Comedy of a certain south-of-the-Mason-Dixon-Line type plays very well here North of 55 in Thompson, Manitoba. By way of parallel, it would be like community theatre audiences in Georgia or Texas falling in love with the Trailer Park Boys from fictional Sunnyvale Trailer Park in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, if it was a play, although the Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten fare on offer here is a tad less ribald, if only because it would be hard to match Ricky’s four-letter word vocabulary even in a NC-17 production, much less PG-13, if Jones, Hope and Wooten were writing movie scripts rather than plays, which they’re not. I’ve lived in Nova Scotia. And I’ve lived in the United States south of the Mason Dixon Line, so I think I get some of this. A more detailed explanation of why Northern Manitobans like Southern comedy is an interesting question for another day perhaps. But not today. For now, let’s just say it has something to do with universal appeal and mass audiences.
Give the Thompson Playhouse credit for having found a tried-and-true winning formula when it comes to selecting comedy. Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten are three of America’s most prolific and popular playwrights and this weekend at R.D. Parker Collegiate’s Letkemann Theatre, on both Friday, Nov. 21 and Saturday, Nov. 22, at 7 p.m. sharp both nights, Thompson Playhouse is mounting a production of The Red Velvet Cake War, which had its debut in October 2010 with Johnson City Community Theater in Johnson City, Tennessee. Tickets are $10 each. The producer is Wally Itson, recently retired principal of R.D. Parker Collegiate and now back to work general manager of Thompson Gas Bar Co-op Ltd. at Cree Road and Thompson Drive, while Donna Wilson, former general manager of the Thompson Citizen and Nickel Belt News, who is now the general manager of Thompson’s Quality Inn & Suites on Moak Crescent, directs. By happy coincidence you can pick up your tickets for The Red Velvet Cake War at … Thompson Gas Bar Co-op Ltd or Thompson’s Quality Inn & Suites. Tickets are also available at Don Johnson Jewellers in City Centre Mall and from some cast members.
Last November, Wilson, who is also president of Thompson Playhouse, directed a Jones, Hope and Wooten production of Dashing Through the Snow, set four days before Christmas in the tiny fictional town of Tinsel, Texas where a colourful parade of eccentric guests arrive at the Snowflake Inn.
Wilson made her directorial debut three years ago in November 2011 with Dixie Swim Club, also a Jones, Hope and Wooten production set on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The playwriting trio of Jones, Hope and Wooten have more than 2,500 productions to their credit and counting and are among most produced playwrights in America.
In November 2012, Thompson Playhouse changed the script slightly and offered a production of Chicago playwright Jack Sharkey’s (aka Rick Abbot’s) 1980 comedy Play On!, which Wilson co-produced with Itson.
While there are always some new faces, look for some familiar ones in The Red Velvet Cake War this weekend. Coral Bennett, who has acted in previous plays and made her directorial debut alongside Sue Colli, who has since retired to Cape Forchu, Nova Scotia, near Yarmouth, with Dixie Swim Club, is back on stage. As is local lawyer Serena Puranen; Kevin Hopton, a technology and trades instructor at the University College of the North here; teacher Ryan Barker, husband of Churchill riding NDP MP Niki Ashton; Delsie Jack; teacher Robyn Foley; and the real-life husband-and-wife team of writer Angela Wolfe and Anthony Wake.
In The Red Velvet Cake War, the three Verdeen cousins – Gaynelle, Peaches and Jimmie Wyvette – decide to throw a family reunion in the fictional small town of Sweetgum, Texas. Having “accidentally” crashed her minivan through the bedroom wall of her husband’s girlfriend’s double-wide trailer, Gaynelle is close to … well, a meltdown. Peaches, the top mortuarial cosmetologist in a three-county area, is struggling to decide if it’s time to have her long-absent trucker husband declared dead. And Jimmie Wyvette, the store manager of Whatley’s Western Wear, is resorting to extreme measures to outmaneuver a “priss-pot” neighbor for the affections of Sweetgum’s newest widower, as the eccentric Verdeens gather on the hottest day of July, smack-dab in the middle of Texas tornado season.
You can listen to a brief 32-second audio promo clip for this weekend’s production of The Red Velvet Cake by Thompson Playhouse right here: http://www.driveplayer.com/#fileIds=0ByoS9i0FECzWek4yQ0FlejFNcXRaa25sY1hob3I4WTROcXJV&userId=101189087505862053096
The most recent outing for Thompson Playhouse was May 31 when they presented Murder at the Tonylou Awards, an audience participation murder mystery – and play on their names – written by Tony Schwartz and Marylou Ambrose of the Lakeside Players in Tafton, Pennsylvania in 2002, as a fundraiser for the Juniper Centre, which brought in more than $7,000, Wilson said at the time.
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