Twice within a month, the Kamsack Players Drama Club has given the community terrific reasons to cheer and support amateur theatre productions.
First, it was the sensational drama Dad’s Piano, which moved audiences in Kamsack and Regina, and then on the weekend the Club staged Scrooge Macbeth at the annual dinner theatre held in the OCC Hall.
Written by David MacGregor, Scrooge Macbeth is a two-act play that features a cast of five. It was directed by Nancy Brunt with choreography by Ellen Amundsen-Case, who was one of the actors.
It is difficult to imagine a play that would be more perfect to be staged for a dinner theatre, especially a dinner theatre during the Christmas season, than is Scrooge Macbeth.
It has everything: laughs, songs, dances, pantomimes, a sprinkling of naughty bits and a parade of costumes, which in itself was worth the price of admission.
The play is brilliantly constructed in order to include every Christmas cliché imaginable mixed with the most familiar of Shakespeare’s lines and characters.
And the Players were successful in milking every line and nuance for their laughs.
Although everyone in the community knows that Zennovia Duch can sing, she being a cantor and core member of the Kamsack Community Choir, who knew that James Perry had such a nice singing voice, and that Ellen Amundsen-Case and Kevin Sprong could sing and dance as well as they do?
And all four did justice to the playwright’s words and intentions.
Perry, who in his performance demonstrated what he has learned, having been involved in theatre for three decades, had a hoot, bouncing and mugging mischievously around the stage in an assortment of costumes. In a show that gave him free reign to delve into many maniacal interpretations, he pretty well stopped the show with his hilarious impression of Santa Claus.
Sprong, who had cut his acting teeth with theatre companies in South Africa, was perfectly cast as the seasoned Shakespearian actor, who while being much too lofty to consider lending his talents to any subordinate theatrical enterprise, still proved to be a very good kisser, to the surprise of all three of his cast mates.
Amundsen-Case, who in real life is a former chorus member and ballroom dancer, shone brightly in a soliloquy that fronted a hilarious pantomime, and no one seeing the play will be able to think of Cleopatra again without the image of her comic portrayal.
It was a treat to see Duch, who has acted in many Players’ productions, return to the stage singing and dancing in an assortment of colourful costumes for different characters, including that of the little girl asking the newspaper man if there really is a Shakespeare and as Shylock, Shakespeare’s creation who wanted his pound of flesh.
Even Odaria Moline, in a small role as the stage manager warning the cast that the show was about to begin, contributed beautifully to the zany goings-on, both on stage and behind the scenes.
Scrooge Macbeth was a real treat; a surprising, wonderful, funny Christmas treat.
(Thought: How about if the Players decide to stage the same play, with the same cast every year? It might even become as much a Christmas tradition are some of the clichés in Scrooge Macbeth.)
