HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2011-09-08, Page 19THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2011. PAGE 19. ‘Alligator Tears’ earns remount, main stage
Continued from page 18
the school, they will also be
available at a booth at the Brussels
Fall Fair and will be sold during the
Firemen’s breakfast held at Grey
Central Public School on Sept. 25.
Alicia Deitner, a representative
from the council, explained in
February of this year, that in 1996 a
cookbook was released by the
school, and that it ended up being
used in some very imaginative ways.
Parents gave the cookbook as
wedding gifts or graduation gifts to
their students to prepare them for the
next phase in their life, and the
council hopes this book will do the
same.
While the 1996 model was printed
on standard letter-sized paper, the
new cookbook, dubbed the Grey
Central Public School Cookbook
Volume Two, is printed on smaller
stock.
Last week the Blyth Festival
Young Company made its debut on
the Memorial Hall stage for the first
time and they picked the right year
to do it.
This was a year of firsts for the
Young Company. Not only was it the
first year the group presented its
project on the main Festival stage at
Memorial Hall, but it was also the
first remount in the decades-long
history of the Blyth Festival Young
Company.
Britta Johnson’s Alligator Tears
made a huge splash at the Phillips
Studio last year during its run and
Festival Artistic Director Eric Coates
felt Johnson’s musical about an
alligator scare in New Hamburg in
1953 deserved a bigger stage and a
bigger audience.
Fast forward to 2011 and
Stratford’s Johnson, now a 20-year-
old student at the University of
Toronto, has a full-scale Blyth
Festival show on her hands, which
ran from Sept. 1 to Sept. 3.
After having a full year for re-
writes and revisions for the remount
of Alligator Tears, Johnson had a 16-
member Young Company to make
the show happen. And make it
happen she has.
Johnson has taken the characters
of New Hamburg in 1953, a year she
hasn’t come within 35 years of
experiencing, and made them
her own.
The story goes that suspicion of an
alligator in the southern Ontario
town of New Hamburg brought
international attention to the town
and its Nith River, which was said to
be home to alleged alligator.
Johnson took the story and ran
with it... and added music to it. Last
year’s production of Alligator Tears
was the first time the Young
Company produced a musical.
The songs are great, the humour is
witty and the story flows smoother
than the aforementioned Nith River;
alligator or no.
Johnson, however, is no stranger
to the big stage, despite her tender
age. Before she was brought into the
Blyth Festival fold, Johnson had a
musical she’d written, Big Box
Story, produced on the Avon Theatre
stage in Stratford.
Alligator Tears was spurred on by
a friend of Johnson’s whose great-
grandfather was the chief of police
in New Hamburg when alligator
fever hit the small town.
Johnson was then given a wealth
of research material to work with,
including newspaper clippings and
radio interviews from the height of
the scare.
Despite being rooted in fact,
however, Johnson says the majority
of the story is fictional.
Words and music can only take
you so far, however. Johnson needed
talented actors to carry them out and
with this year’s installment of the
Young Company she got just that.
This year’s crop of young talent
that made its way to Blyth is one for
the ages, and it’s safe to say that
Johnson and this group could very
well have been a match made in
heaven.
The singing of the 16-member cast
is great and they all settle into their
respective roles, many of them very
adult roles, with ease and
confidence.
The roles range from a crotchety
farming couple to a local manure
tycoon, to three chatty PTA
members who have to be the centre
of attention, no matter the situation,
and there are plenty more. There’s
the attention-starved reeve of New
Hamburg and the soft-spoken police
chief and of course, central character
Annie Thomas and her group of
hometown friends.
Thomas is portrayed for the
second year in a row by Rachel
Hearn of Clinton. She is a soft-
spoken scholar, like her police chief
father, but unlike her father, she’s
willing to bite back if need be.
She returns from McGill
University in Montreal and before
long Thomas realizes that something
is going on in the town of New
Hamburg and no one will let her in
on it.
She’s tipped off when a farming
couple, portrayed by Blyth’s
Marlayna Kolkman and Gordon
Law, corner the police chief with a
pitchfork inquiring about some
missing animals.
The story takes off from there, in
more than one way, as a few people
in town allow their imaginations to
run away with them.
Thomas doesn’t really believe all
of this alligator nonsense and sets
out with some of her friends to see
what’s what.
She is joined by a walking
billboard, employed by Mansfield’s
Manure to spread the... word, played
by Beth Beardsley, and her man-
crazy friend, played by Taylor
Watson.
While there are many people
claiming to have seen the alligator,
there are very few first-hand witness
accounts and it’s not until the
alligator fanaticism stops making the
town money and starts wreaking
havoc that the whole situation gets a
little too real.
As an audience veteran of several
years of Young Company
productions, I have to say with the
remount of Alligator Tears, it was
time for the group to make the jump
to the Memorial Hall stage. Seeing a
production on this grand a scale
seems unfathomable on any smaller
of a stage.
And Johnson and her cast were up
to the challenge.
Lisa Tubb’s portrayal of the town’s
reeve is spectacular, as is Curtis te
Brinke’s police chief and the late
arrival of Haley Hunt as an alligator
wrestler from Sarnia really carries
the show home.
Aside from her motivational
speeches and her confidence in the
power of... well, confidence, Hunt
rides a unicycle around the stage and
displays other talents, wowing the
audience and providing more than
her share of laughs.
With a show as ambitious as
Alligator Tears, it was only a matter
of time until a remount and the
Memorial Hall stage made a perfect
landing place for such lofty
expectations. Expectations that
Johnson and her crew built upon and
exceeded.
Graduation
Jane and George Zwep of
R.R. #2 Brussels are pleased to
announce the graduation of their
children Danica and Randy.
Danica graduated on June 16th
from Georgian College in Barrie
with Honours and Distinction in
the Interior Design Program. She
will be continuing her education
by attending Fanshawe College
in September in the Interior
Decorating Program.
Randy graduated on June 24th
from Lambton College in Sarnia on the Dean’s Honour List in the Pre-
Service Firefighter Program. In addition, he was named Rookie of the
Year for the Lambton Lions Men’s Basketball Team. He will be returning
to Lambton College in January in the Fire Science Program.
Congratulations to you both - we are so proud!!
Family and friends are
invited to a
Buck & Doe
for
Nick Campbell &
Danielle Good
September 17
Brussels Arena
8 pm - 1 am
Age of majority • Lunch provided
Tickets available from
Scott Armstrong, Emily Elston,
Brandon Blake, Corey Campbell,
Lacey McArter.
Happy 2nd
Birthday
September 2
Dylan Lee
XOXO Mom, Dad,
Madison & Family
Graduation
Jennifer MacDonald, daughter of
Barry and Cindy MacDonald of Blyth,
graduated with honours receiving her
diploma in Business Administration-
Accounting. Jenny will be attending
Laurentian University for her degree in
Bachelor of Business Administration
Accounting - BBA. Congratulations
Jenny — We are very proud of you!
We wish you continued success in
future studies. Love, Mom and Dad,
Josie and Ryan and J.J.
Entertainment Leisure&
By Shawn Loughlin
The Citizen
Kicking it off
Paul Weber was in Blyth last weekend to help kick off the
50th annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and
Hobby Association with a Barndance performance on
Saturday night at the Blyth and District Community Centre.
(Vicky Bremner photo)
Cookbook to be
sold at breakfast