There Goes the Bride

Postcard Review by Caroline Russell-King

Show – There Goes the Bride

Playwright/composer – John Chapman and Ray Cooney

Production Company/Theatre space – Morpheus Theatre, Victor Mitchell theatre, Pumphouse.

Length – 2 hours 40 minutes (one 15 min. intermission)

Genre/s – Farce

Premise – The father of the bride bangs his head the morning of his daughter’s wedding and hallucinates the model for his new bra marketing campaign which sets in motion all manner complications and shenanigans.

Why this play? Why now? – It’s a big cast, perfect for community theatre, and hasn’t been done in Calgary since Stage West in 2019 (who did it in 100 minutes, with no intermission).

Curiosities – The preshow announcement warns us that the first act runs an hour and twenty --isn’t that a clue? Are actors getting more chaste or are Intimacy Directors hindering shows?

Notable moment – The joke that made me (a 62-year-old Brit) laugh, but no one else did.

Notable writing – Cooney is one of the best and most successful farceurs of the 20th century. This show is dated (though it’s no fault of his). It was also written as a British farce for a British audience, so not all of the humour lands – again not the fault of the playwright.

Notable performances – There are two simple things that actors can do to shield themselves from bad direction: 1) know their lines, and 2) pick up their cues. Some of these actors went into battle without shields and the audience got injured.

Notable design/Production – A sound designer should never be asked to create the sound effects for a soda syphon; but kudos to Grace Lu who did. Christie Johnson shouldn’t put actors in costumes their characters can’t trash. Beige shoes with a black dress? Set Designer Sharon Umeh is being mentored and is by default inexperienced. I’m going to assume the stage manager had enough to deal with and let them off the hook for fake alcohol that looks like 2-week-old tea.

Notable direction – This show needs at least two more weeks in rehearsal. The production is riddled with bad directorial choices. Farce is hard -- the exits and entrances with split-second opening and closing provide an essential rhythm (like percussion for a score); if the stage is big the actors have to run; if the stage is tiny a few steps can be taken a smidge slower. Mime isn’t part of this genre (unless one character is frantically miming behind another’s back to communicate for laughs). An actor should never be asked to mime being on the receiving end of a soda syphon. The director should never stage a drink spill upstage to hide the fact it doesn’t really happen. There is an urgency in farce – a clock that ticks down with the intensity of a social bomb about to explode. In this case, the bride has to get to the church with all the accoutrements. Stakes are high, being lackadaisical should be counterintuitive. In a “sex” farce things should actually be sexy. The casting of the play should be age appropriate so that our toes don’t curl.

One reason to see this show – It will make older British ex-pats feel nostalgic.