Comedy a real trip

By LOUIS B. HOBSON

Last Updated: 25th October 2009, 3:33am

Norm Foster is Canada’s most prolific and popular playwright.

With his new Lunchbox Theatre comedy Under the Bright Sun, Foster seems to be entering an existential phase.

Foster strands four people at a bus stop.

Jake (Len Harvey) is an eager entrepreneur who is planning to convert a neighborhood pizza parlour into an upscale eatery with his overbearing wife Joanne (Karen Johnson-Diamond).

While waiting for Joanne, Jake is joined by Ernst (Gerald Matthews) a drop-out from life who admits he repulses women.

Before Joanne arrives, Violet (Elinor Holt), a self-proclaimed whiner, joins the men at the bus stop.

Soon, it becomes clear that even though the four people have lived in the same neighborhood all their lives, they don’t know each other and are not very familiar with their surroundings.

Foster has taken a few pages from Jean Paul Sartre’s existential play No Exit, but plays the same situations for the broadest of laughs.

Though it takes a good 40 minutes for the characters to realize who they are and why they’re at the bus stop, it takes the audiences less than 10 minutes to realize they are in the company of seasoned comics.

Harvey, Matthews, Holt and Johnson-Diamond know how to milk a line, an expression and even a pause for maximum laughs.

It’s up to the foursome and director Simon Mallett to establish and maintain energy, pace and suspense because Foster’s dialogue and plot are not nearly as scintillating and witty as they have been in the past.

UNDER THE BRIGHT SUN

Rating: 3 out of 5

STARRING

Karen Johnson-Diamond, Len Harvey (pictured above)

Lunchbox Theatre Runs until Nov. 14

Sun brightens the day

Lunchbox’s latest a laugher

By Bob Clark, Calgary Herald
October 21, 2009 9:56 AM

From left, Len Harvey (Jake), Gerald Matthews (Ernst), Elinor Holt (Violet), and Karen Johnson-Diamond (Joanne) on the set for the Lunchbox Theatre production of the comedy Under the Bright Sun.
Photograph by: Stuart Gradon, Calgary Herald

Review

Lunchbox Theatre presents Under the Bright Sun through Nov. 14.

- - - ½out of five

—

It’s testament to Norm Foster’s consummate skill as a comic playwright that his newest show can turn a play about four characters waiting at a bus stop into a cute play that deftly (and daftly) touches on what it means to live versus what it means to exist–simply through suddenly subverting our expectation of theatrical convention.

If that sounds a little ponderous, it isn’t–at least not in Foster’s Under the Bright Sun, which premiered on Tuesday at Lunchbox.

Taking his cue from the questioning absurdity in a play like Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, for example, Foster sets us up well–first, with straight-ahead Jake (Len Harvey), who says he’s waiting to open a cut-above-pizza type of eatery across the street; and next, with slightly daffy Ernst (Gerald Matthews), who says he lives in the big purple house on the corner and besides, just wants to wait with Jake.

Then comes the inconsolable Violet (Elinor Holt), wailing that she’s just broken up with her boyfriend (she’s now waiting for her lover); and Jake’s domineering wife Joanne (Karen Johnson-Diamond), who arrives to accompany her husband to the bank for the expected approval of their joint loan application for the aforementioned restaurant.

Turns out the only real trouble with this existentially imagined quartet is that–well, they don’t really seem to know their own . . . surroundings.

But to reveal anything about the rapid-fire building of conjecture that greets this realization would only ruin the conclusion, so. . . .

Suffice to say that, as directed by Simon Mallett, the 40-minute show unfolds in well-timed fashion in front of designer Scott Reid’s curving backdrop of painted panels depicting a leafy part of Anytown.

Aside from some of the sight-gag stuff at the beginning which could have been shortened by a bit, and the shrill histrionics of Holt’s Violet, which could been less by a lot, it all added up to a pretty funny day indeed in Mr. Foster’s neighbourhood.

bclark@theherald.canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

Media Release
For Immediate Release – October 8, 2009

Canada’s Most Produced Playwright Returns to Lunchbox

With a new comedy about how we perceive the world around us

Calgary, AB – Norm Foster, Canada’s most produced playwright with over 130 world-wide productions of his plays in 2009 alone, has once again lent his talents to Lunchbox Theatre for the world premiere of his brand new comedy, Under the Bright Sun, which runs October 19 to November 14.

Previous world premieres at Lunchbox Theatre from the always-entertaining Foster include last year’s wildly popular The Christmas Tree and 2006’s My Narrator.

Under the Bright Sun humorously explores the way many of us go through our lives often oblivious to the simple details of our surroundings while playing with theatrical conventions frequent theatre-goes may take for granted. In the play, four people at a bus stop don’t seem to know anything about their surroundings. Why are they there? Where are they going? And who can answer their questions? This is fast-paced comedy about living, loving, and taking stock.

Under the Bright Sun also provides Lunchbox Theatre the opportunity to welcome back director Simon Mallett who was the BD&P Emerging Director in 2006/07. Lunchbox Theatre artistic director Pamela Halstead says, “We have followed his continued success and it is a thrill to have him return to direct his first full production with us.”

>Under the Bright Sun features the fantastic comedic talents of Karen Johnson-Diamond, Elinor Holt, Len Harvey and Gerald Matthews. While designers Scott Reid and Shauna Breslawski bring Foster’s surreal world to life, with stage-management by Ailsa Birnie. Under the Bright Sun runs October 19 to November 14, Monday to Saturday at 12:10pm with ‘Happy Hour’ performances Friday at 6:10pm.

The world’s longest running lunchtime theatre, Lunchbox Theatre is a professional company that caters to downtown office workers over the noon-hour by producing six plays per year as well as the Petro-Canada Stage One Festival and the BD&P Emerging Director Program. Lunchbox Theatre recently relocated to a new theatre at the base of the Calgary Tower.

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www.lunchboxtheatre.com

For more information, to request an interview, or to visit a rehearsal:
DJ Kelly
Marketing and Communications
Lunchbox Theatre
403 265 4292 x 229
dj.kelly@lunchboxtheatre.com