October 31 - November 3 , 1996
Carrefour de l’Isle-Saint-Jean, Charlottetown
Written by: Michael Frayn
Director: David Sherren
Producer: Valerie Moore, with Terry Pratt
Stage Manager: Wallena Higgins-Gray
ASM - Joe Whyte
Cast:
Barbara Rhodenhizer - Dotty Otley / Mrs. Clackett
Tim Mossey - Garry Lejeune / Roger Tramplemain
Ed Rashed - Frederick Fellows / Philip Brent
Sara Fraser - Belinda Blair / Flavia Brent
Ben Kinder - Lloyd Dallas
Jennifer Long - Brook Ashton / Vicki
Greg Stapleton - Tim Allgood
Kim Gillis - Poppy Norton-Taylor
Gerry Gray - Selsdon Mowbray / Burglar
A highly popular farcical comedy from 1982, successful on Broadway; a film version (1992) featured Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve and John Ritter. The idea is that what happens back-stage can be even more entertaining than what the audience sees on-stage. There’s a play-within-a-play: Act 1 of “Nothing On” is being performed — the type of play in which young girls run about in their underwear, old men drop their trousers, and many doors continually bang open and shut. Act One is the technical rehearsal, and the cast are hopelessly unready, baffled by entrances
and exits, missed cues, missed lines, and bothersome props, including several plates of sardines. Act Two has a performance a month later, as seen from backstage, showing deteriorating relationships among the company: romantic rivalries, lovers' tiffs and personal quarrels — offstage shenanigans and onstage bedlam. Act Three is a performance near the end of the ten-week run. Relationships have soured; the set is breaking down and props are winding up in the wrong hands and wrong places, and the plot evaporates with actors ad-libbing their way to a limping end.