The Goderich Signal-Star, 1981-08-19, Page 17P
The cast of Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii now running at the Huron Coles, Don Saunders, Michael Menegon and Patricia Strain. ( Photo
Country Playhouse in Grand Bend is, from top left clockwise, courtesy of Playhouse)
Barbara Wheeldon, Jenny Turner, Miriam Newhouse, Stanley
Dealers and customers
enjoy show for benefit
of Bluewater residents
Twenty-one dealers from Windsor to
Willowdale displayed their wares last
weekend at Bluewater Centre's Fourth
Annual Antique Show and Sale, sponsored
by Bluewater's Volunteer Association.
Pat Wheeler, co-ordinator of Volunteer
Services at the Centre, said she was
"absolutelythrilled" with the show which
she said attracted top quality . mer-
chandise. •
With funds gathered from booth rentals,
admission charges, and the tea room, the
show enables the Volunteer Association to
finance projects that directly benefit the
1`
residents at Bluewater.,
In addition to buying Christmas presents'
for , the residents, and maintaining the
above -ground pool at the Centre, the
volunteers hope to raise enough money to
buy a $2,000 electric scooter which looks
like a tiny golf cart. The scooter is half the
price of an electric wheelchair.
?The Volunteer Association will be
holding one more fund-raising event at
Bluewater this year, the Annual Christmas
Bazaar which will take place the last
Wednesday in October.
photos by Cath Wooden
•
rcical s1it of Nurse
Jane just doesn't maks it
BY JOANNE BUCHANAN
Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii, the latest
production now running at the Huron
Country Playhouse, is billed as a farce. In
the dictionary, .arfarce is defined as a play
marked by broadly satirical comedy and
improbable plot.
Nurse Jane certainly fulfills this
definition. In fact it goes overboard. The
actors and actresses play their roles well
but the impossibly silly script by Allan
Stratton gets in the way. To put it bluntly:
1 w as not amused.
However, readers must remember that
this is my opinion only and they may want
to check out Nurse Jane for themselves. A
small survey of people who saw the play
the same night I did, revealed mixed
reactions.
The satire in Nurse Jane is aimed at
Harlequin romance novels. When Vivien
Bliss ( Miriam Newhouse), a Harlequin
novelist and creator of Nurse Jane
Pringle, decides to spend an illict weekend
with a respectably married geography
teacher named Edgar Chishohn (Stanley
Coles), she is already beyond the deadline
for her latest, book. How she gets the book
done in spite of all the crazy incidents that •
follow, makes up theloose plot of Nurse
Jane.
Newhouse plays her role as a scat-
terbrain extremely°well. For most of the
play she runs around in bright pink fuzzy
slippers and baby doll pajamas talking
into a tape recorder microphone, piecing
together the plot for her latest novel. Coles
is also excellent as the boring and equally
silly man she meets in her ceramics class.
The mainstay of the play though is ,
Barbara Wheeldon, whom the audience
may remember from her previous
Playhouse role in Chapter Two. She has
the role of Doris Chisholm, wife of Edgar,
alias Chloris Bienfait, advice columnist.
The rest of the cast includes Don
Saunders as Bill Scant who spends most of
the play with a pair of panty hose stretched
over his face; Jenny Turner as Betty
Scant, Bill's domineering wife and
Vivien'q dnminoorino editor; and
G�dericth
SIGNAL
Playhouse newcomers Patricia Strain and
Michael Menegon as Peggy Stant and
Peter Prior, the illegitimate children of
Bill Scant and Doris Chisholm and Betty
Scant and Edgar Chishohn.
Sound, confusing? It is. Add to ail this,
Vivien's incessant talking into the tape
recorder and it's enough to make one
crazy.
I'll admit that there are some clever,
amusing lines in the play but the whole
production deteriorates from bad to worse
in Act II with everybody on stage yelling
and screaming, chasing one another,
flailing their arms and in general, con-
tributing to the mass confusion. Someone
even gets the proverbial cake in the face.
Maybe I just don't have the right sense
of humor. Perhaps I like more subtle
comedy. And there is nothing subtle about
Nurse Jane. It tends to beat one over the
head with its farcical plot. It's so con-
fusing, you Have to see it to believe it. It
runs until August 22.
STAB
133 YEAR -33
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 19, 1981
SECOND SECTION
This spotlight plays on 5ntique colored glassware.
on sale by Clair Gates of .'imcoe.
This is an Armand Marseille doll
made in Germany between 1900-1930.
It was on sale by Alena Hopkins
of Dorchester's Four Horsemen Antiques.
Three-year old Jennifer Boak of Goderich tries out an antique rocker
Many people mingled ahou t the Fourth Annual Antique Show & Sale at Bluewater Centre on Friday and Sat urda vN
ti