Canadian Captures Human Comedy

Canadian playwright Norm Foster continues to please his small and big town audiences south of the border. Maggie's Getting Married just finished its run at Billings Studio Theatre.

So look for the Foster name in coming seasons, extraordinary stories about ordinary people: sure to be entertaining, probably very funny with some parts a little maudlin, and usually some flare for the universal in the particulars of whatever situation he is exploring.

We have a lot of good players here in Billings: Amy Peterson, Angela Fulkerson, Elizabeth Alexander, Shawn Bettise, Zak Kreiter and Jayme C Green all did well individually and especially together, and should be counted among those good players. Their S.O. was well-deserved.

Casey Visser turned in a good job in his first chance at direction. The guys who built the set should be commended. This set really looked like the kitchen of a successful dentist, and the doors were solid, something not easy to do. Way to go guys.

I'm pretty sure we've seen at least one other play by Foster here recently, maybe The Foursome, and perhaps some others but they have slipped my mind.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention poutine. See the picture to the right. Thanks to NPR on Sunday morning I found out that this French-Canadian dish of cheese fries and gravy is fairly recent but now widespread across Canada. If I remember correctly it is used in a different, suggestive if not seductive, way in the play, several times. The context and body language left no doubt as to its meaning, sort of a single entendre. Check out the Wikipedia entry. It looks and sounds delicious.