If the legendary comedic playwright Neil Simon was sitting down today to pen Barefoot in the Park (the 10th-longest running play in Broadway history), it’s quite possible he might have taken his inspiration from Rachel Fischer. She is the energetic Toronto/New York-based actor who will star as the free-spirited Corie Bratter in the Classic Theatre Festival production of this beloved marital comedy opening July 10 in Perth. Fischer, whom television viewers might recognize as the dog groomer and first actor ever to be touched by the pain-killing Mr. Robax in a nationally televised commercial, has been performing since she could stand. “I was quite the comedienne and was always putting on shows and getting all my friends to take on roles and costumes, and I always loved making up stories,” she recalls. “It was always a lot of fun to play, and now as an adult to be able to make a living playing on stage feels so much like home.” She grew up with singing and dancing lessons, and at the age of 15 was attending high school during the day and the Winnipeg School of Performing Arts by night, literally working around the clock while also taking roles in the North Kildonan Community Players, a community theatre group run by her father for 17 years. “I did drama in high school and was the girl who failed math and went from rehearsal to take a test in English class but was late, and the teacher said she could hear the tap shoes rushing down the hall as I tried to get there,” she recalls with a laugh. After playing in her first professional gig at Manitoba’s Rainbow Stage as a chorus girl in Crazy For You, she subsequently entered the highly-regarded Sheridan College Music Theatre Performance Program, which graduates “triple-threat” performers who sing, dance, and act. “It’s a whole other beast, because everyone comes from another school and feels like they’re on top of the world, and suddenly you’re thrown into this crazy world of reality and experts that teach you that it is not just singing and dancing, but that there’s a real determination and stamina that you need to have in this business,” Fischer says. Fischer graduated early for a job at the Deerhust Resort (where Shania Twain got her professional start), and recalls sitting in the same dressing room where the country music star once put on her makeup. Since then, Fischer has performed across Canada, in lead and featured roles in productions including The Little Years, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Magnus Theatre), Anne of Green Gables, The Wedding Singer (Canadian premiere at Stage West), Footloose (Stage West Calgary), Good News, Chicago, and Grease at Rainbow Stage (Canada’s longest-running professional outdoor theatre company). While TV viewers know her for appearances in ads for everything from Staples to Mazda and her role in the W Network’s Smart Women’s Survival Guide, she also originated the role of Cheryl in the first professional Canadian company… Continue reading

This summer marks the 85th anniversary of the Nancy Drew series of fictional mystery novels. With that in mind, the Classic Theatre Festival’s annual theatrical walking tour, Perth through the Ages, kicks off a new story in the town core that features a character who is inspired by the teen detective’s spunky smarts and fearlessness. Building on the success of last year’s Perth through the Ages story, “The Preacher and the Leading Lady,” this year’s hour-long presentation, staged by the Festival’s youth theatre training project, features upcoming talents performing Wednesday to Sunday at 11 am from June 24 to August 30. In addition, the troupe will also perform a new family-friendly Friday night event, The Lonely Ghosts Walk, beginning July 10 at 8 pm. The daytime tour, which begins at Matheson House (the Perth Museum, 11 Gore Street East), is set in 1930, when 19-year-old Nora Shaw (the Nancy-Drew like character) is packing up her family’s belongings as the house is set to be sold and become a tea room. She is distracted, however, by a haunting tune coming from the garden, where she eventually meets the ghost of Ann Glascott, a nursery maid who was once employed by the Honourable Roderick Matheson, leading to a scandal that rocked the town. Audiences will find remarkable similarities between the Perth of 1930 and that of 1830-40s: both were marked by economic desperation and poverty, towns dealing with the ill effects of alcohol consumption, and social structures in which women were often treated as second class citizens. Ann wants her story to be told, and Nora, motivated by reading the first in the Nancy Drew series, is ready to tackle the challenge. Ann guides Nora through the streets of Perth, describing life as she knew it in the early days of the military settlement. They run into a series of significant historic buildings as well as characters including Malcolm Cameron, founder of the Bathurst Courier (now the Perth Courier) and William and John Bell (the sons of the stern Presbyterian Minister William Bell, a Calvinist who played a major role in the early years of Perth). Also appearing will be Mary McMillan, a former servant girl, then the wife of Captain Alexander McMillan, Roderick Matheson’s best friend. The murky legal waters of another of Perth’s founding denizens, Daniel Daverne, lies at the heart of The Lonely Ghosts Walk, which will start each Friday at the Classic Theatre Festival (54 Beckwith Street East, at Harvey) and traverse through the historic Burying Ground, Court House, the Red House (Adamson’s Inn), the Morris store, the King’s Stores, and McMartin House. Along the way, a modern-day tour guide and descendant of Daverne is suddenly transported back in time to Perth’s early years, when her ancestor was, he felt, unjustly disgraced. Daverne faced charges of embezzlement and abuse of government powers as he tried to administer the complicated and conflicting demands placed upon him as superintendent of Lanark, Leeds, Grenville and Carleton Counties. The elder Daverne seeks… Continue reading