Village Squire, 1976-08, Page 33time and again.
Many people told Roy he should bring the
production back for a.second season and he
was finally convinced to bring it back for a
short run of four performances. As of this
writing, all of the performances he,ld so far
had been completely sold out iri advance and
many people ryere turned away. An extra
performance was added. The show will also
go on tour to Kincardine and Petrolia after the
Blyth season. (It will return to Blyth for a
special performance in aid of the building
fund for the Blyth arena.)
The second best box office draw was even
more of a surprise than Clover. Roy decided
that he wanted to do a stage version of the
Alice Munro short story "How I Met my,.
Husband". He rounded up a script from the
television version of the story and set to work
with his actors and actresses to develop the
story into a longer play. The result is a show
that was long on quiet humour and mood and
short on action, not the kind of thing that
seems a big crowd-pleaser. Yet the reviews
were good, the box-office much better than
expected and the audience comment
praiseworthy.
On the other hand, the disappointment
came in the form of the show that was
expected to be the big hit of the season: a
musical adaptation of Lister Sinclair's play
The Blood is Strong. The play seemed a
natural fort the area: telling the story of a
pioneer Scottish 'family in an area where
pioneer life if still revered and there are many
Scottish people. The production was
excellent, one of the best all-round shows
seen in this area and the best of the season at
The Festival. The critics gave it rave reviews,
even the normally hard -to -please Gina
Mallett of the Toronto Star. The audiences
that were there (and they were respectable if
not as large as hoped) loved the show. Yet
People didn't flock to the box office and
Festival people are still trying to figure out
why.
More serious, however, was the final
production of the season. When you walk the
tightrope producing new material so often,
sooner of later you're to slip and fall and the
Festival's Shape was that fall. It was the first
completely new script the Festival had done,
compared to adaptations. The play was
commissioned from actor, writer J im
Schaefer to celebrate Olympic year and
concentrating on the story of a small town
athlete who goes to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Schaefer quickly learned that its easier to
act in a play than write it. He rewrote and
rewrote' but still the final script had many
flaws. Some faulty staging, particularly
lighting didn't help the show either. The
Festival actors performed well and the music
of Ann Lindsay stood up well but in general,
the critics hated the show and apparently so
did the audiences since Shape produced the
poorest box office of all the shows.
The Blyth Festival proves that Canadian
theatre can be both excellent and mediocre,
both popular and not popular but with the.
overall success there (75 per cent isn't a bad
average) and the big success at Stratford and
Grand Bend, it seems likely we'll be seeing
more Canadian productions in the coming
years.
-tc
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