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| Last updated
at 7:58 AM on 21/01/07 |
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IDEALISTS: Leon (Robin
Ward, right) and Bill (Bill Carr) in a scene
from Neptune Theatre's The Love List. (Photo:
SABRENA MacKENZIE) |
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Gotta love this
List 
Foster's comedy deceptively light
RON FOLEY MACDONALD
The Daily News
The Love List by
Norm Foster. Directed by Ron Ulrich at Neptune's Fountain
Theatre until Feb. 11. ****
If Neil Simon and Camille Paglia rewrote The
Bride of Frankenstein as a contemporary, three-person
comedic stage play, it might just describe Norm Foster's
marvellous The Love
List, Neptune's sparkling first mainstage production
of 2007.
Powered by a remarkably restrained, nuanced performance
by funnyman - and Sunday
Daily News columnist - Bill Carr, The
Love List is light comedy at its most deceptively
slight.
Foster - who happens to be Canada's most produced playwright
and, until recently, a longtime Maritimer - is one of
those rare writers who disguises his plays as mildly
diverting entertainment.
Barbed wit
Behind the gentle scenarios about everyday people with
everyday problems lies a ruthless intelligence armed
with a barbed wit and a wicked sense of propriety.
The Love List takes
as its subject men's expectations of the perfect woman.
Accelerating and distorting those expectations, the
play eventually reaches a richly absurd dramatic plateau
by the middle of the second act. Cleverly designed as
a set of themes and variations, Foster manages to reach
a playful sense of self-consciousness that lets the
audience in on the joke. The result is, at times, paralysingly
funny.
The two other members of the cast - Robin Ward as Leon
and Leisa Way as Justine - play off Carr with a certain
knowing aplomb that gives the play an unexpected sense
of relaxation and confidence, as if it was an after-dinner
game of charades.
Most of Foster's plays are deliberately small-scale,
making them ideal for community theatres and more intimate
performance spaces.
Director Ron Ulrich and set director Corey Mullins manage
a neatly unassuming single set of a loft-style apartment
that minimizes Neptune's tall ceiling and imposing sense
of space, making for a warm and inviting visual sense
that doesn't get in the way of the play's pointed humour.
With only a few snippets of Frank Sinatra introducing
scene changes, there's hardly any fancy lighting or
sound effects. You're left with Foster's superb writing
delivered by a polished cast, smartly directed by Ulrich.
There's just enough room in the production for the jokes
to breathe, giving several of Foster's juiciest observations
full range to resonate with the audience.
Major impression
An ideal way to pass a dreary mid-winter evening or
afternoon, The Love
List is proof that this country's most prolific
playwright has finally made an major impression on Halifax's
theatrical establishment. |
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