@ - Friday, Nov. 6, 1992 - Nerth Shore News

North Shore theatre is in sad shape!

r “ per theatre in its own community

BIG US not necessarily best.

Like it? | thought you'd appre-
ciate its originality.

This fresh thought occurred to
me while lL was ruminating that
the state of theatre — and the
theatres — on the North Shore is
worse than the state of my study.
(And you should see my study.
Bring your own shovel.)

Last spring the group called
ACTION failed in its attempt to
save the deserted West Van Odeon
movie house and reclaim it for te-
gitimate theatre and other pur-
poses.

No dough. No political support.
No community support — none,
that is, from corporate or private
West Vancouverites, in a com-
munity with the highest per-capita
income in Canada.

(Hey, Guinness family —
you’ve made scores of millions of
dollars in West Vancouver for 60
years through your British Pacific
Properties land sales. Why not
establish a small but perfect
Guinness Theatre here as a token
of your affection? Just a thought.
From a big fan of your brew.)

So ACTION, which stands for
Acknowledging Creative Talent in
Our Neighborhood, crashed into
INACTION. Which I guess stands
for ‘I'l Never Acknowledge ...’’
etc. etc.

Then, from gloom to doom:
last month the Presentation House
Theatre board abruptly lowered
the curtain on its 1992-93 season
before it began, following the ex-
pensive failure of the apparently
over-ambitious summer produc-
tion of Haunted House Hamlet.

The theatre’s director, Michae!
Fera, resigned.

Accusations have been flying
back and forth, including the fair
one that Presentation House needs
air conditioning.

This leaves the North Shore
with one middling-sized theatre,
North Shore Centennial, and one
tiny one: the charmingly off-beat,
and definitely off-the-beaten-
track, Theatre at Hendry Hall.

ve frankly never cared much
for North Van Centennial, with its
poorly designed foyer, awkward,
strung-out area for standing and
chatting at intermission, a
refreshment stand with the
sophistication of that of a small-
town hockey rink, and — maybe
worst of ali —- appallingly ama-
teur coat-check facilities.

Its best features are its location
and its parking lot.

Little wonder that it's rarely us-
ed for plays.

Trevor
Lautens

on.
co

The Theatre at Hendry Hall is
so whimsically obscure — it’s ina
leafy residential neighborhood, the
800-block East 1fth, just east of
Grand Boulevard — that even our
mauscular and cosmopolitan West
Vancouver mayor, Mark Sager,
told me in casual conversation a
while ago that he’d never heard of
it.

But the quaint theatre -— a (reat
to go to with the cosy 76 seats,
and passageways so tight that you
haven’t been that close to anyone
since your honeymoon — has a
devoted following. The North
Vancouver Community Players
report that they'll sell about 95%
of the house for their half-dozen
plays being staged this season.

An aside: A year ago Coconuts
Theatre staged George Bernard
Shaw's The Millionairess at little
Hendry Hallas part of the Pacific
Shaw Festival.

(This year the festival kas mov-
ed to the more spacious Water-
front Theaire in the big town
across the inlet, where the offer-
ings are Arms and the Man and
two little-known one-act plays by
Shaw, Augustus Does His Bit and
The Incas of Perusalem, another
sad though understandable loss
for North Shore theatre — the
festival is striving for more recog-
nition and a wider sponsorship
than it was getting.)

The point is that I saw this
small group’s production of The
Millionairess.

Coincidentally, the Vancouver
Playhouse has just staged the
same play — with a far bigger
budget and the ture of one of the
city’s best-known actresses,
Nicola Cavendish, in the title role.

And !| am obliged to say that I

GARDEN OF BIASES

4&4 Theatre West Van is heading toward
half a century of existence — without
ever having had a proper theatre ...99

liked the Hendry Hall production,
directed by John Keith, much bet-
ter.

The casting of the Coconuts
version won on points for almost
every role.

I’m such a softie that I chose
not to write this during the
Playhouse production, but I
thought Cavendish — a fine com-
edienne and a great draw — was
badly miscast as the millionairess,
named Epifania followed by a
whole lot of outrageous names.

Physically, Epifania has to have
a tall, tube-like elegance to g0
with the imperious manner.

This does not describe Caven-
dish, who'd have been better cast
as her rival: a squat, placid, low-
class homebody.

Patricia Andrew was a far more
effective Epifania in tie Hendry
Hall production — she’s also ar-
tistic manager of Coconuts
Theatre and wife of director
Keith.

Without giving you a full
review, Wendy Donaldson was
also a more believable ‘‘other
woman,”’ and Marek Czuma —
who has now left acting for the
environment movement — far
more effectively portrayed the
Egyptian doctor in this typically
bizarre Shaw play that equally
challenges the playgoers’ intellects
and their moral order while
suspending their credulity.

Well, you had to be there. Asa
theatre critic 1 pose no threat to
that excellent writer, Lloyd Dykk,
or to Shaw himself, whose
Dramatic Opinions & Essays, a
favorite volume on my shelf, is as

nonesuch ||

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ago.

te’s enough to say that 1 like the
Coconuts’ production so much
that I wished I had seen fast year’s
other Pacific Shaw Festival play,
Widowers’ Houses, directed by
Martin Millerchip, whose know-
ledgeable criticisms are now ap-
pearing in the Nerth Shore News.

Returning to the main points:
North Shore residents should be
alarmed, perhaps even ashamed,
that three adjoining communities
with a total population of around
140,000 are so thin on theatre.

And especially Greater Tid-
diycove.

Theatre West Van is heading
toward half a century of existence
— without ever having had a pro-

to play in.

Litt wonder James Hazell,
vice-president of the West Van-
couver Cammunity Arts Council
and a leader in the foiled AC-
TION group, tore impatiently into
the recently released North Shore
Arts Commission study as vague,
repetitious and empty.

And even if the second part of
the study furnishes concrete pro-
posals, will the political will to
carry them out materialize? And
the dollars?

i’m skeptical. The blunt fact is
that piaygoers are largely drawn -
from the affluent classes, and I
suspect that many such people liv-
ing or: the North Shore would
rather go across the bridge to the ©
big town to see one of the glitzy; .- 4
hyped and glitteringly empty pro-
ductions of Andrew Lloyd
Webber — a songwriter whom —
Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart,
Lerner and Loewe could out-wri
on a bad afternoon — rather than
support a good, small North —
Shore theatre run with taste and . -
verve. :
It's called snobbery.

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