The Classic Theatrre Festival is pleased to announce a new, expanded season for the summer of 2016, running June 24 to September 11 with three signature shows from the golden age of Broadway and the London Stage, as well as a return of the much-loved Perth through the Ages morning walking tours and the Friday evening Lonely Ghosts Walk. The season opens with Neil Simon’s I Ought to Be in Pictures (June 24 to July 17, 2016), a heartfelt 1979 comedy about a father and daughter rebuilding their relationship after years of disconnection. It was hailed as “a mature, touching, memorable play that brings great joy to the season” (Clive Barnes, New York Post) and “Neil Simon’s best play since The Odd Couple” (Women’s Wear Daily). It also became a hit film starring Walter Matthau, Ann Margret and Dinah Manoff. The summer’s second show is Arms and the Man (July 22 to August 14, 2016), George Bernard Shaw’s delightfully witty comedy that satirizes the futility of war and inspired the operetta, The Chocolate Soldier. George Orwell called it “the wittiest play” Shaw ever wrote, and one whose message needs to be told so long as men insist on taking up arms against one another. In the season’s closing play, the Festival returns with its annual mystery/thriller, An Inspector Calls (August 19 to September 11, 2016), J.B. Priestley’s nail-biter of a mystery in which a body has been found and everyone is suspect. Considered one of the true classics of mid-20th-century English theatre, it has received numerous revivals and adaptations, the latest a BBC-TV film slated for broadcast in 2016. The Festival is spending the month of September auditioning performers for these classic plays, while it also develops new stories for the Perth through the Ages theatrical historic walking tour (which will run five mornings a week, Wed. to Sun. at 11 am, June 22 to August 28). This annual family favourite staged with the Festival’s youth theatre training program, brings to life characters and stories from Perth’s 200 years. Following the success of its first year, The Lonely Ghosts Walk (July 8 to August 26), featuring new stories about the ghostly beings of Perth who insist on hanging around until their stories are told, returns for Friday nights from 8 to 9 pm. As Perth celebrates its 200th anniversary in the summer of 2016, all of these events are officially playing roles in the party. Tickets are now on sale, with significant savings for purchases before December 31. As always, the Festival allows audiences to purchase now and pick their dates later (with no charge). Tickets are available at classictheatre.ca or 1-877-283-1283. Continue reading

The release of the latest Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, is bringing back some warm Hollywood memories for Perth resident and Classic Theatre Festival Associate Producer Matthew Behrens, who lived in the City of Angels for a decade. “Both my parents were actors, and my Dad, Bunny Behrens, was chosen to play the role of Obi Wan Kenobi in a series of radio productions of Star Wars for National Public Radio in the early1980s,” Matthew recalls. “The pay was nothing to write home about but the experience was great, because he got to work with some terrific performers, including some of the original Star Wars actors.” Among those who gathered around a Studio City microphone with Behrens were Mark Hamill, reprising his Luke Skywalker role, and Anthony Daniels, the quirky English chap who created the role of C-3PO on film. With James Earl Jones unavailable for the Darth Vader character, that role was filled by veteran Hollywood actor Brock Peters (who played Tom Robinson in the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird). Behrens had previously worked with James Earl Jones on a forgettable satire of pirate films, Swashbuckler, along with fellow Canadian Genevieve Bujold. The multi-year series recreated the stories of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi, airing on NPR stations across the United States at a time when some radio networks still broadcast evening comedies and mysteries. “Each new series would be launched with a reception at the amazing Griffith Park observatory in Los Angeles which, if you have never been there, you’ve probably seen in a multitude of Hollywood movies, including many scenes in James Dean’s Rebel Without a Cause,” Matthew remembers. “So the place was dripping with history. As the lights dimmed, the ceiling of the observatory would become a starscape and, in the dark, we would listen to the first episode, just like people used to do when radio was the main source of entertainment in North America.” Matthew Behrens lived in the same neighbourhood as the The Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, a retirement home for performers, and recalls seeing some of the legendary actors of the 30s and 40s in their sunset years across the street at the El Camino Shopping centre. “Mae Clark (who got a grapefruit in the kisser from Jimmy Cagney), and Gale Sondergaard, who was Bride of Frankenstein, were often shopping for shoes and I got a wee peak at these folks who were still larger than life figures who carried themselves with such class and dignity.” Behrens recalls that Sondergaard, in particular, also carried with her the weight of a bleak era in Hollywood documented in another new Hollywood release, Trumbo, which recreates the Red Scare blacklist period. During that time, premature ends were brought both her own film career and that of her husband, director Herbert Biberman (who, with Dalton Trumbo, was one of the Hollywood Ten group of writers and directors blacklisted for standing up against racism and being labeled “premature… Continue reading