HomeMy WebLinkAboutLakeshore Advance, 2012-08-08, Page 112 Lakeshore Advance • Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Bringing Narcisse to life
The breeze is cold, but the sun is still up and warm
as the 300 people in attendance begin to fill the seats
in the back field of St. Peter's Catholic Church in St.
Joseph to see the play, Narcisse.
As some late comers hustled to get into their seats,
lighthearted violin music played by Capucine Onn
and Jamie McClennan already gets the audience
clapping and tapping their toes to the beat. 'Ihe stage
has been completely decorated and painted by hand
and by cast members. It easily creates a main stage
for the important scenes in the play, yet still does not
distract from other scenes. 'Ihe use of props and the
break -down of the scenes by narrator Napoleon
(Nap) Cantin played by Mathieu Burdan helps rnake
the play easy to follow and sets each scene quickly.
It is hard to believe that the majority of the actors
are community members with little to no acting skills.
Right before the audience eyes, these everyday peo-
ple become neighbours, bartenders, Members of Par-
liament, industrialists, salesmen, and doctors. The
actors do a great Job of absorbing their roles, as many
Thank You..
•
Riverbend Bar & Grill would like to say thank you to -
our family & friends for your generosity this year with
donations being made to Lambton County Down
Syndrome Assoc., and Grand Bend Nursery School.
Bayview Golf Course
Custom Catering To Go -
Curt Bower
Kelders Trailer Park
Back N' Time
Paddingtons Pub
Dairy Dip - Pizza Place
Aux Sables Inn
F.I.N.E. A Restaurant
Sobeys - Grand Bend
Mike & Terri's No Frills
Ricco Foods
The Garden Gate Gifts & Floral
It's Thyme
Foodies of Grand Bend
Marlena's Hair Styling
Stewart Wehh & Sons
Tilco Electric
Fischer Plumbing & Electric
Jim Moffat
RBC Bank
Caradoc Sands Golf Club
Widder Station Golf &
Country Club
Labatt
Quality Tree Service
I3edell's
Pine Dale Motor Inn
Special Thanks to: Skipper & Bob, Grand I3end Fire Hall,
Gray Insurance Brokers Inc., Grand Bend Legion for all your
generosity, and Ivor Jones - APC Summer Showdown!
Special Thanks to: Shirley & Tiffany and all the Car Washers!
Donny, Joey, Renee, Shelley, Julie, Angie, Stephanie, Holly,
Jennifer & Jen.
Total Donations Collected $29
200 00
Thanks to all of'you!
We couldn't do it without your support!
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Lunch & Dinner
26 Ontario St., S.
(Hwy # 21)
Grand Bend
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play multiple, albeit small roles. They all
become a living part of history.
This outdoor play is about a man
named Narcisse Cantin, a French immi-
grant salesman and persistent business-
man with big dreams. A man of many
ideas and inventions, including crazy
glue, Cantin also had a dream of building
a canal from Lake Erie to Lake I luron. As
Burdan introduces the play, he asks the
audience if his father was a man before his
times or a crook. He leaves it up to them to
make the decision.
With seemingly original costumes to fit
the era, the characters come to life to tell
the trials and tribulations of Cantln and
his family, from the highs of becoming a
big -shot salesman to seeing his dreams
fade away. The main characters, Narcisse
(Rob Bundy), Josephine (Susan Carradine
Armstrong), and Oliver Cabana (Cam-
eron Laurie) are all professional perform-
ers, but it was obvious that their experi-
ence has rubbed off on all the community
members, as everyone was so believable.
"I bought you a town," Narcisse excit-
edly tells his wife Josephine in broken
English. The chemistry between Bundy
and Armstrong is believable, but there
seems to be more during the difficult
times of Cantin's life, rather than the hap-
pier titnes. At the beginning of the play
when an emotional Cantin asks Josephine
for her hand in marriage, the scene comes
off a little stiff as both characters only hug.
The part would have been more powerful
if a kiss would have been used to show the
emotion that Bundy used to portray the
nerves and happiness he felt by asking the
question.
The accents do not always sound
French, but many of the characters do a
great job at depicting the language
through broken English, the way many
learning French-Canadians learn how to
talk. The women's choir sings the majority
of their songs in French. They all sound
beautiful, but most of the audience has no
idea what they are saying. The choir has
approximately 12 singers, with only four
adults and the rest of young adults and
children. The harmony and mixture of
altos and sopranos is rich as they come
together beautifully to piece together the
scenes or add as an accent background t'
,4a
the scenes.
In many parts of the play it was difficult
to hear some of the characters lines
because it was outside and at some points,
their backs were turned away from the
tnicrophones. However, it was impressive
to see the children, some as young as five,
into the play and on cue with their roles
and where they were suppose to be on the
stage.
Although it was getting quite cold out
by the end of the second part of the play
as the sun was going down behind the big
hales of hay that surrounded the stage to
block the noise from the highway, all the
audience members were still consumed
by the parliament scene in which a very
young Wilfrid Laurier, played by'l'ler Par-
sons got everyone laughing as well as par-
ticipating in a vote in or out of favour to
give the approval for Gamin's canal. An
entertaining fight scene between the 10
Lamin children and the people tearing
down the Balmoral Hotel was high energy
and the melodramatic music seem to
paint the characters in place, like one of
those children's flip books as they moved
frons one place to another. All the charac-
ters in the scene seem to flowingly end up
in the right place after being punched or
pushed.
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