Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✩✩
by Norm Foster, directed by Patricia Vanstone
Norm Foster Theatre Festival, FirstOntario PAC, St. Catharines
July 20-August 3, 2018;
Theatre Collingwood, Collingwood
August 7-11, 2018
“Good people with some flaws”
For the 2018 Foster Festival, now in its third year, Norm Foster has written two brand new plays. The first of these to have its world premiere is Come Down From Up River, another new play like Foster’s Halfway There (2016) and Lunenburg (2017), set in the Maritimes. Although Come Down is still a thoroughly enjoyable comedy, the plotting, compared to the the previous two Maritime plays, has an air of artifice about it and only one type of misunderstanding is made to carry the entire comedy. Because of that it does not seem quite out of Foster’s top drawer.
The plot concerns Shaver Bennett (Peter Krantz), who comes down from the isolated New Brunswick village where he has been a logger to Saint John for a series of medical tests. While there he hopes to stay with his niece Bonnie (Amanda Parsons), whom he hasn’t seen for 23 years. During that time Bonnie has become a lawyer and has fallen in love with Liv Arsenault (Kirsten Alter), a Black woman who is a graphic artist. The two have been happily married for three years.
The main difficulty is that Bonnie loathes Shaver. Something happened 23 years ago for which she can’t forgive Shaver. She views him as typical redneck – right-wing, homophobic and racist – and assumes that he will be outraged with her and Liv and will cause trouble for the short time he stays with them. As it happens, Shaver arrives when Bonnie has been called to work, and he and Liv have a long chat. Contrary to the negative picture Bonnie painted of him, Shaver seems to Liv gentle, kind, funny and very easy to get along with. So the play poses three questions, “What happened 23 years ago that should make Bonnie hate her uncle so much?”, “Has Shaver changed or was Bonnie mistaken about what he was like back then?” and “Why has he come to St. John for tests when there are hospitals closer to where he lives?”
As we have noted before, Norm Foster’s plays are quite different from those of Neil Simon, to whom he is often compared, in that a strain of sadness underlies even some of his funniest comedies. In Come Down the story of an older man coming to the big city for advanced medical tests already sets up the foundation for rather predictable unhappiness from the very start. The primary source of comedy in the play is the contrast between what we have been told about Shaver versus what he is actually is. Liv is the first to see this and then she has to convince the incredulous Bonnie that she is wrong about Shaver. We see that Shaver is right that most people are “Good people with some flaws”.
As for the three questions that the play poses, only one is answered satisfactorily. As Liv supposes, Shaver has come to St. John to reconnect with her, even though Bonnie obstinately refuses to reconnect with him. This hostility of Bonnie’s leads us to expect that the events that happened 23 years were something horrendous. As it turns out, the background leading to the event is complicated and Shaver’s action towards Bonnie seems logical under the circumstances. Not only do we think Bonnie has blown it out of all proportion but we feel that it isn’t really sufficient to cause a 23-year-long estrangement between two people.
As to whether Shaver has changed or not, that, too, is unclear. All we have is Bonnie’s ravings about what Shaver must be like based, it seems, on very little evidence since she last saw him when she was twelve. Shaver claims he has changed but we have no real evidence of what he used to be like.
Thus, while part of the point of the play is that the irreconcilable conflict between Bonnie and Shaver has been manufactured in Bonnie’s mind, the conflict also feels dramatically manufactured since it is based on events for which we have no reliable evidence. The impression Come Down gives is of an insubstantial conflict that is easily resolved.
Since Bonnie and Liv represent what, as far as my knowledge extends, the first married gay couple in Foster’s prolific oeuvre, it’s surprising that he misses a few chances to compare the life of Bonnie and Liv to that of Shaver and his woman up north called Ruby who only get together when they feel the need for sex. Clearly, Shaver’s arrangement with Ruby is actually less conventional than that of Bonnie and Liv, who have gone so far as to get “churched up” as Shaver puts it.
The role of Shaver is a particularly rich one and Peter Krantz, long-time veteran of the Shaw Festival is the ideal actor for it. He is adept at playing layers of emotion, showing Shaver attempting to be satisfied with Bonnie’s mean behaviour towards him while simultaneously conveying his sadness at her animosity. Krantz makes Shaver a humble, lovable, uneducated man with keen perception and the habit of colourful turns of phrase.
Bonnie and Liv are set up as opposites and that is how Parsons and Alter play them. Parsons emphasizes how uptight, controlling and even rude Bonnie can be, while Alter is wonderfully open, giving and personable. Because of this it’s quite clear why they need each other. What director Patricia Vanstone could make clearer is how much the two love each other despite their differences since they show surprising little personal affection. The interactions between Shaver and Liv are necessarily more amusing than those between Shaver and Bonnie, and Alter is especially good at demonstrating how the nervous Liv can’t help asking Krantz’s slow and deliberate Shaver the same question over and over before giving him a chance to answer it.
The action takes place almost entirely on Peter Hartwell’s handsome set depicting the living room of Bonnie and Liv, one that blends in with the muted colour scheme of Cairns Hall where the Foster Festival plays are performed. The principal flaw with the set and the direction is that the two most important scene of the play, which do not take place in the living room, have to be played to the extreme left and right of the wide living room space. This means that many people will only get a sidelong view of these scenes. It would be better if they had been played centre stage on furniture brought in in front of the darkened living room set so all could see equally well.
Come Down From Up River may not be as tightly structured or rich in atmosphere as Lunenburg or Halfway There, but Foster Festival fans – and Shaw festival fans who have been missing Peter Krantz – will certainly not want to miss it since Krantz’s performance alone is worth the price of admission. Two world premieres at one festival is a lot to expect form any author, even one as prolific as Norm Foster. We look forward to what his next one, Renovations for 6 coming up in August. Meanwhile, those who can’t make it to St. Catharines for Come Down before August 3, should know that the production is travelling to Theatre Collingwood from August 7 to 11. And New Brunswickers will get to see the same production at the Fredericton Playhouse November 8 to 10 – a great sign of how eagerly awaited each new play is from Canada’s most performed playwright.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive
Photo: (from top) Kirsten Alter, Peter Krantz and Amanda Parsons; Kirsten Alter, Peter Krantz and Amanda Parsons. ©2018 David Vivian.
For tickets, visit www.fosterfestival.com.
2018-07-23
Come Down From Up River