Archive » Arts and Entertainment

Theatre Orangeville opens 30th season with ‘The View from Here’

October 19, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

What a terrific show “The View from Here” is – the first of Theatre Orangeville’s 30th season. It opened last Friday, Oct. 13 and is running until Oct. 29. Written by and starring Jamie Williams (Skin Flick and others) and Melanie Janzen (Screwball Comedy and others), this couple gives us an evening that is so good it lasts a long time in your head afterwards.

Seemingly pretty basic in brief, Michael and Mary have been married for 32 years, and this is their story over a year at that time in their lives, from New Year’s Eve to New Year’s Eve. Yet, what the cleverness of the play, the actors’ delivery, and Beckie Morris’ revolve set do is they keep us laughing, involved and irresistibly loving this adorable couple.

The conversations between the pair, a river of dialogue with only the two on stage, are extremely well maintained, back and forth, confrontational sometimes, asking and answering, funny, affectionate. Never predictable and often quite thoughtful. Frequently, a different take on an average day. The magic between them works so well because they are, in fact, a married (to each other) couple, bringing, as the Director of the play, David Nairn said, “their own short-hand.”

Actually, in his playwright notes, Jamie Williams admits the idea for this comic view of married life sprung from “our own completely unsexy bedtime routine…a far cry from what I believe our bedtime looked like in our younger days… My aim was to highlight those moments that are at once ordinary and extraordinary in a marriage. It is a love letter to those relationships that endure because of and in spite of ourselves.”

In the course of this year’s challenges are the difficulties and joys that apply to many long-term marriages. Mary’s elderly father is slated to retire to a seniors’ home, and her dealing with this move, her fear for her father, and the repulsion for the place and conditions she instinctively bears on his behalf may well ring true in the hearts of many in the audience.

On the other hand, is the upcoming wedding of their daughter to Rob, a philosophy graduate whose constant output of big words and long-winded rhetoric irritates the father of the bride-to-be.

All that and the sudden closure of the newspaper for which Michael has written over many years, coincidentally echoing our town’s recent history, forces his abrupt retirement with perhaps foreseeable and not-so-expected reactions on his part.

Beckie Morris, the set designer and production manager at Theatre Orangeville, dreamed up a revolve, the device that swings the sets around on stage and is usually round. This one is square, which gave its builders some challenges as to its geometry. It supports the two sets of bedroom on one side and living room on the other. Propelled by a quietly efficient stage crew to swing from one room to the other as the scenes change and a song plays, its job is to note the movement of time and push the story of this year into its next moment.

In the background is a simplistic cut-out of a roof and windows, and inside, a basic door frame between the two sets, wainscoting as dividers. Every surface is covered by the words of the dialogue. No, you can’t follow along with the actors as they speak — a true Beckie Morris for its innovation, interest and the best design for the play.

Louise Guinand’s lighting beautifully follows the same theme of the moving conversations, the shift in time and life. Lighting’s job in the theatre is to support and even define the action and story on stage. Ms. Guinand does this to perfection. 

This much sought-after lighting designer was the genius behind the lighting design of Beneath Springhill, produced here earlier this year. This is her 600th professional lighting production.

Directing, David Nairn presents us with a show of great timing, a pleasure to enjoy that touches our minds and our emotions. That is his particular skill.

Theatre Orangeville’s brilliant creative team pulled it off again to give us a very high level of lovely to look at production that has kept many people supporting the theatre all these years.

From the really silly opening to the perfect touch at the end, The View from Here is a must-enjoy couple of hours of theatre.

Jamie Williams ended his notes by reminding us, “It is of course a love letter to, and for my wife, Melanie.”

For tickets, subscriptions and tickets to the ‘Twas the Night Gala, Theatre Orangeville’s biggest fundraiser of the year, go to www.theatreorangeville.ca or call the charming folk at the Box Office at 519-942-3423.

Readers Comments (0)