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by Norm Foster, directed by Emily Oriold

Norm Foster Theatre Festival, Mandeville Theatre, Ridley College, St. Catharines

August 8–23, 2026

Ruby: “When did we all become so needy”

Euchre Night may be Norm Foster’s 81st play but it is one of his funniest plays so far of the 2020s. It takes up one of Foster’s particular interests, the nature of human friendship. The Festival has assembled a superb cast and the play is beautifully designed and punchily directed. It is a well-observed comedy of human foibles guaranteed to provide two hours of laughter.

Norm Foster has written a number of plays about the changing dynamics among a group of friends. The one closest one to Euchre Night is The Ladies Foursome (2014). Both have a cast of four women. Both involve women who have gathered to play a sport or game. Both involve a change with one of the friends that affects the other three. The major difference is in that The Ladies Foursome, one of the four friends has died and the remaining three have to decide whether or not they will accept the new woman as part of their group. Euchre Night has a much lighter premise. One of the four women, a 52-year-old woman who has been a widow for 11 years, has fallen in love with a man who is 30 years older. The other three find the age-gap off-putting enough. But the three personally can’t stand the man.

The play is set in the home of Ruby where the “girls” plan to have their weekly euchre night. This ritual has been going on for 32 years. Playing euchre is a way for these women to enjoy some time without their husbands, at least for the three who are currently married. The first and second to arrive are Deb and Kelly. The fourth, Grace, arrives late which gives the other three a lot of time to discuss the “awful” news that Grace says she has fallen in love with Robert, an 82-year-old pastor. The three all think that Grace must be deluding herself and that infatuation cannot possibly last.

This idea, however, is brutally dashed when Grace arrives with the news that Robert has just proposed to her and given her an engagement ring. The others are astounded. The problem now — and the prime source of comedy for most of the first act — is how the three can hide their amazement and disapproval from Grace who calls them her very best friends in the world. Grace naturally detects disapproval in the voices of her friends until the effort to hide their view becomes too much and one negative view of Robert after another slips out.

At the same time that the topic of Grace and Robert is discussed, we realize that unlike Grace, buoyant with love, the other three women are unhappy. It could well be that Grace’s blissful happiness grates on them not so much because of Robert but because of their own hidden struggles.

One has been preoccupied for six months with the estrangement between her husband and their gay son. Another, whose husband is unemployed, has just been laid off from a job she really enjoyed. A third is tasked with raising two children because their mother, her daughter, is an alcoholic.

In typical Foster fashion there is sadness behind his comic characters. Yet, Grace is so worried that this dispute with her friends will ruin their friendship that she says, unwisely, that she will do anything to prevent their break-up. This leads Deb to ask Grace to choose – it’s either Robert or them – which naturally alienates Grace and prevents any friendly game of euchre. This ultimatum leads us to wonder how the women can come back from this blow in Act 2.

Director Emily Oriold knits the four well-known actors into a tight ensemble and gives the show a quick but natural pacing. Patricia Yeatman, known from previous Foster shows and from performances around Ontario plays Ruby, the euchre night host. Yeatman gives Ruby a certain brittleness that suggests from the beginning that Ruby has something troubling on her mind that she is trying not to think about in order to enjoy euchre night. Yet, supressing thoughts takes effort and if Ruby’s concertation is broken, Yeatman has Ruby suddenly lash out with critiques of her friends that are comic in their bluntness.

Nora McLellan, well-known from her 22 seasons at the Shaw Festival, plays Deb as a woman with little control over her mouth. McLennan has Deb provide an hilarious running commentary of asides criticizing everything the other three say. Yet, when it comes time to own up to her own troubles, McLellan fully brings out the painfulness of having to admit the truth.

As Kelly, Kirsten Alter is familiar to Foster fans from her role in Halfway There (2016) and other shows, covers up her worries with a forced air of carefreeness. The fact that she has baked muffins when she has never baked anything before is a clue to the others that something must be wrong. The attempts of the others to pretend that Kelly’s inedible muffins are just fine is a miniature version of the pretense the group tries to put up in dealing with Grace’s choice of lover.

Jenny L. Wright, known for her 25 seasons at the Shaw Festival, is making her Foster Festival debut. It is a major pleasure to see her on stage again. She gives Grace an endearing mix of quirkiness and vulnerability that make us believe, long before her friends can see it, that Grace’s love for Robert may be the real thing. Though always expert at comedy, Wright brings out the hurt that Grace feels at her friends’ disapproval of Robert.

The show plays out on one of the cleverest sets of the Festival’s performances at the Mandeville Theatre. Beckie Morris gives us a typical suburban dining room but uses as walls larger-than-door-sized panels representing the four jacks in a deck of playing cards. Euchre players will know that jacks have particular importance in that game. Alex Amini’s colourful costumes serve to underscore the differences in personality of the four women.

Foster fans will be over the moon to see such a great new play by Canada’s most performed playwright. For those new to Foster, Euchre Night will impress you with its wit, the naturalness of its dialogue and with Foster’s generosity towards his characters. He knows that all people are flawed. The point is that true friendship depends on a balance of honesty and tolerance even if, as his play so comically demonstrates, finding that balance takes good will and a little time.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Kirsten Alter as Kelly, Patricia Yeatman as Ruby, Jenny L. Wright as Grace and Nora McLellan as Deb; Nora McLellan as Deb, Patricia Yeatman as Ruby, Jenny L. Wright as Grace and Kirsten Alter as Kelly; Kirsten Alter as Kelly, Nora McLellan as Deb, Patricia Yeatman as Ruby and Jenny L. Wright as Grace; Jenny L. Wright as Grace, Kirsten Alter as Kelly, Patricia Yeatman as Ruby and Nora McLellan as Deb. © 2026 Emily Oriold.

For tickets visit: fosterfestival.com.