. Tickets are available here.

A Grand Weekend for Singing!

Leave a reply

A Grand Night for Singing ensemble, in evening dress. Photo Nanc Price Photography.

Continuing my festive week of attending performances, tonight I went to opening night of Foote in the Door’s production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical celebration A Grand Night For Singing. Ten familiar musical-theatre performers, along with an orchestra of seven, presented about 35 songs from the mid-20th-century writing/composing team. The simple staging and costumes allowed the focus to remain on the singing, and the singing was great. From solos like “Love, Look Away”, sung by Brendan Smith, or “It’s Me” sung by Christina O’Dell, to playful group numbers like “Honey Bun” and beautiful group harmonies in “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City”, all the singers used the music to tell stories and evoke emotions.

The songs in Grand Night For Singing, which was first performed on Broadway in 1993, come from about eleven different stage or screen musicals. Oddly, the only one I’ve seen live is Carousel – in the Foote in the Door production and as done by Opera Nuova. There is one song from The Sound of Music (as well as a few familiar riffs in the overture), which I’ve seen on television. Despite this, I recognized a lot of the songs! And even the ones I didn’t recognize were fun to listen to and watch.

The performance felt shorter than the 2-hour estimate in the program, with very smooth shifts between songs and performers (director/choreographer Katie Hayes). The Foote in the Door ensemble is made up of Jason Duiker, Kathryn Kroeker, Melanie Lafleur, Christina O’Dell, Aaron Schaan, Brendan Smith, David Son, and Kelsey Volker, along with company principals Russ Farmer and Ruth Wong-Miller.

A Grand Night for Singing has a short run, May 11-14 with 7:30 evening shows and Saturday/Sunday matinees at 2 pm, at La Cité Francophone.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder

Leave a reply

Kathryn Kerr, Stephen Allred, Ruth Wong-Miller, in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Photo Nanc Price.

My previous entry was about the Teatro la Quindicina quirky tongue-in-cheek period piece Evelyn Strange. And tonight I saw another quirky tongue-in-cheek period piece – Foote in the Door’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. This musical, by Steven Lutvak and Robert L Freedman, won several Tony awards in 2014 – I was actually in New York that spring and could have seen it, but I picked shows I’d heard of instead. And I got to see this production completely unspoiled.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is set in England in 1907. The premise of it is that Montague Navarro (Stephen Allred) discovers after his mother’s death that he’s distantly related to nobility, in fact being something like ninth in line to an earldom, although his mother had been disowned for marrying his late father, “a Castilian … and a musician!” All this information is provided by his mother’s old friend Miss Shingle (Nicole English), paying an unexpected visit. He sets out to meet his rich relations, hoping they will give him a job, but then temptation, ambition, and a series of very strange coincidences lead him to try benefiting more directly from being only a few deaths away from the title and the property.

His girlfriend Sibella (Kathryn Kerr) is a hilariously shallow and self-centred woman, but Montague doesn’t seem to mind, continuing to be captivated by her after she gets married. Meanwhile, he continues to meet various members of the D’Ysquith family, many of whom (all played by Russ Farmer) then meet untimely deaths. Most of them seem equally unlikeable, demonstrating various stereotypes about the turn-of-that-century English upper-class. The career do-gooder Hyacinth, seeking a novel charity that hasn’t been claimed by her friends and speaking of her prospective beneficiaries in appallingly patronizing terms, was particularly memorable. At intermission, I was thinking that I’d only seen one D’Ysquith who actually seemed nice, cousin Phoebe (Ruth Wong-Miller), but that maybe I should distrust that thought.

I thought I’d figured out where the rest of the plot would go … but it didn’t, exactly. And the plot twists of the second act delighted me.

My two favourite scenes were the ice-skating scene (who knew that graceful ensemble dancing – and some not so graceful wobbles by Asquith D’Ysquith Junior – behind some snowbank set pieces could so easily convey skating on a pond?) and the scene where Montague is entertaining both Sibella and Phoebe in different rooms of his apartment, The hallway set piece with the two doors, and the way Allred’s character uses it while he sings to play out wanting both women and trying to keep them away from each other, were just brilliant.

Set and lighting design were by Leland Stelck. My companions and I were impressed by how many set pieces shifted silently and rapidly behind the drapery to convey many different locations, particularly given that the production had relocated to Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre on Gateway from their original performance venue three weeks ago due to the flooding at La Cité Francophone. I think the OSPAC stage is not as deep or wide, but the ensemble of eleven never looked crowded. The lighting design must have been more challenging at OSPAC, which has a relatively low ceiling and doesn’t seem to have as many lighting instruments.

We also admired the period costumes including hairdos and hats (Betty Kolodziej). The members of the ensemble (Kelsey Voelker, Shauna Rebus, Lynnéa Bartel-Nickel, Jason Duiker, Aaron Schaan, Brian Ault) played several background characters each, changing costumes and accents as needed – my favourite ensemble bit was when they were all serving at a dinner, like in an episode of Bridgerton.

The production was directed by Ron Long, with musical direction by Daniel Belland, and an orchestra of 13. The melodies were catchy with some Gilbert-and-Sullivan-esque rhymes, and strong voices among the cast.

Advance tickets to the four remaining shows (Jun 16-18 at 7:30 and Jun 18 at 2 pm) are available here and going fast. Door sales (if available) will start 45 minutes before showtime.

If you’ve already seen it, or you don’t mind being completely spoiled, this webpage reviews (and ranks) all the deaths, as staged in the original Broadway production.