MORRISBURG – William Shakespeare probably got it right. After all, he did once comment “the course of true love never did run smooth…”
And in Norm Foster’s very witty new comedy, Those Movies, currently on stage at Upper Canada Playhouse, love does indeed shoot off in many directions, and seldom smoothly. Built around the ‘romances’ of four (and in typical Foster fashion) completely believable characters, the play explores just what ‘love’ is all about.
Harry (Ephraim Ellis) runs a hospital parking lot gate – oh, excuse me, he’s “a barrier gate operator’ – who has had a crush for over two months on his fellow “barrier gate operator, ” Millie (Brittany Kay), and has only just worked up the nerve to finally ask her out for dinner. She will be meeting him at his apartment that very night. Harry is obsessed with creating just the right romantic impression for his potential lady friend.
However, that impression may be skewed a bit if Millie arrives to find Harry’s friend Patrick flopped on his couch, and scrounging in the kitchen. He’s staying while his own apartment is being fumigated (“silver fish, beetles, and some termites…but no bed bugs!”). Patrick (Jeff Dingle) admits to being a bit bored by Harry’s observations about ‘romance’ such as “Women love genuine feelings.” However, he admits that he too has seen those ‘romantic’ Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts movies, and, based on them, he absolutely knows the ideal way to any woman’s heart – “just say you own a bookstore! A man who owns a bookstore would be very attractive to women…a deep thinker.” At least according to those movies. Based on such romances, Patrick grandly announces that he can arrange for any woman to fall in love with him. Just watch. And as Millie is bringing her cousin Chelsea (Caitlin Driscoll) with her on this first date, Harry convinces Patrick to take off his beer soaked sneakers, tidy up, and join them as Chelsea’s escort.
From the moment Millie and Chelsea arrive, the “course of true love” grows madly skewed. Millie greets Patrick with “Is this your buddy who has the infestation?” And Chelsea hobbles in on one shoe, having lost the other heel in a street grate, just the latest, as Millie points out, in years of “Chelsea things.” She has always been the butt of jokes in their family: why, even her husband ditched her, and then didn’t bother to leave town with his new girl.
In true to life, funny conversational asides, and often hilarious repartee, the audience gets to know these four characters and to care about them. Despite Patrick’s observation that his buddy Harry is so shy around women that he “wouldn’t know his hanky from his panky”, there may be something between him and Millie (who is also playing games, pretending not to be well educated, since in traditional romances, men don’t like women cleverer than them.) Over the course of the dinner date, even Patrick discovers, almost ironically, that he may have actually taken a shine to sweet-natured Chelsea. “She’s falling for me, and I kind of like her too.” However, when he and Chelsea are finally alone together at the end of Act I, and she kisses him – which should lead to the burst of romantic music, and movie true love -what he actually does hurts her. “You weren’t holding up your end of the kiss.” It’s one thing “for my family to treat me like a fool” but when someone she cares for does the same, it is a bitter blow. Chelsea leaves and Patrick fails to stop her because “Romance only happens in the movies, not in the real world.”
Or does it?
In Act II, set a year later, Millie and Harry are still together. And Patrick, still alone, arrives to visit them: he hasn’t been a frequent guest over the year since both Harry and Millie believe he is at fault for Chelsea’s departure. “Why are you blaming others for your actions? You’re a blame shifter.”
And then Foster tosses something unexpected into this delightful comedy. Chelsea herself, cursed, of course, with yet another broken heel hobbles in, to announce some changes she has made in her life. What will happen? Can such a thing as ‘true romance’ actually exist between such ‘ordinary’ people as Chelsea and Patrick? Are “those movies” right about love?
Directed by Jesse Collins, with four strong and convincing actors bringing their characters to wonderful life, Norm Foster’s Those Movies explores life and love in many, many ways. Harry, Millie, Patrick and Chelsea are real people in this playwright’s hands, and we come to care about them. Sometimes we laugh at them, but mostly we laugh with them. As Norm Foster pointed out in a earlier Leader interview “How will they walk through to the other side? How will it all come out, especially if it isn’t easy to find the way? Yes, love can really surprize you……”
At the end of the play, one character shouts: “No! No! I’ll be here tomorrow morning! And forever!”
Well…cue the romantic music!….
Laughter and love…Norm Foster’s Those Movies.