The MacGregor family is decidedly odd.

But the fictional Prairie clan is oddly charming.

As is the dysfunctional family dramedy MacGregor's Hard Ice Cream and Gas, on stage at Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro until Sept. 2.

The work, by Saskatchewan playwright Daniel Macdonald, builds slowly, gathering steam as it moves along, racing to a conclusion that is utterly absorbing.

The setting of the play a dying town where most of the residents have moved away leaving streets full of boarded-up windows and a sense of hopelessness, accentuated by the bitter cold of February on the Prairies - is as much a character as the MacGregors and their dead accordion-playing neighbour (who is never seen).

And set designer Michael Fuller expertly captures the desolation and loneliness of life in the town.

Looking at the brilliant set, with its glistening spiked icicles, surrounded on all sides by a train track gradually retreating to nothingness, you feel the cold despite the summer heat.

The play isn't so much about what happens as about the people and why they did what they did and the unknown reasons for their past actions.

The family patriarch is dead, but can't be buried until spring because the ground is frozen.

Youngest son Jack, who ran a family ice cream store with his father, takes the body hostage, packing it with tubs of homemade ice cream that nobody buys because it's the Prairies in the middle of winter.

Sensible middle child Fred, who hosts a two-day wake, tries to get the body back down to the parlour, while running around town boarding up windows and attempting to fix the sign for the family store.

Mum Marlene is in the basement pacing, counting off steps. It's a behaviour that surprisingly makes a lot of sense when she explains it.

Daughter Missy, who left home 19 years ago and hasn't been heard from since, returns 10 months pregnant, fearful her child will never be born.

But the play isn't about plot, it's about family, about sibling rivalries, relationships with parents, the bonds borne of blood.

And it's a play about roads.

It's about the roads where the train that runs through the town but never stops will take you, filling residents' heads with dreams of what lies outside their small patch of earth.

It's also about roads not taken, the consequences of choices made.

The oddly childlike Jack could be an annoying or pitiful character, but, as played by Ship's newcomer Nathan Pilon, he's intriguing, compelling and caring.

Live Bait Theatre artistic director Charlie Rhindress shines as Fred.

As Missy, at various ages from shivering newborn to train-obsessed tween, to partying teen, Natasha MacLellan displays the perfect amount of anger, rebelliousness and unspoken longing for a mother's love.

And Gay Hauser is a tour-de-force as Maureen, as frozen in her feelings as the Prairie ground until the confluence of circumstances and confessions leads to an almost frightening eruption of long bottled-up emotion.

Director and Ship's Company artistic producer Pamela Halstead expertly ensures the actors move at the right pace for the audience to keep up with the shifting revelations and emotions.

Tickets for the show, which runs nightly except Mondays at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Sundays at 2 p.m., are $26, $23 senior, $17 youth and student and Sunday evening shows.

Call 1-800-565-SHOW or 254-3000.

(anemetz@herald.ca)

PARRSBORO: A home filled with ice cream, accordions and train sets would usually be a recipe for joy and happiness but for the MacGregor's of Rosetown, Saskatchewan, it has brought a strange, fantastical kind of inertia whereby the family spins their tires upon the cold, prairie landscape.

MacGregor's Ice Cream & Gas opened to a packed house on Friday night at the Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro . Written by playwright Daniel Macdonald and directed by Pamela Halstead, the play follows the MacGregor's as they deal with the death of the family patriarch and break free from the grip he's had on the family.

The playwright says, "Minus 40 degrees on the prairie seems like a far cry from a summer's day in Nova Scotia. But no matter where we are, the land, the climate, and our own sense of place at times makes us do strange things."

In the case of the MacGregor's, doing strange things comes in many forms. Because the ground is in a solid state of permafrost Jake, the youngest son, played by Nathan Pilon, is keeping his fathers dead body cool by filling his casket with buckets of flavourful ice cream until somebody comes to haul the body off to the morgue for storage. Mother Marlene, played by Gay Hauser, paces the basement in bitter circles, angrily counting off the steps she should have taken to escape the family while she was still young. And the eldest son Fred, played by Charlie Rhindress, spends his time fixing the sign to the family store while trying to fix his family by maintaining some sense of sanity.

This is what director Halstead calls, "A frozen landscape and a frozen family." She asks, "How does one transcend the isolation and the despair and look up? How does one stop pacing in the basement and make those first steps forward out into the world?"

Relief comes in the form of daughter Missy, played by Natasha MacLellan, who refused to spin her tires and, therefore, escaped from the family when she was 17. It's been 20 years since she last stepped foot inside the MacGregor home and little has changed since she left. In a play infused with a kind of magic realism, she is 10 and a half months pregnant. Standing in as a metaphor for rebirth, regeneration and hope, Missy opens the family's eyes to the life of quiet, angry desperation they lived under a father who loved the accordion and his friends more than he loved his own family. After the family argues about how their lives have been wasted through mere chance and happenstance, the MacGregor's decide to dispose of the fathers body in dramatic fashion. It's here that sparks fly and green grass grows as Missy's baby is finally born and the McGregor's find catharsis and rebirth in the middle of winter.

MacGregor's Hard Ice Cream and Gas is thought provoking and thoroughly entertaining.

The MacGregor's corner store sells hard ice cream and gas, but it's never sold a drop of gas. In the dead of a Saskatchewan winter, ice cream isn't exactly breaking sales records either.

In the opening scene of Hard Ice Cream and Gas, the latest play at Parrsboro's Ship's Company Theatre, Jack MacGregor steals his father's casket from a two-day wake. To keep the dead man's body comfortable, he packs buckets of the family's specialty hard ice cream inside the coffin.

From here, the plot makes surprising turns in a small-town tale about the delicate balance between family dynamic and demon.

The set design is eerie and ambitious. Steel railroad tracks run through the middle of the stage, representing the train that goes through town, yet never stops. Another section of rail line leaps up into a blue sky to symbolize, presumably, a possible escape. Columns of ice and soft snow on the ground bring a chill to the playhouse and frame the interior of the house, which is always too cold.

Far from a light, slapstick comedy, the play is tinged with dark humour and bitter irony. The writing is moving and imaginative; the plot narrative weaves a seamless stitch between past and present where family members, Jack, his older brother Fred, middle sister Missy and Mom struggle to deal with their own expectations of life against the cards they were dealt.

Nathan Pilon makes his professional acting debut as Jack, a man caught in childhood-adult limbo.

His youthful optimism and manic character make for a touching performance, though he shines brightest in the second half of the play.

Charlie Rhindress gives a consistently stellar performance as Fred, the straight and narrow accordion playing eldest son.

Ship's veteran actor, Gaye Hauser, anchors the show with a graceful portrayal of a mother who silently washes dishes, desperate for attention and adventure.

Her daughter, Missy, played by Natasha MacLellan, ran away only to return two decades later, 10 months pregnant. MacLellan's wry wit and typical teenaged sarcasm bring lightness to an otherwise heavy home atmosphere.

Although the first half is slow at times, the second half has enough quirky and bracing moments to carry the show.

Director Pamela Halstead has successfully brought the world premiere of this complex and beautiful story to stage on the ship.

In his notes, P.E.I native playwright Daniel MacDonald writes: "Minus 40 on the prairie seems like a far cry from a summer's day in Nova Scotia, but no matter where we are, the land, the climate, and our sense of place at times makes us do strange things."

There was a groan of recognition in a Parrsboro audience when Nova Scotia playwright Carol Sinclair referred to the lost Headz Gamez plant.

It was a subtle reference in this new, wonderfully warm-hearted comedy about two mismatched couples trapped in a rustic seaside cabin during a hurricane.

The two-hour play, which opens the 2007 season at Ship’s Company Theatre, explodes in farcical, physical comedy, acrobatic wordplay and pithy observations. However, there is a serious undercurrent about the economic problems facing many a small Nova Scotia town today.

This takes an essentially light comedy deeper so that a line like "This is some kind of head game!" can resonate in a town where a board game plant was supposed to employ 1,500 people.

Most of all, though, Share is a great chance to see four comic actors, particularly the under-utilized Brian Heighton, at their best in a realistic play given a highly polished, fast-paced production by director Pamela Halstead and a great, realistic-looking cabin set by Corey Mullins.

(Some people might be bothered by herbal cigarettes standing in for dope and real cigarettes, though I actually didn’t smell them, and they add to the realism and expression of the characters’ tension.)

In Share, two urban couples have a stake or share in an old cabin in a part of rural Nova Scotia where schooners once buoyed a booming economy but where the only commodity today is peace and quiet.

Kate and Nigel are quirky, granola-eating scientists who are goofily in love and have come to Kate’s old childhood cabin to be alone. When they go out for a walk, in sweep Mia and Jake, a high-powered, business-oriented couple also desperate to shed their cellphones and be free from her job as manager at the casino in Halifax and his in advertising.

Doors open and close, candles get lit by one couple and blown out by the other, the pace quickens to a hilarious discovery of one another and then Hurricane Tessa strikes.

In the second act Sinclair archly takes the fine physical comedy of shaking walls, loud noises and frightened, madly dashing, angry people into the terrain of self-revelation, family drama and mystery.

The two couples struggle to share the basics like food (and liquor) and to find common ground within their radically different visions for the area’s cabins and land.

Kate and Nigel dream of a nudist camp with de-stressing sessions, Mia and Jake want to develop a dinosaur theme park with rides. Out of the chaos of the storm and conflict, a new order arises and there is a happy ending.

Apart from the laughs, Share is rewarding in its realism. Sinclair’s characters feel very real even when they are behaving extremely.

The actors have a fierce energy, sharp comic skills and deep commitment to the story. Jerry Etienne takes Nigel to comical, corny extremes in the beginning of the play but makes his somewhat idiotic character ultimately reasonable and likeable. Heighton registers both the bold strokes and minutia of comic acting in rapid-fire facial ticks and vocal expressions that make him a delight to watch.

The female characters are more the peacemakers but are also comic and played equally finely by Angela Vermeir, infusing vitality into Kate, a straightforward, natural, braver woman who feels strongly about life and love, and Glenda Stirling as Mia, a robust, fast-talking, guilt-free city girl who is terrified by the storm.

Ship’s Company Theatre is always good at design and taking a viewer thoroughly into another world. By the end of Share it’s hard to believe the cabin with its high beams, wood stove and old sofa-bed doesn’t actually exist.

Adding to Mullins’ cabin and the realism of the hurricane are Bruce MacLennan’s lighting design, Krista Levy’s costume design, sound design by Greg Simm and Krista Wells and walls actually shaken by an invisible crew that includes Nik Hynes and Yolande Laking and is led by Mullins, also head carpenter on his set.

Glenda Stirling choreographs the racing physical comedy in scenes that include all four on and under one bed. Technical director is Evan Brown, stage manager Tammy Faulkner and wardrobe head Tabatha Daigle.

Though a Nova Scotian audience will enjoy the many provincial references, Share’s themes are universal and the play is marked by warmth and good humour when it comes to solving big problems.

Share runs to July 29, Tuesdays to Sundays, 7:30 p.m., with a matinee Sunday, 2 p.m. Tickets are $26 for adults, $23 for seniors, $17 for students and youth and $17 for the matinee. Call 1-800-565-SHOW or 254-3000 or go online to www.shipscompany.com.

( ebarnard@herald.ca)

PARRSBORO: Where to begin."Share," first off Set Design by Corey Mullins, it's as though Mullins brought one of the many untouched camps in the area and brought it to the stage at Ship's Company Theatre (the Ship) for the performance of "Share," which saw its second preview night on July.

Playing "Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Harry McLintock softly in the background definitely added atmosphere to the rustic old camp with the lazy boy chair and fold out coach with the crocheted blanket that Grandma would have made. This was the first set Mullins designed for the Ship and what a debut, the detail was phenomenal right down to the antique coffee pot sitting on the shelf to the lobster crate doubling as a wood box. Despite a little technical difficulty with the lighting which delayed the performance for a short time, Artistic Director for the Ship and Director of "Share" Pamela Halstead ensured the audience that the show will go on regardless. This was certainly nothing that would hinder the performances of the cast and no truer words such as "the show must go on," would have fit the scene.

The cast made up of Jerry Etienne as Nigel, Angela Vermeir as Kate, Brian Heighton as Jake and Glenda Stirling as Mia jumped right into their roles as two couples trying to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life in the fast lane.

Set off the shores of the Bay of Fundy in a tranquil little town that used to be one of the busier sea ports now a town on the decline trying to make the most of the resources available which is mostly logging. Both couples with grand ideas on how to bring life back into the little town with much to offer. One couple Mia and Jake, a little glitzier than Nigel and Kate want Casino's and amusement parks, while the vision Nigel and Kate see is serenity and wilderness as much a retreat even perhaps more to offer as the exciting nightlife Mia and Jake see in the little town's future.

"Share," is more than just the weekend the two couples get thrown into sharing at a rustic cabin along the shores of the Bay of Fundy, Playwright Carol Sinclair shows throughout the play how often life throws a curve ball and we've shared not even realizing it.

The World Premiere of Share will run at Ship's Company Theatre until July 29, and if you enjoy laughing and entertainment at its best then Share is definitely a play worth seeing.

Parrsboro - Ship's Company Theatre mainstage is open with the world premiere performance of Share by Parrsboro based playwright Carol Sinclair. Share is a comedic look at the politics of relationships and a story about survival, set in a run-down cabin on the Bay of Fundy shore. Pamela Halstead, the artistic director of Ship's Company Theatre, says the play is, "a world premiere production by an established playwright with ties to this community." The show has, "a tremendous (cast) working on a hilarious script to create a night of great fun for our audience." Share runs at the Ship until July 29. To reserve tickets, call 1-800- 565-SHOW or order online at www.shipscompany.com.