Reel thing lands at Ship’s Company Theatre
Outstanding cast delivers fun, colourful portrait of Nova Scotian life
by Elissa Barnard, Arts Reporter, Herald
Lee J. Campbell as Ed is excited about the 27 1/2-pound trout he caught while his friend Dick, played by Michael Chiasson, watches him from his hiding place in Ed’s shed in the Ship’s Company Theatre production of Fishing for Frank, running in Parrsboro to July 25. (Rena Kossatz)
A stellar Maritime cast lifts an entertaining comedy off the page in Daniel Lillford’s Fishing for Frank.
Set in a small town in the Annapolis Valley, the play is startling in that 60-something characters talk very openly and comically about sex, as well as religion and the flaws of their neighbours.
It’s the day of Frank Whitman’s funeral and Dick and Ed are in Ed’s shed tying flies and yakking about Frank and his scandalous wife, Millie, who left Frank for a younger man. While they admit they should never speak ill of the dead, they reveal, in a conversation like a slow waltz, what they really thought of Frank, whose only good quality was making excellent pies.
Michael Chiasson as Dick, in an amazing physical performance with nervous fingers expressing a slew of tentative feelings and thoughts, is a seemingly ineffectual and highly colourful character who turns out to have made choices and to know more about town life than Ed imagines.
Dick’s tendency to visualize what’s he’s talking about is very funny, especially when he enacts a baby’s preference for mother’s milk.
Ed (Lee J. Campbell) is a blowhard who works himself up into wonderful rants, still hates Trudeau and salutes Stephen Harper on television, something that infuriates his proper, tightly wound wife Hilda (Deborah Allen).
The expository first scene wends its way a bit too long (and it’s initially hard to clearly hear Chiasson) before the women appear in Hilda’s kitchen for a chat with tea and President’s Choice Scotch fingers. Millie (Mary Vingoe) has snuck in to visit her old friend, who is alarmed the neighbours may have seen her. As shocked as she is by Millie’s affair, Hilda is desperate to hear the passionate details, and she later turns it back on her husband in an explosive and hilarious scene.
All the actors are in top form. Allen is constantly comic in her facial and verbal expression, from shock to desire to supreme irritation. Vingoe’s portrayal of a suave, confident woman is a lovely counterpoint to the more boxed-in characters, and Campbell’s Ed is a pressure cooker of a man who believes he is a model citizen and whose love for a fish could undo him.
Former Neptune Theatre artistic director Linda Moore directs for comedy and colour on designer Victoria Marston’s great, full-detail set of the shed, a clothesline with a sunset backdrop and Hilda’s spotless kitchen. Contributing to the atmosphere are costume designer Krista Levy, lighting designer Paul A. Del Motte and sound designer Greg Simm.
Lillford exposes people’s foibles in a warm-hearted and honest way. This play, crammed with Nova Scotian references and commentary on churches and politics, works wonderfully as a glimpse of small town life and an insight into people’s lack of perception.
The journey is very entertaining, but the end is wobbly and inconclusive, especially since it’s preceded by a hilarious act of violence on a surprise character.
Fishing for Frank, which Lillford originally wrote for Chiasson, returning for his eighth season at Ship’s Company Theatre, Parrsboro, is an example of the kind of play — a familiar, thoroughly rendered and tender picture of Nova Scotian life — that Ship’s does best. It runs to July 25, Tuesday to Sunday, 8 p.m., with a matinee 2 p.m. on Sunday.
Tickets are $27.90, $18.30 for youth, students and Sunday nights and $24.40 for seniors. Call 1-800-565-SHOW or 254-3000 or go online to www.shipscompany.com.
