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As July turns to August, there’s still a few more opportunities to see the hit Classic Theatre Festival production of the Neil Simon comedy Barefoot in the Park, which runs until Sunday, August 2 at 54 Beckwith Street East in Heritage Perth, Ontario. Thousands of visitors have joined local residents in applauding this production that the Capital Critics Circle praised as “bubbly and very entertaining,” and which also drew the praise of JACK-FM morning man Wayne Cavanagh, who enthused: “Director Laurel Smith has a lovable cast making a Neil Simon classic fresh and fun. It makes me want a beige Princess phone and a 5th-floor walkup!” The latter references the setting of the 1963 show, the 10th-longest running in Broadway history. A young married couple, conservative lawyer Paul (Chris Zonneville) and his free-spirited bride Corie (Rachel Fischer), butt heads in a tiny Greenwich Village apartment where the heat doesn’t work, and February breezes freely flow through. Their clash of values, opposites attracting and sparking, is pure Simon, who has created many similar shows based on such dynamics, such as The Odd Couple (two divorcees, one of whom is a neat freak and the other a slob) and The Sunshine Boys (two vaudevillians are brilliant onstage but cannot stand each other in real life). Much of the show’s long-standing appeal is rooted in Simon’s ability as a writer to parse the range of human emotions, and to show that seemingly intractable situations can be resolved through patience, determination, and a sense of humour that includes the ability to laugh at oneself. Throw in some wacky characters – from an overweight telephone repairman (Sean Jacklin) for whom climbing five flights of stairs is a trauma, and the vivacious, boisterous Victor Velasco (William Vickers) to the loopy Ethel Banks (Catherine Bruce), trying to find her way in life as a middle-aged woman – and it makes for the kind of entertaining matinee or evening that shines a new light on one of the great plays from the golden age of Broadway. With the exception of Jacklin (a Perthite who is currently attending theatre school at George Brown College), all of the performers hail from southern Ontario, with two of them having performed in previous Classic Theatre seasons. With the support of local billeting hosts, they have enjoyed their stay in Perth, haunting local restaurants and shops while taking in some of the many summertime activities Perth offers, including fishing, kayaking, and learning lines in Stewart Park under a shady tree. As Barefoot in the Park comes to a close, the theatre will be dark for a few days as the changeover for a new set comes in, this time for another Greenwich Village-situated show, Wait Until Dark, the gripping thriller that was made into a legendary Audrey Hepburn film. Running August 7-30, it will feature the professional debut of two area child actors, Perth’s Madison Miernik and Smiths Falls’ Samantha Salter, who will rotate the role of a 9-year-old girl who plays a… Continue reading

One of the first times actor Chris Zonneville ran into Rachel Fischer, his co-star in the Classic Theatre Festival production of Neil Simon’s comedy “Barefoot in the Park” (running July 10 to August 2), she knocked out one of his teeth. The two first met while performing in a series of Disney Cruise Lines musicals, as part of “Toy Story: The Musical” casts. The cruises would launch from Cape Canaveral and end up on Disney’s private island in the Bahamas (where the movie “Blow” was filmed). On a second tour, they saw each other for the first time in eight months and, in a manner common to the theatrical tradition, went for a friendly hug. “But as we went to hug each other, a guy walking nearby accidentally bumped her from behind, so she butted me in the face and broke out my fake tooth. It was funny, and also a bit awkward, but we were chipper about it and went on,” Zonneville laughs. Little did he know then that the two would work on a show as a battling young married couple years later in Perth, in the roles of stuffed shirt lawyer Paul and his free-spirited newlywed wife Corie. Then again, accidents can have a funny way of determining one’s destiny. Zonneville’s path to a life on the stage began when an accident kicked him off the elementary school basketball team. So when his mother needed boys for the chorus of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie,” he suddenly had some free time and gave it a shot. Like many a youthful performer, he was immediately struck by the unique experience. “I finally found a voice that empathized with me when I got into theatre, and I love telling stories, which is the basis for theatre,” says Zonneville. “I was very young at the time, and it just seemed very real and natural and I was good at it,” he says, noting that growing up in a sports-crazy town (Sarnia), his future as a theatre student was a bit different from the career paths of many of his hockey-loving peers. He was accepted at one of the top theatre schools in North America, Sheridan College, where he enjoyed the triple threat program (singing, dancing, acting) a few years behind Fischer. “It’s a remarkable program, and you get back what you put into it, with a great staff who put in the time to make sure you get the training you want.” His first professional gig out of school was performing “The Mikado” at Southern Ontario’s Drayton Theatre, and he has since performed across the country in a variety of roles, including a recent Thousand Islands Playhouse production of “Anne & Gilbert,” as well as a remount of “Les Miserables” at the Princess of Wales Theatre in 2013. He says that musical was huge but very intimate at the same time. “I will never forget our first public preview, and we sing this huge Act 1 finale song and 2,000… Continue reading