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When the Classic Theatre Festival’s mainstage season opens June 23 with the legendary Bernard Slade comedy Same Time, Next Year (sponsored by CogecoTV), many audience members will recognize the performer playing George, a married man who gets together for an annual weekend with a married woman named Doris, played by Lana Sugarman. The longest running Canadian comedy in Broadway history is the brainchild of a Canadian writer who, in addition to penning many a CBC show during the 1950s and 60s, also created the TV series The Flying Nun and The Partridge Family. Clarkson says his character is “the same mass of walking contradictions that we all are. He describes his life as a mess, but he became an accountant because figures don’t lie, and he takes comfort in that.” Clarkson notes that among George’s conflicted feelings is the fact that “he considers himself happily married, but falls in love with Doris and carries on a yearly tryst with her for decades. He feels terrible guilt, but doesn’t want to stop. He alternates between self-centred obliviousness and being aware enough to know when he’s made a mistake, and to apologize for it.” The veteran Festival performer – now appearing in his 7th consecutive summer season – says “the scope of playing a person over the span of a quarter century is what makes it tricky. Each scene is set in a distinct era, five years apart, and George and Doris clearly reflect the changes of the society in which they live. Lana and I can’t play symbols though, and Slade walks the line between letting the characters suggest the times outside their never changing hotel room, and being the messy human beings in love that they are.” Playing George recalls Clarkson’s first role at the Festival in the Jan de Hartog play The Fourposter, which similarly charts a marriage’s ups and downs over 40 years. “Though written a generation apart, I remember being so impressed with how The Fourposter felt fresh and true, and that’s also true of Same Time, Next Year.” Being on stage the whole time is a challenge that Clarkson likens to running a marathon that, while testing his endurance, benefits from the fact that “there’s really no opportunity to let your guard down, to be distracted backstage as you wait for 15 minutes for your next scene. You get to live in the world you’ve help create, for the duration of the show.” While the play and film of Same Time, Next Year (with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn) were hugely popular with baby boomers, Clarkson notes “the characters are actually older than boomers, so if anything, this is an opportunity for a boomer to get a glimpse of what life may have been like for their parents. But for all that, Slade doesn’t write Doris and George as bland 1950s stereotypes. “Slade made his name as a TV writer in the 60s, but this play allowed him to go so much deeper than a sitcom… Continue reading

The Classic Theatre Festival is gearing up for two major openings later this month, as its 8th summer season heats up in sync with significant anniversaries being marked across the land. With Ontario and Canada both marking sesquicentennials, the Festival plans to present a number of works that both reflect where Canada was in 1867 and also to celebrate the most successful Canadian playwrights to hit Broadway during the company’s mandate period (the 1920s through the 70s). On June 21, Laurel Smith’s new historic walking play, A Nation Lost and Found, opens the 4th season of the Perth through the Ages series of shows, highlighting key characters, stories, and themes in the town’s heritage history. Directed by Joanna McAuley Treffers, it features four members of the Festival’s youth theatre training program: Keegan Carr, Emma Houlahan, Garrett Pipher and Connor Williamson. In this historical re-creation, audiences will observe Perth residents as they go about their daily lives at the time of Confederation. What were they thinking and talking about with respect to the birth of a new country: the forced dispossession of Indigenous peoples’ traditional territories, the dynamics of the 1837 rebellion, the debates over the Fenian Raids? How did they handle the always tender terrain of courtship, love, and marriage? The hour-long, family-friendly historic walking play introduces viewers to the conflicts, challenges and everyday dreams of people who once lived inside the fabulous architecture that won the town the Prince of Wales heritage preservation prize. “These plays remind us that it’s a myth to say that Canadian history is boring,” says Smith. “We get to dig a little deeper and find out that those who came before us dealt with major issues that, in many ways, still reflect a lot of the problems we still face today.” Smith felt it was important to point out that not everyone was celebrating the birth of a new nation in 1867, especially given the attempts – then as now – to destroy nations that have inhabited this land for tens of thousands of years. “As a company, we feel it is vitally important to acknowledge that we live and operate on unceded, traditional Algonquin territory, and that the scars of centuries of abuse must be part of the conversation we have around the Canada and Ontario 150 events this year.” Smith points out that while the history of settler-Indigenous relations is often painful and shameful, there were non-Indigenous individuals who did speak up about the dispossession of Indigenous lands, pointing to the work of 19th-century whistleblower Peter Henderson Bryce, a medical officer who tried to expose the appalling conditions faced by Indigenous children forced into residential schools. Bryce is buried in Ottawa’s Beechwood cemetery. A Nation Lost and Found runs June 21 to August 27, Wed. to Sun at 11 am, starting at Matheson House Museum. The Classic Theatre Festival, which on its mainstage produces hits from the golden age of Broadway and the London Stage, opens the most successful Canadian comedy ever… Continue reading