Thursday 22 July 2010

When I’m asked what it’s like playing in such a successful comedy as Harvey, my answer often is that it reminds me of the summer stock shows of my youth.

As an impressionable 13-year-old , I performed in Peterborough and Port Carling with The Straw Hat Players in a series of plays with such actors as Nancy Kerr (later to be a Shaw Festival stalwart) and young Timothy Findley.  I was thrilled by the gales of laughter that greeted our comedies.  Happy vacationers from the Muskoka or Kawartha lodges and cottages would come out after supper to enjoy these plays as their summer entertainment.  On certain days our audience reactions in Harvey remind me of that completely pure enjoyment, an absolutely free, unchecked laughter that sometimes seems to be becoming less frequent in daily life. Read the rest of this entry »