Finest of Strangers the finest of Lemoines
A new play by Stewart Lemoine is something to celebrate.
For some 36 years – since his debut at the first Fringe – he has prolifically turned out play after play, over 70 of them now. The amazing thing about all this is that the playwright has managed to maintain an innate curiosity in a bewildering number of subjects and styles which he approaches from his own unique and whimsical perspective.
Consequently we have enjoyed a clairvoyant automaton (The Salon of the Talking Turk), two lonely middle-aged people who find love in the sunset of their lives (The Exquisite Hour), a spellbinder who opens up a world of adventure for a closeted widow (Pith!) and marveled at what might have happened when Sarah Bernhardt came to Edmonton (At the Zenith of the Empire).
One could go on, and he does. Lemoine, who has turned his company Teatro la Quindicina into a local phenomenon (subscriptions up by 143 percent since 2009), has written a new play for their new (36th) season. At the Varscona Theatre until June 16, The Finest of Strangers ably demonstrates that the playwright has lost none of his inquisitiveness, invention, humour and guileless perspective in the near four decades he has been writing.
But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Lemoine quite like this one (and I’ve seen almost all of them).
Lemoine credits much of his success to the ace company of players he has assembled, and in The Finest of Strangers he stretches them as never before.
The first act is pure “screwball” – one of Lemoine’s specialties. Jeff Haslam plays Bruce Faraday, a well-known television personality who returns to the house where he spent a memorable year in his childhood. He thinks he’s working on a news item about houses people used to live in – but he’s really drawn by unresolved memories.
He meets Mavis (Patricia Darbasie) who lives in the house; and Allison (Davina Stewart) a chatty next door neighbour. He thinks the meeting is over – but discovers he can’t move. Chantel Fortin’s ingenious proper middle-class set is really full of nooks and secret rooms, and hides an array of colourful characters who include deceased members of both Bruce’s and Mavis’ families.
At this point in this Lemoine’s ghost story, the tale turns 180 degrees on itself. The mood changes from light comedy to serious as painful secrets of the past are revealed. Lemoine has often turned to a genuine sentiment to give his comedies a touch of heart, but seldom has he gone this far. This is not about “ladies in black” or things that go “boo!” It’s more about plumbing deeply into the bond that stretches beyond the grave to haunt us for all our lives.
His performers are certainly up to the demands the playwright puts upon them. Haslam is solid as the Peter Mansbridge-like newsman, and brilliantly dips into his put-upon Cary Grant repertoire of gestures, facial expressions, deadpans and slow burning comic reactions to the strange apparitions that feed into the room. Darbasie, whose recent return to Edmonton stages is a welcome one indeed, demonstrates her comic chops and great timing. The rest of the cast, – Julien Arnold, Mark Bellamy (singing in a soaring Irish tenor), Leona Brausen, Cathy Derkach and Michelle Diaz all have their moments and shine throughout. Diaz, a Latin firecracker, sings a lovely Portuguese folk song (delicately supported by Arnold on the guitar); and Derkach, who accompanies the rest of the songs throughout the play on the piano, also has a powerful monologue about the effect of music on a relationship – which leads to a heartrending tale of wasted lives and obsessive love.
My, can Lemoine write for actors.
At the end, the cast joins to sing a lovely a cappella version of Flow Gently Sweet Afton – a gentle ending to the emotional turbulence of the evening.
Photos by Mat Busby
