I Heart Morrisburg

On Sunday, as part of my touring Shakespearian duties, we left Ottawa for the quaint little town of Morrisburg. We had an evening performance, but since one of our castmates works for the Upper Canada Playhouse, we were privileged enough to have tickets for the matinee performance of the new Norm Foster play, Bedtime Stories.

On first impressions, I was pleasantly surprised. The exterior of the theatre consists of a giant mural. It's so big that at first I couldn't figure out where the door was. Then when I walked into the building, I fell in love with the space. I can't even begin to explain it. You can check out the UCP website for their sating plan to get a better idea, but it definitely won't do it justice. The space just felt very cozy to me. Add to that the fact that the show was sold out and people were fighting for standing room tickets... well, I felt like I was home.

Everyone was very nice and welcoming. Perfect strangers would just start pleasantly chatting with you in line. Every store window I passed had posters for our show. And best of all, we were down by the waterfront, which is an amazing thing for a Maritime girl. To think, I technically just hop in a boat and let the current take me all the way home to NB...

The Norm Foster show was great too! I have to admit, I wasn't as familiar with his work as I felt I should be. Somehow I always confuse him and Neil Simon. I had never actually seen a Foster show before (though I'd read two), even though the Melville Boys seems to be in constant rotation at one theatre or another around here. I had always heard that Foster was low-brow or common and not very popular with the theatre "elite". To that I say: Who cares? I had a blast which is more than I can say about some of the "upper crust" theatre I've seen in the past. Bedtime Stories was well-written, cheesy good fun, sometimes touching, often very funny, and well-worth the drive down all the way down to the end of Bank St.

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Our show took place at Morrisburg's new outdoor amphitheatre. It was gorgeous, although a run through the giant circle at least once would have been beneficial. We were the first ones to ever use the space in town and attendance for our show was well over 100 people.

After the show, I got to meet the artistic director of UCP, a really nice man. He said it would be great if we could come back again next year. I said I would prefer working in his theatre next year. He told me to make sure to send him my stuff and I would get an audition.

That was just the icing on the cake.