Wyrd Sisters: a twist on *that* play, you know the one

Andrew loves British author Terry Pratchett. His books take up about a row and a half of our bookshelf. If you've never read any of Pratchett's books, let me briefly describe: he's a satirist, primarily of the fantasy genre, but he'll occasionally make fun of well known popular cultural stories (i.e. Masquerade makes heavy reference to the Phantom of the Opera). They all take place in his fictional setting of the Discworld. He also has a large cast of character's he draws upon to populate his books (different books focus around the wizards, witches, the city guard), and Death MAKES AN APPEARANCE IN ALMOST EVERY BOOK (I'm not going to explain my seemingly inexplicable use of caps, you'll have to figure it out yourself). I enjoy Pratchett's books as well (although not quite as much as my hubby) and I haven't read all of the ones on our shelf. I think in particular I enjoyed Night Watch, Thud, Going Postal, and the Tiffany Aching series.

A week or two ago after we'd were finished up at the gym Andrew noticed a slightly unusual picture on the front of the University newspaper. It showed three women poised around what looked like a weird bust or something--but as we were heading to the locker rooms we didn't get a close look. Later as Andrew waited for me to finish changing he picked up the paper to fill his time and discovered the image we'd seen was from the play version of Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters as performed at the Walterdale Theatre. We seem to be knocking a lot of Edmonton firsts off our list as of late--probably because we know our residence here is coming to a close. We've never been to see anything at the Walterdale, and this seemed as good a time as any. Thankfully Andrew ordered the tickets ahead of time, or I suspect we would've been out of luck as the theatre was packed.

The Walterdale is nice small theatre. For those of you who don't know, it's housed in the old Srathacona fire hall, so it has these huge arching doors as a part of it's exterior facade, which would have once been the exit for horse drawn fire trucks. The interior theatre is basically a black box and I wonder if they create other seating/stage arrangements depending upon the requirements of the play. For Wyrd Sister's the stage took up one corner of the square, while the seating covered the opposing corner and two lengths of the square. Andrew managed to snag front row seats on stage left. I thought for a little theatre the costuming was quite good, especially given that this play required medieval-type dress, and although the set was minimalistic, there were a number of excellent special effects, especially the scene that had been photographed for the newspaper.

Wyrd Sisters is not one of the Pratchett books I'd read, so I didn't know the plot, but it didn't take long to figure out it was based upon that play. You know, the Scottish one. Or for those of you who aren't superstitious (including myself) it was based upon MacBeth. It starts off with three witches standing around a cauldron, but very quickly breaks from the 'creepy-mysterious' mood it was trying to create to parody as the witches pull out their pocket books and try to find a suitable date for when 'they three will meet again'. From there it's off to the races as the witches are intrusted with the care of a infant king, whom they secret away to live with a traveling band of actors. Meanwhile the king is dead, killed by his cousin, Duke Felmot. Here was a neat twist on the MacBeth storyline; it was the duke who continued to envision blood all over his hands rather than his lady. They continued to play with the scrubbing of the hands theme, starting out with a simple cloth, moving to sandpaper, a file, then a cheese grater. I have a pretty strong stomach for grossness, but even I flinched as the show progressed, and blood and fake skin was worked into the makeup.

I thought the acting and over all production quality was quite good--especially given it's little theatre (not that little theatre can't be good, but it can be bad). The actors who played the witches were especially strong, rather important, given they're the central characters. Granny Weatherwax was appropriately steely and unflinching, Nanny Ogg jolly, and Magrat a bit flighty (although I don't think I've read any books with Magrat, so I can only assume this is how she normally appears). As I mentioned above they did a really neat affect when the witches call up a demon to answer their questions. It looked like an empty brick fireplace with a metal pot on the top, but in fact, there was an actor hidden inside the fireplace who came up out of the pot (with excellent makeup I might add).

The only criticism I have, and it's not of the actors or techies, but that the play does a lot of cutting back and forth between different scenes, which gives the show something of a choppy feel. As Andrew and I discussed later we thought this amounted to the difficulty of translating Pratchett off the page, and into another medium. So much of what he relies on language and watching it versus reading it takes something away from that. Also, Pratchett often does a multiple timeline sort of story, so jumping back and forth in a book helps to layer in the plot, but in action it just becomes jumpy.

Overall, we both enjoyed Wyrd Sisters. We haven't seen a play in a while, so it was enjoyable to go see one, especially one that we were disposed to like before it even started.

Ciao,

Andrea

Dinner at the theatre: not just for retirees and Sunday afternoons

I think there's a stereotype that says dinner theatre is generally horrible, and the demographic that attends this type of entertainment tends to be geriatric in nature. I recall a scene from one of my childhood favourite movies, Soap Dish, where Kevin Klein's character, a fallen-from-grace-soap-actor is stuck doing Death of a Salesman in Florida and has to yell his lines so the hearing-aid wearing crowd can hear him. This image, I'm glad to say, bares no resemblance to our experience at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre last Thursday night. We were definitely at the younger end of the crowd, but both the food and acting were quite good. As I believe I indicated in a previous post, we won the tickets in the silent auction fundraiser held as a part of Firefly Theatre's Let There Be Height show.

We arrived at the theatre shortly after 6:00 pm and joined the crowd waiting to get in. After a couple of minutes of standing in line we were shown to our seats, a semi-circular booth located on stage right. We had a pretty good, straight on view to the stage, although still three or four rows back. There were no curtains to hide the stage, so we were able to pre-appraise the set, which I think we both approved. It was multi-layered, with a set double set of steps leading to a platform in the back half of the stage. It was made up to look like a swanky hotel with funky metal wall hangings, a collage of mirrors and not only a chaise longue, but a shiny gold, round ottoman too.

At any rate, this was shortly after 6:00 pm and we still had 2 hours before the show started so we hit the buffet. It's been a long time since I've eaten at a buffet--which is a probably a good thing since I love to eat and buffet's definitely encourage eating. The salad bar had an excellent variety from standard lettuce salads, to potato salads, chickpea salads, chilled veggies in vinaigrette-type dressings, there was also sushi, smoked salmon, and shrimp. We also helped ourselves to cheese from the desert table at this point (people were scooping up deserts at this time too). The hot food also varied, with several different types of meat, although I opted for the vegetarian mushroom ravioli, roast veggies, and potatoes. I was s little disappointed with desert, but only because I wished I'd picked more of the best (in my mind at least) selections, and left the just 'okay' treats behind.

The evenings performance was a 2-actor play called Sexy Laundry about a couple who'd lost the 'spark' in their marriage and had booked a night in a fancy hotel to try to get it back. It featured Eddie Mekka who was a regular on the show Laverne and Shirley (I'm aware the show existed, but I'm pretty sure I've never seen more than 5 minutes of it) and as it turns out, he was an excellent actor. The play, I believe, was billed as a comedy, and there certainly were a number of funny bits, but I actually found it quite touching and at times a little heartbreaking as the couple acknowledged that neither were happy with the way their lives had evolved (or devolved?) into. Sometimes things struck close to home as Andrew and I have had discussions about happiness, what it means and how we can have more of it in our lives. It's on going subject that we haven't found the answer to yet.

During the course of an hour and a half the couple, Alice and Henry (I think, I can't remember his name for sure), managed to wade their way through various suggestions on how to reconnect with each other physically (via 'Sex for Dummies'). They tried to tell each other fantasies (Henry's first attempt turned out to be a monologue on how he comes how from a rewarding day at the office, is greeted at home by his loving family--included a fully covered daughter--a delicious dinner, and curling up in bed with a good book, his wife at his side--I thought it was pretty hilarious), come up with sexy nicknames, argue, discuss the 'D' word (divorce), nearly split, and finally realize they still truly love each other. I rather enjoyed it.

The new season at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre starts in September with a Beatles tribute. We're considering getting seasons tickets as at least 3 of the 5 shows intrigue us greatly...and the remaining 2 sound all right too. Plus, they're going through renos right now (I thought the theatre decor was fairly attractive and not horribly out of date, however...) so everything will be new and spiffy if we go again.

Ciao,

Andrea