Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Theatre Orangeville’s final 2014-15 production will take audiences into our relationship with the land.
The local theatre company will offer another world premiere when curtains rise from May 7 until May 24 on Baco Noir by playwright Dan Needles. Starring Terry Barna, Jay Davis, Perrie Olthuis and Craig Pike, Baco Noir will take theatre-goers back to Needles’ fictional Persephone Township made famous through his Letter from Wingfield Farm episodes.
The synopsis: Bruce Berne, played by Newfoundlander Pike, has a dream of growing grapes and making wine the natural way on the south slope in Persephone Township, a geographic location similar to Dufferin County. And Persephone is not smiling on his venture.
The climate is awful, the wine from his first vintage tastes like it was made from horseradish, and the bank is calling about his line of credit. But Bruce’s next-door neighbour, Oscar, played by Barna, has an intriguing theory about why the wine tastes so bad — and it has more to do with the supernatural than the natural.
The story is rooted in Needles’ son’s attempt a few years ago to grow grapes in the Dufferin County region. While his son has since moved into other endeavours, Needles says he’s still somewhat slogging away at a vineyard. And it provided a sound chassis for a work of romantic comedy.
Berne and his wife are a Toronto-centric couple. The wine-making is a convenient means to justify their leaving the big city in favour of a more pastoral setting. Watching their attempts to grow and cultivate grapes is an older local farmer named Oscar. His presence and experience informs the newcomers of the established farming practices and the land’s attributes.
But there’s also things Oscar can learn from Bruce and Lindy. So there’s kind of that phenomenon of how things seem to stay the same the more they change. The constancy that weathers change.
The land is the fifth character in the play. It’s personified by way of a character named Al, a spirit played by Davis who will make his Theatre Orangeville debut with this production. A region’s sense of place makes it unique, and Needles said a sense of place has always been important to him and his work. Baco Noir promises to extol the flavour of Persephone and the characters’ relationships with each other and their land, and the land and those who scratch their lives from it.
There’s an “obligation we have to be better stewards of the land, whatever that means to different people,” said David Nairn, theatre artistic director. “A sense of place is what you need to protect a place.”
Baco Noir will run May 7 until 24 at the Theatre Orangeville Town Hall Opera House in Orangeville.
For tickets call the Theatre Orangeville Box Office at 519-942-3423 or 1-800-424-1295. Tickets can also be purchased on-line.
By James Matthews for www.orangeville.com/orangeville-on/.
Photo: Dan Needles in Persephone Township. ©2015 Matthew Needles.
2015-04-29
Orangeville: Theatre Orangeville presents the world premiere of Dan Needles's "Baco Noir" May 7