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Norman Bray puts the question: who are we really?

April 15, 2015   ·   0 Comments

PaintingWhat if your “best days” were the “good old days,” now long gone, and since when you have been riding down the slippery slope to low days and no work?

How would you cope? Would you really be able to admit to the state of your present day realities or would you shelter yourself under the safe roof of your sunny recollections?

Welcome to the inside of Norman Bray’s brain.

However tumultuous is the moment in time, with which Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life deals, everything about this production, currently playing at Theatre Orangeville, is brilliant and very funny. It is quite remarkable.

In spite of the large number of characters that make up the whole story, the cast only numbers three. Stephen Sparks holds the audience in his hands with his portrayal of Norman Bray. Every emotion that passes through a person’s heart passes through Norman’s during the time of our relationship with him in the telling of his tale. We say relationship because, at the beginning of the story, Norman breaks the “fourth wall” to recognise and adopt the audience as his confidants and sympathisers.

Mr. Sparks holds true to Norman’s trials as his world of reassuring denial crumbles violently around him and he rushes to the bottom of that slippery slope.

The numerous souls that guide him on that journey are all played – and, my gosh, so well – by Heidi Lynch and Jesse Griffiths.

Here is a brief synopsis to make the framework for all the sorted persons in the story:

Norman Bray was, so he tells us, a very successful actor, having played every kind of hero, lover and villain, always on stage, never on film, which roles we eventually learn, he turned down with a degree of misguided distain. At some point he married a lady who had two children, Amy and David, for whom Norman stepped up to the mark as a step father. While, after his wife’s death, Norman inherited their home, it is naturally understood that, some day the place would belong to the two (now grown) children, who, in any event, regard it as the home they shared with their mother.

With Norm’s failing career and, hence, diminishing income, the mortgage on the house falls into arrears. Meanwhile, David and Amy worry about losing their future home. They have different approaches to Norman: Amy with affection and David with more negativity – a young man resentful of his mother’s marriage and subsequent death.

Potential rescue comes in many forms of an young man in the employment business, sent by the bank, whose task is to find a job for Norman; the banker who wants to give him a chance, an extension – time to save the house; a wild Spanish neighbour, a dancer, who rents a room in the house; her wild Spanish husband; others – come and see them for yourself,

Through it all, Heidi Lynch and Jesse Griffiths move into one personality after another, skillful, comical, right on cue. The swift combination of changing characters, the two of them shrugging efficiently into their different props and attitudes, Norman effervescent or in despair, are like a dozen people on the stage rather than only three, like a tug of emotional war, lots of feelings to bring into focus at once – such fun, fascinating.

A complicated dance, this play must have presented director David Nairn with certain challenges. However, he assured us that he was looking forward to directing it. He loves the theatricality of it.

“We never … do blackouts between scenes at Theatre Orangeville,” he told us. “I like the audience to see the theatricality of the piece, seeing how actors change their costumes to change their characters. There’s the whole concept – not to hide anything.”

Based on his novel, also titled Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life, this is Trevor Cole’s first play. It is no small matter to jump from prose to play writing, for there is a world of difference in the writing. Dialogue is all and the plot has to move along well and quickly enough to keep a live audience engaged.

Having spent two years in the making, Mr. Cole has done a fine job of adaptation. The dialogue follows with good fidelity the spectrum of emotions the play encompasses, while indulging in an element of hyperbole in the characters that is very entertaining.

The set is a wonder. Made 90% of corrugated cardboard, with the ridges showing to demonstrate the unusual material, furniture, set, doors, all of it, to create “an interesting metaphor,” Mr. Nairn said. “None of us had seen or heard of the like. It’s so exciting and refreshing.”

Designed by set designer/Production Manager, Beckie Morris, and executed, as a team effort, by herself, Tim Moore, Technical Director, and Sarah Scroggie, Props, the attention to detail is typical of the excellence of all the stage settings at under Ms Morris’ direction.

Showing as the World Premiere at Theatre Orangeville, this is an exceptional time at the theatre. Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life runs until April 26. Tickets as usual at the Theatre Box Office- telephone 519-942-3423 or on line www.theatreorangeville.ca

Said David Nairn, “This is a play about actors, about the theatre, warts and all.”


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