Post-theatric stress syndrome

I have not been sleeping well since the play ended. I blame Juno the Dog. She has no social conscience and very little idea of boundaries. I woke up this morning with my feet dangling over the side of the bed and the rest of me occupying about six inches of dog-free territory on the extreme frontier of the mattress. I guess I should have persevered three years ago, when I tried to introduce a very small Juno to the idea of territory: hers being a big cushion on the floor; mine the bed. But it didn’t seem important at the time. She weighed about ten pounds and occupied roughly the space of a large bag of sugar. Now, she is ten times that size and, as I said, has no social conscience.

There are other boundaries that she ignores. I have just removed a half-chewed bone from under my pillow, with Juno the Dog anxiously supervising. Apparently, she thought this an ideal place to bury her bone and, after some argument, we agreed to disagree. There were also two half-eaten books to be removed from the sheets. Juno is still working on literacy, it seems. She tells me that the love letters of Lloyd George were especially tasty. Personally, I think she’s too young for that kind of reading.

Lloyd George Knew My Father, the seventh annual play of Linden House, has just closed, and I am having trouble settling down. Indeed, the tension is dissipating like a very slow leak – drip, drip, drip. I had a dream a couple of nights ago. I was standing in the darkened wings of some mysterious theatre where a play was in progress. I knew I was supposed to enter, but I couldn’t remember the cue. Actually, I couldn’t hear the voices; they were just a distant hum, so knowing the cue would not have helped that much. I started running around asking for a script, to no avail. I woke up in a panic then and, after lying awake for a while, started reciting lines from the recent play to get back to sleep again. Reciting lines from a play that has finished – that can’t be normal!  

Another source of stress is the accounting. We have a producer this year who isn’t me: isn’t that nice? Actually, it’s a bit embarrassing, because I remained in control of the bank account. When Ann Davis started trying to reconcile expenses and revenues for this year’s show against the statements, she seemed a little startled. In fact, she has just told me, quite kindly under the circumstances, that I am “a master, an absolute master at financial confusion.” Oh dear.  That’s not a compliment, is it? She went on to say, with a somewhat grim smile: “Never mind. It will be different next year.” She added that she feels sorry for my accountant, whose annual torment it is to sort out the accounts for my business. (When I relayed this comment to my accountant, she laughed.)

The good news is that we have a tiny profit this year, which makes a nice change; the bad news is that the producer refuses to hand it over.  While willing to reimburse me for my own expenditures – and she would like a little paperwork to support those expenditures: oh dear again – she is going to guard our winnings tooth and claw in an account clearly labelled “Linden House.” As opposed to “Janet Uren.” There goes my plan to go whale-watching in Baja this winter.

Ann is right in taking a hard line. “You can spend what belongs to Janet,” she says firmly, apparently believing I have a right to whatever level of confusion I want in my private life. “But what belongs to Linden House is going right back into the theatre. Seriously, Janet, this will allow us to plan a little for next year.” I don’t think her plan includes me acting as Chief Financial Officer. I can bear it.

An actor once told me the following, when I was cringing over some onstage error: “If nothing ever went wrong, what would we have to laugh at?” Seen in that light, this year’s dress rehearsal was a side-splitter. You see, the set-builders hadn’t quite got to the bottom of the list by October 21, so there were no lights backstage. At one point, we had six actors crammed into a quite small space and all changing their clothes in the dark. That is how Maud came to turn up on stage shortly afterwards with her dress on back to front. I had my own problems.  Between scenes one and two, I had roughly 60 seconds to exchange my blouse and cardigan for a new sweater set. Picture me, if you have the strength, in the pitch black, kneeling on the floor, half naked and groping around for a top that I had just accidentally dropped. At that very moment, one of the crew – they had sorrows of their own – stepped on my outstretched hand with a clinking and clattering of a laden tray somewhere above my head. I leave you to imagine my joy.  This is the unvarnished truth about a show that many later described as “polished.” It makes you believe in God.

I guess I owe this year’s audience an apology for not warning them that I was going to sing. I know there were pained looks at rehearsal as I rummaged squeakily around in my head and attempted to locate the tune for “Onward Christian Soldiers.” In the end, with a bit of coaching from our pianist, Jenny Ross – “Anybody can learn to sing,” she lied – and the sheet music in front of me to give some guidance about whether to go up or down, I sort of managed. I am a bit worried, however. Someone just sent me a review that identified the song I trilled so bravely as “When the Saints go marching in”!? Maybe I got it wrong after all. Director Robin Bowditch says we are NOT doing a musical next year.

I did have one other musical moment, this one quite spontaneous. During the last performance, the workings for the telephone failed. Standing in the wings, I saw the stage manager frantically wiggling the switch on the thingamajigger and then frenziedly starting to check the wire. From on stage – where an appalled silence reigned – I saw the Vicar (George Stonyk) heading for the wings with a fierce, “who-the-hell-has-messed-up” expression on his face. What to do? I threw back my head and rang! “Rrrrring! Rrrrring!” The play chugged into gear once more and continued on its merry way. It was my debut as a telephone.  

Seriously, as any actor knows, the thing that is keeping me awake nights isn’t Juno the Dog; it is bereavement. I have lost Sheila Boothroyd, and for the last few months, she has been my delight. She was such a brat, stirring up the family with threats of suicide, and all because of almost unbearable boredom. She cut it pretty close in the end; and, of course, what saved her at the last moment was love. It was too sweet.

A lot of people came up to me after the show and said they thought that Sheila had actually died. All I can say is, had that been true, it would have been very cold of me to advertise the play as comedy. Others said they had tears in their eyes during the final few moments. So did I. As for Sheila’s husband, William, well – she did rather put him through the marital wringer.  But it wasn’t a dead loss. Didn’t he look fine in scarlet and gold, with sword at his side and the bearskin cap? “Il faut soufrir pour être beau.” That’s what Sheila and I think, anyway.

We had a survey this year, with over 100 patrons leaving us encouraging little notes, like “well acted,” or “could hear every word.” My personal favourite is this one, however, from someone who obviously thought that William should have seen a divorce lawyer: “Forget Sheila. A hunk like you can get somebody better!”

Now that IS cold. Next time, I might insist on sharing the glory. I shall wear the bearskin cap myself and see what kind of notes I get.  

Grace under pressure (or not)

Janet and Juno at Star Island, 2013

Juno the Dog and I have just returned from the annual family endurance test on Star Island and, after several nights in a clean, bug-free environment with hot and cold running water, I am ready to face the threat of continuing existence. Juno is snoring.

Actually as endurance tests go, it was pretty smooth sailing this year. Smooth, that is, if you overlook the vision of my nephew-in-law Ian standing on his bed in the middle of the night and vigorously defending himself from bats with a tennis racquet. I wasn’t in the room, to my infinite regret, but I am told that he was quite a sight. There were ten bats to begin with, but only nine bats made it back to base. My family will be returning to Star Island next year, but the bats will probably decide to rent other accommodation.

You know the old saw about “grace under pressure.” Well, Ian has it (as well as a formidable backhand). We’re not sure about the bats, but the only thing that pressure produces in me is language unbecoming to a gentleman. The strange case of the blocked toilet springs to mind. Now, there’s a topic you probably don’t want to touch with a ten-foot plunger and – though this year went well – toilets did rather dominate the summer holidays last year, and the memory is raw. I was too shattered to tell you about it at the time, but time heals all. Read on, if you have the strength.

Have you ever reflected that, inadequate as it is in many ways, the 21^st century is utterly redeemed by its plumbing? We have the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age and – wait for it – the Age of Flush Toilets. Fascinated as I am by history, two things make me grateful for the timing that landed me here, not there. These are public executions – and, frankly, even “private” executions strike me with something of a dull thud – and plumbing.

Star Island is a case in point. The island is actually a large lump of rock in the Big Rideau, which means that sewage disposal is something you don’t want to think about, any more than I want to describe it. Suffice it to say that my father was right: “Get an education,” he intoned, and he might well have added “or you may find yourself pumping sewage out of holding tanks on the Big Rideau.”

I pass lightly over the details. The important thing to note – and, sadly, not everyone has noted it – is that there is a protocol to using a toilet on Star Island. It is based on the idea of moderation. Unless you have been incredibly lucky, you have probably heard the disgusting old ditty: “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” That’s the regime in a nutshell. To educate newcomers to the island, the wall of the bathroom bears several large, hand-stencilled signs featuring some good advice and a bit of really unfortunate grammar:

DO NOT FLUSH

Only when necessary

And then, in pen to one side, the depressing ancillary message appears: “Put paper in the pail.”

These then are the ugly facts, and we adults – who have seen life in the raw and know that it is not a bed of roses – obey the law and think of other, higher things while we’re doing it. However, to navigate your way through the poor grammar and the handwriting on these signs requires a sophistication that your average four- to five-year-old does not possess.

Let us draw a veil over the sordid scene. The important thing to know is that with an increasing number of youngsters in the family – children who have abandoned diapers without adopting full literacy – there was a record number of plumbing problems last year.

Not to worry. We have an unwritten law in our family that my sister Claire does all the unpleasant and difficult things requiring character and intelligence, while the rest of us retire to the hammock with a stiff drink. It’s a sad day, I can tell you, when emergency strikes, and I find myself the ranking adult, officer in charge of being calm in a crisis. You see, I am the youngest child in my family. My sisters were brought up to take care of me, not the other way round. When I have a problem, I appeal to them – tearfully or in a rage, as the case may be – and they fix it. That is the way things are in my family. That is the universe that God ordained, and I don’t think we should mess with an arrangement that clearly works.

There have been moments, however, when Claire and Meg go AWOL, and I am forced to solve a problem on my own. These crises may range from figuring out how to assemble and install a ceiling fan all the way to dealing with a phone call from the hospital at 3 a.m. in the morning. Let me expound.

My nephew Steven lived with me during one long, LONG year when he was 19 going on 12. Summer rolled round, and he went out to celebrate on July 1. Some celebration. Having been foolish enough to express disapproval of a young man who happened to be holding a lead pipe in his hand, Steven ended up with a concussed head en route to the hospital. Years have passed, and I still remember my horror when the phone rang, I pressed a groggy ear to the instrument, and realized that we were in trouble, Steven and I. My sisters were both out of town. My nephew was in emergency, and I was the only one around to go and “deal with things”. I pulled myself together, called a cab and rallied round the recumbent body, which was undergoing a bit of sewing at the time. Steven was anesthetized by a high level of alcohol in the veins, an advantage I lacked. As I recall, the doctor told me to put my head between my knees.

 

Oh well, we all survived. It wasn't as though I actually had to wield the needle myself. In fact, it was a useful incident. In childhood, a favourite book of mine was called Cherry Ames, Probationer, and my ambition was to become either a nurse or a horse trainer. Or was it a horse? I forget, though I did love running around the neighbourhood with a dog leash in my mouth, neighing: a very strange child).  

Back to the matter of sisters. This sibling hierarchy explains why, many years later, when the Star Island toilet overflowed the first time, it didn’t worry me much. I just mentioned to Claire that she’d better get cracking. The second time I saw Claire going for the mop, I averted my eyes and went for a stroll. The third time was different. Claire had left the island, and I was the ranking adult. Yikes.

I was out on the verandah reading. In fact, I was lost somewhere in 9^th-century Britain – that summer’s current reading was historical fiction – when I became aware of running feet. The screen door slammed, and Juno and I realized with certain misgivings that seven-year-old Peter was among us. “Auntie Janet!” he said, with an inappropriate note of joy in his voice. “The toilet’s blocked!”

“F—k!” I said, summing up the situation in a word. Peter’s eyes widened with a mixture of delight and horror. “Auntie Janet,” he exclaimed. “You said….”

“Never mind what I said,” I cried, springing to my feet. “Who put paper down the toilet?”

I arrived at the scene of the crime in time to see five-year-old Maddy heading for the hills. A sensible child who will live to see another day. I took a deep breath and stiffened the sinews as I prepared to take calm, intelligent control of the situation. All of a sudden, there came a great crash and a cry of dismay from the kitchen. A second theatre of war!

I bolted in to find six-year-old Charlotte, frozen to the ground, eyes wide with horror. She had just dropped an entire quart of chocolate milk on the floor. It seemed to me that a theme was developing – brown stuff flowing through every room.

“Out!” I shouted. “Everyone out. Everyone go home!” (You see, there are two cottages on Star Island, and we rent both: roughly speaking, there is one house for me, and one for everyone else, or at least that is the ideal to which I aspire.)

Children are not stupid. They fled, all except Juno the Dog, who was trotting excitedly through the milk. I yelled at her too. She responded by fleeing the jurisdiction and, thundering milky-pawed into the living room, she leapt excitedly up on the couch. I pursued, seized her by the collar and threw her bodily out the screen door in the kitchen. I had completely forgotten that, while the kitchen door pushes out (thereby preventing an outer dog from becoming inner), the living room door pushes in (allowing the outer dog to be inner with a simple thrust of the nose). The exiled Juno, thrown out the “out” door, streaked along the verandah to the “in” door and was back in a minute, anxiously volunteering to help.

I tied a vociferously complaining Juno to the banister, squared my shoulders and sought out the mop and bucket and a bottle of disinfectant. You’re probably impressed – I know I was – at this demonstration of savoir faire. It’s amazing how much I had absorbed while pretending not to look at Claire being competent in every crisis. I draw a veil (my second veil in a single report) over the next hour or so, except to say that what doesn’t kill us makes us strong. Next morning, I sought out young Peter.

“Peter,” I said. “Yesterday, when the toilet blocked, I used inappropriate language. I apologize.”

Peter giggled. “Yes, you did. You said….”

“Never mind what I said!” (God, I hate apologizing to children.) I gave up and headed back to the 9^th century, where my hero was facing all kinds of catastrophes with invading Danes – very moody people indeed, holding very large, sharp weapons. But in a seven-book series, there is not one toilet, functioning or otherwise. Maybe the 9^th century knew a thing or two.

The end of the Star Island saga does not mean a return to real life in any meaningful way. It means coming back to Ottawa and getting ready for the annual Linden House Theatre play (October 22 to November 2). And this year, we have a humdinger – Lloyd George Knew My Father by William Douglas-Home. It is a hilarious tale about suicide. No, really. This is a very funny play, I promise. The only sad thing is that I shall be playing an 80-year-old. I had hoped that another 20 years or so would pass before I could make that believable. I blame Star Island. It has aged me.

If you want to order tickets, you know what to do – visit the website (www.lindenpro.ca), Books on Beechwood (35 Beechwood Avenue) or call 813-842-4913.

 

Where the ego goes to die

I swear – every time I start to feel modestly proud of myself, I start to look nervously over my shoulder, because I know that life is about to narrow its eyes and take action. It’s fail-proof. Whenever there is a little modest improvement in internal stock prices for Janet Uren Inc., I can count on a sudden market adjustment. Just watch. Janet starts to glow with pride, and life whips out the old shillelagh. Whomp!

Take, for example, the Linden House Theatre poster for October 2012. We have a magical designer, young Karenna Boychuk, and she does great work. So it’s a beauty. Nevertheless, when I first saw it I was a little appalled at the sheer predominance (and youthful beauty) of my physiognomy. It looked to me like ego on the way to whomping. I shivered and, as said, looked over my shoulder.

I was right to worry. Members of the Linden House production team, when they beheld the poster, said with wonder. “Is that really you? It’s very flattering, isn’t it?” I winced, but really the blow to the amour propre was a gentle one. The ego picked itself up and dusted itself off with an air of relief. You could almost hear it singing, “Is that all there is?”

Apparently not. What your friends can’t accomplish, your family can. After all, they have had practice. My sister, striding on to the scene shortly afterward and finding my ego bloodied but unbowed, didn’t hesitate to finish it off. She stared at the poster. “Is that you?” she asked. “What did they do, photo-shop you?”

That did it. What remained of my ego lay motionless, flat on the ground, with life apparently extinct. It was a good thing in the event, because if there had been any lingering flutter of a pulse in the corpse, my first attempt at a costume for this year’s play might have stung.

The initial design idea for costumes was an ambitious one – we wanted to re-create Downton Abbey in Rockcliffe Park. I scoured the Internet and found a dressmaker in Los Angeles who was willing to make an Edwardian suit, made to measure for my somewhat unfortunate figure, out of striped blue-and-white cotton.

Honestly, I am a cockeyed optimist. In studying the online image of this outfit, I had an impossible vision of myself, looking tall, thin and stately, because that was the rough outline of the woman modelling it on the website. Tragically, I am not tall and slender. Quite the opposite. Indeed, unless fashions in feminine beauty change radically and soon, I have no real future in the modelling industry. “Small” and “round” are the kindest words that can be applied with any accuracy to my corpus.

Momentarily blind to these facts, I flung caution to the wind. The suit was duly ordered, manufactured and posted north, where I waited in a state of quivering anticipation. (My life would really be quite sad, if it were not so ridiculous!)

The package arrived in due course and, as fate would have it, I was not allowed to face facts in decent privacy. A friend from the dog park dropped in just as the mail was delivered and witnessed the first unveiling of the Edwardian skirt and jacket. The blue-and-white material, I noted with some dismay, was coarser than I had expected, and the suit was heavy and thick with folds and layers. Fran the Friend shared my foreboding. “It looks like mattress ticking,” she said doubtfully.

I should, of course, have waited till she left to try on the suit and then only with the lights off and the mirrors covered. But I lack native caution. I simply couldn’t wait to try it on. Fortunately, my ego had died earlier in the week, because Fran looked at me with real horror. “You look like a mattress tied in the middle,” she said.

I laughed. You see, my sister brought me up to appreciate – well, not exactly “appreciate” – but at least to survive a certain amount of frank talk. So I laughed. I learned afterwards that Fran went home and wept with embarrassment, and she later turned up with a little present, just in case we needed to reconstruct our friendship. The truth is, I was grateful. Sometimes when you see a friend sailing into sartorial danger, you have a moral obligation to speak or, if words fail, to save your friend in whatever way strikes you as convenient – sitting on her head till the fit passes, perhaps, or calling 911. Whatever it takes.  

Anyway, Fran’s comment worked. I packed the costume away, and Linden House addressed itself creating a completely new look for the play. I think you will like it. In doing so, we moved the action along the historical timeline from the beginning of the 1920s to the end of the decade, and we haven’t looked back.

Today we have a dress rehearsal – lots of tension in the air – and tomorrow it’s trial by audience in the first of several benefit performances. I am happy to say that the play has really come together. Yesterday, I was watching two of the performers blossom into their roles. I was so impressed, I actually forgot my cue to enter, and everyone clapped at the end of the scene. I never recall that happening before in rehearsal. A very special moment and one that augers well for the show.

So I cautiously recommend that you reserve tickets and join us this week or next for a performance of You Never Can Tell by G. Bernard Shaw (October 23-November 3). Tickets are available online at lindenpro.ca, at Books on Beechwood (35 Beechwood) or by calling 613-842-4913.

At Linden House, we believe in hospitality, so join us on Saturday and Sunday, October 27 and 28 for a glass of wine after the show. I really look forward to seeing you. As for me, don’t be afraid. Though I am not tall and thin, I am dressed to resemble a human being rather than a mattress. Cheers!

Face to face with a raging bore!

It’s no secret. The trick to good conversation is to let everybody have a turn and pretend to listen when you aren’t talking. This is the rule I have (mostly) lived by – until recently, that is, when a friend – I think she’s still a friend – joined me for dinner.

It began as an ordinary evening, with just your ordinary old dinner conversation. Pleasant, you know? Everybody getting a turn. A little politics here, a little book club there. Then things changed. Suddenly I heard myself in the middle of explaining the War of the Roses! The War of the Roses, for goodness sake! Nobody understands the War of the Roses, much less talks about it. It is history’s single most incomprehensible mess.

It was like being trapped in a nightmare. I heard myself going on and on, just like Juno with her squeaky toy, and I couldn’t stop. Squeak, squeak, squeak. Like that poor little girl in the red dancing shoes, I was in the grip of compulsion. I saw the eyes of my dinner companion glaze over, but still I couldn’t stop. I am not entirely bereft of social conscience. I did pause a few times in full flight, when I feared she was wilting, to ask anxiously if she was really interested. But she kept saying, “Yes, of course. I’m fascinated!” What can you do with a woman like that? Made of iron. Anyway, on I dashed. And on. And on. I tell you, I was possessed. If I had tried this in Salem, they would have burned me at the stake.

Do you know about the War of the Roses? No? Well, I think the defining quality was bad temper. It was the family fight to end all family fights, and it lasted for most of a century – and so, my friend would say, did dinner. Believe me, I covered that century like wallpaper. I was all over it. I started with Richard II and did not stop till I arrived panting at the feet of Henry VII.

I tell a lie. When I got to Henry VII – who in my view was a Bad Man – my dinner companion made a mistake. Up to this point, you might say she was an innocent victim. Like someone getting hit by a train through no fault of her own. The sort of thing that could happen to anyone. But then she said: “How is the present Queen related to Richard III?” After that, her fate was sealed. There was nothing anyone could do to save her, and it was all her own fault. You must never, never throw liquid fuel on a raging bore.

The War of the Roses occupied a single century – a long century, I admit, jam-packed with action and crowded with human beings demonstrating why dogs are superior in almost every way. But still, just one little century. Hardly worth the trouble, really, for a dedicated bore. The challenge of connecting the Windsors to the Plantagenets, however, now that is a challenge to inspire. It opened up another five centuries for exposition and gave me new scope for boring at Olympic levels.

A few hours later, the poor woman – her head was bloodied but unbowed – made another mistake, and this one was fatal. I think I was beginning to slow down, because she actually got a word in edgewise. Of course, you and I know what she should have done. She should have seized her chance and said: “Will you excuse me for a moment? I’ll be right back.” Then headed for the door at brisk trot. Instead, the mad fool asked a second question. “How did the Royal family come to be German?” After that, she was doomed.

As I recall, I backed right up to James V of Scotland in order to get a really good run at my subject, then bounded forward, tongue flapping with excitement. I wanted to make sure she had all the facts, so I touched lightly on the Reformation, Mary Queen of Scots, the English Civil War, the Bloodless Revolution of 1688 and Elizabeth of Bohemia before landing triumphantly on George I, one-time Elector of Hanover. My companion asked for the bill.

I am a social failure, and I know it. You would think I had learned my lesson. But no, here I am blogging away again and arriving, shamelessly, at the tenth paragraph without ever having got to the point. Actually, I’m wondering what the point is? It may, of course, be Juno the Dog. Those of you who are still conscious will be happy to know that Juno is sitting up and taking nourishment now despite the fact that, on May 22, she was operated on to remove a rope from her stomach. A rope! Proof positive that no good act goes unpunished: I had bought a basket of dog toys (including this rope) at a charity auction. When the rope disappeared shortly afterwards, I didn’t panic. I thought that Juno had buried it. She has been helping me with landscaping lately, and her particular project is my tiny lawn where she has buried a variety of bones, toys and – I assumed – a rope. The garden looks a little like Belgium 1917 but not as lively.

What I like to think of as my mind has been elsewhere lately, but I finally noticed that Juno was unwell. It was the middle of the night and, as I recall, she was standing on my bed vomiting at the time. That got my attention. Over the next few days – such is the life of a dog-owner – I noticed that, whereas lots of stuff was coming out the front end, the back door had gone out of commission.

To cut a long story short, we went to see the vet, and many x-rays later found ourselves in Alta Visa Animal Hospital – where bank accounts go to die – and Juno was committed for surgery. I insisted on saying goodbye before leaving her in the surgery; it was a mistake. She was chained up in what looked like a tiled cell. I patted her and said comforting words, but her English is not on the level that takes in messages such as: “It serves you right, you little brat!” All I could hear as I went down the hall was Juno the Stoic screaming with woe. I felt like six cents worth of candy.

When it was all over, Juno and I were reunited, and the vet asked me if I wanted to take the rope – which had been discovered lodged in the valve between the stomach and the gut – home with me as a souvenir. I stared at her in cold astonishment. I mean to say, where do these vets get their ideas? Furthermore, if that is the kind of souvenir that interests you, dear reader, all I can say is that you’re reading the wrong blog! 

Anyway, Juno now has a scar running right down the middle of her belly. It looks like a zipper, and I am hopeful that the next time she eats something indigestible, they can just run it open and have a look, no muss, no fuss. The other result of this medical catastrophe is that Juno and I now live in a rope-free zone. If you need a rope in a hurry, do not come here. We cannot help you.

I asked Juno if she wanted to add anything to the story, tell her side of it, you know. She stopped snoring for a moment. (You know the old saying, don’t you? “Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep all alone!”) Anyway, she stopped snoring for long enough to say that the whole subject made her sick, then went back to sleep. Nice life. Are you still there? I have other news. Linden House has chosen a play for the October show. It is You Never Can Tell by George Bernard Shaw. This is the story of a romantic dentist who falls in love with the original Ice Maiden. It is an early play of Shaw’s before he got really wordy. Critics call it his “funniest and sunniest” work. The subject is the struggle between advanced woman and old-fashioned man. Guess who wins? I get to play another old woman. Sigh.

Still with me? Keep going, we’re nearly there. Linden House has gone mad with ambition this year, and we are actually doing two shows. On Saturday, September 8 – on one night only – George Stonyk and I will be presenting Dear Liar, a two-person dramatic reading of a truly brilliant cascade of love letters exchanged by Shaw and the actress, Mrs. Patrick Campbell. And after the show, you are invited to join us for wine and cheese and chat in The Atrium at Elmwood Theatre.

George Bernard Shaw was a drama critic and social reformer in London in the 1890s when he first saw Mrs. Patrick Campbell on the stage and fell deeply, tempestuously and verbosely in love. She was later the inspiration for many of his most famous theatrical characters – such as Cleopatra and Eliza Doolittle. Both Shaw and Campbell were married when they met, and Shaw lived out his love affair with the actress mainly through a series of dancing, trumpeting, madcap letters, which Stella answered with a combination of playful charm, exasperation and fury.

The letters are now part of the Shaw legacy. An aging, cash-strapped Stella Campbell published them (much to Shaw’s dismay), but she kept the originals with her till the day of her death in a rooming house in southern France at the dawn of the Second World War. The letters were rescued and brought back to England, where they remain today as a memorial to one of the great love affairs of the English stage.

As a collection, the letters are rollicking good fun. “Come to tea at 4 o’clock,” Stella would command, “and make me laugh.” The letters speak of more than laughter, however, when Shaw writes of witnessing the cremation of his oddly extraordinary mother. And again, when the widowed Stella resolves to remarry, and Shaw rages at her. “Your pen makes you drunk,” she protests wearily. “When you were quite a little boy somebody ought to have said “hush” just once.” But, of course, Shaw has the last word. “Don’t let’s quarrel until we are dead,” he pleads.

The letters – the first of which dates to 1899 – form the basis of a play, Dear Liar, by American actor and playwright Jerome Kilty (1922-2007), first presented on Broadway in 1960 and about to be resurrected as a dramatic reading by George and moi.

Well, that’s about it. Are you still there? Still conscious? If so, you may be interested (or not) to know that there are only 132 tickets on sale for Dear Liar, and only one performance. Given that there will be thousands clamouring to get in, order now to avoid disappointment. Also, if you feel like ordering tickets for both shows at the same time – Dear Liar at $20 and You Never Can Tell at $25 – we will offer you a MINISCULE discount at $40 for the two! If you write, complaining that the blog was just too damned short, who knows, you may get a free ticket!

Oh, by the way: I went out to lunch yesterday and mentioned the War of the Roses to another friend. Just testing the water, to see what would happen. I asked my companion what she would do if somebody tried to tell her at length about this major historical screw-up. “I would change the subject,” she said firmly. And did so.

Scenting trouble

Juno the Dog says she’ll be glad when this damned play is over. You see, Juno and I share a crate at night. I used to think of it as “my bedroom,” but Juno has rather imposed her personality on our shared quarters. Now, she has the nerve to complain about me as a roommate. I may even have to find my own crate.

The thing is, with rehearsals for The Communication Cord about to culminate in a performance, I have become increasingly restless. Most nights, I wake between 2 and 3 o’clock and, rather than just lying there cursing the dark, I do lines. Out loud. With feeling. Unfortunately, one of those lines goes like this: “Stand still, you brute you, or I’ll hop the stick off you!” Juno takes this personally and, refusing to accept an apology, retires muttering to a safe distance.

Oh well, we don’t have long to go. Tonight is the Preview – gulp! – and tomorrow (Wednesday, March 28 at 8 pm exactly), we open to the world, or at least that part of the world that lives in Ottawa and likes theatre and especially Irish wit.

Lines have not been the only challenge – you know, choosing which to include in to any particular run and in which order. Last night, for example, one of my fellow actors broke it to me that a beautiful phrase – “tethered there like a brute beast” – has recently disappeared from my repertoire. Too bad, because it is actually a cue for him to respond.

Another actor told me with a smile last night and a strange glitter in her eye that, if I ever again left the box of matches on the stool where she is supposed to sit, she would “bloody kill me.” So you see, tensions are running high.

Back to Juno. She just came in from the garden, and there is mud on her shiny black nose. I can’t bring myself to go and look, but I fear – I FEAR – it’s another hole! I used to have a tiny perfect garden, with a little heart-shaped plot of green grass. Then Juno arrived. Today, the landscape resembles Belgium 1917.

Learning lines and gardening are just two of the issues on which Juno and I part company. Another involves rolling in dead animals. I don’t. She does. Observing her delight when she comes across a dead fish or mammal, I imagine that it is something like dabbing a little Eau de Dead Groundhog behind the ears. Frankly, I prefer Eau de Joy.

It’s not that I haven’t given dead animals a go. Only last fall I was out in the forest with Juno when she found something nice and smelly to roll in on a steep forest slope. I plunged down the hill, shrieking wildly and seized her by the collar. Unfortunately, Juno resisted arrest. At the time, she represented some 80 pounds of pure kinetic energy and, though I outweigh her, she has always had the stronger will.

Juno toppled me backwards into a large hole where something had died not too recently. Perhaps she meant it kindly, wanting to share her interests with me, but it was not a good moment. Though nothing was broken, no blood was spilled, I was unhappy. Upside down with my feet in the air, rolling around and moaning, I had a splendid opportunity to experience life from the point of view of a dog. So it is no mere prejudice when I say I don’t like Eau de Dead Groundhog. I have tried it, and it doesn’t work for me.

I hope it won’t turn you against Juno when I say that she also likes to eat dead things. Really dead things. Walking home last week, we found a rotten squirrel carcase in the gutter, and I had to intervene. It would not have been my first choice, prising open a very determined canine jaw and scraping out rotten bits of used squirrel. I also didn’t like disappointing Juno when she had patently found something nice to eat. However, the alternative was waiting till the middle of the night when Juno – disgusted by my nightly recitations – has been known to vomit in my bed. So I faced the crisis firmly and did the right thing.

The other thing about Juno is the difficulty of getting her to bathe. All last summer, I pursued her with the hose when things got too intense. But now it is March, and the hose is still rolled up in the shed. As for stepping into the bathtub like a civilized being, Juno doesn’t see why she should.

So this is where the iron enters to the soul. Now that I have been spending long days rehearsing The Communication Cord, Juno is spending more time on her own. She doesn’t mind. She has a nice bed to lie on, and her life is evenly divided between the park, where she rolls passionately in dead animals, and snoozing in the comfort of her crate – otherwise known as my bedroom. Unfortunately, it’s my bed that she has made her own.

Fair is fair, and I guess the honours are about even. I disturb her sleep with loud cries. She disturbs my waking hours with the ripe scent of Eau de Dead Groundhog.

In the meantime, I am very happy about this play. Not to put too fine a point on it, it is a hoot. So do come and see it. The Communication Cord by Brian Friel, produced by SevenThirty Productions, opens Wednesday, March 28 at 8 pm at the Gladstone (910 Gladstone Avenue), and it runs till April 14. Visit the website at thegladstone.ca or call 613-233-4523 for tickets.

While shivering in my shoes

My niece, Maggie - the only wise woman in the family - says that every day we should do something that scares us, the theory being that what doesn't kill us makes us strong. Well, I think that is a bit excessive, actually, but then, my idea of "scary" may be a bit over the top. Not every day, therefore, but two or three times a year, I am willing and even eager to shiver in my shoes. A case in point - the play that I am currently rehearsing in, called The Communication Cord, which opens at The Gladstone in late March.

I think I used to have a higher tolerance for fear. In my extreme youth, I hitchhiked, heading for India with a university friend. It was a kind of spontaneous decision, and I sent my parents a postcard from Istanbul urging them not to worry about their 17-year-old daughter. Yeah, right. It was the most fantastic adventure, but I do remember in the middle of one night on a bus somewhere in the heart of Turkey, feeling far from home and thinking scared thoughts as we trundled through the darkness.

I survived that adventure and came home with some new and interesting information on how the world works (including why it is unwise to hitchhike in a mini-skirt). I finished school, settled down to work and found that editing copy did not provide an adequate amount of terror - irate authors notwithstanding - so I took up whitewater canoeing as a hobby. Now there's a sport that regularly has you questioning your sanity. I ask you to believe me when I say that, from the first year I canoed, I do not retain a single memory from "inside" a rapid. I was so terrified that I simply blanked out. (Actually, that's not true: I do remember hearing one of my partners screaming out from the stern: "Oh fuck!" Please excuse the language, but I am reporting history here.) As you can imagine, there was a line-up of people just begging to partner with me.

Anyway, things got better. The second year, I distinctly remember waking up in the middle of a rapid and actually having a thought. Who cares if it was only something along the lines of "Oh my God!"? (Which you may be interested to know, is an "involuntary response cry" - I'll explain later). The point is, I was conscious, and that was an improvement.

I blame my mother. Every time I went out the door to go canoeing, laden with pack and paddle and looking tough, she would say anxiously. "Be careful now, dear. You know you're not a natural athlete." Jeez, mother! You're supposed to be building up my confidence! Oh well, that was not her style.

I remember canoeing with Blaine once. (Now why, when I think of the most intense moments of fear in my life do I just naturally think of Blaine?) He always had a canoe full of floatation because he liked to canoe just under the surface of the boiling water. Personally, I prefer to be on top with my nose in the air, but that's just me. I like oxygen. Anyway, I made the mistake of getting in the bow of Blaine's canoe for a run down Rollway on the Petawawa. We were going strong when we got to the big ledge at the bottom, where my instinct was to eddy out and think things over. Blaine is cut from different cloth. He steered right for a steep chute and down we went. The bow of the canoe, containing a horrified me, plunged straight towards the bottom of the river. All I saw for a moment after that was bubbles and foam. Very interesting.

This is where the floatation comes in handy. The canoe plunged downward, and after moment resurfaced like a breaching whale, still containing me, I am pleased to report, though somewhat wetter than I had been. I believe I was still wearing long braids in those days, and I have an impression that the water was streaming off them as I emerged from the foam in my yellow raingear with my paddle frozen horizontally into what I very much hope was a brace.

Anyway, Blaine allowed as how we might stop shortly after that. We eddied out, and Judy came down to help me out of the canoe. I needed help because my knees were literally - no word of a lie - knocking together. When I looked down I could see my legs vibrating, and they weren't doing as good a job holding up the superstructure as they usually do. Anyway, this is fear.

Blaine was at my side as well when I took up scuba diving. AM I NUTS? I'll never forget the day that Blaine - a certified madman if ever I knew one - said not to be afraid of the deep black waters of the St. Lawrence in November because HE WOULD LOOK AFTER ME! I rolled about laughing for 20 minutes or so, then decided that scuba diving was one shiver too far. I had been the only woman in the pool classes who had to be rescued repeatedly by the life guard, even when we were working in the shallow end. Scuba diving was definitely not the sport for me.

So what am I doing to ensure that I have enough fear these days? I haven't canoed much in the last few years and, as I say, I shelved scuba diving shortly after the launch of my career. So what am I doing now for adrenilin? I founded a theatre company, that's what, and reached deep into my credit line to pay for it. As a source of fear, however, impending financial ruin is beginning to fade as the Linden House audience grows, and people tell us that they like what we're doing. So what next?

Oh, I know! I'll leave the safe little world - well, relatively safe - of amateur theatre (where after all, the audiences are getting what they pay for) and try a little professional work. Yikes! Maggie? Are you sure this is good for me? I have just finished the first full week of working five days, all day long, 10 to 6 daily, in the REAL theatre! I am excited, happy, challenged and - oh yes - SCARED! Once again, my knees are knocking together.

It’s Saturday morning now after a tough week, and this was supposed to be a day of rest. I was very tired on Friday night and planning to sleep in. Juno the Dog had other plans.

I woke up. The first thing I saw was a large, dark, furry face thrust into mine. Oh good, I thought. Juno. The second thing I saw was the clock, glowing red with the disappointing information that it was 6:23 in the morning. I didn’t see the third thing because a big, wet, shiny black nose was thrust into my face, and I retreated under the pillow.

Just before Juno’s rude intervention, I had been dreaming that I was writing an exam – with a pencil. You know, don’t you, that professional actors always use pencils to mark the blocking (movements) on their scripts? They do. So do amateurs, as a matter of fact. But I find pencils dispiriting. They make such a damned little, half-hearted mark on the page. I have a passionate temperament, and it follows that I am an ink person, purple or green by preference, just so long as the ink is squidgy and the mark is bold. To give you an idea of the extent of my madness, I do crossword puzzles with a pen and regularly abandon Sudokus because I can no longer read my inky notations. (This is a lie. I abandon them because I am “a bear of little brain,” and I run out of ideas.) Anyway, in the theatre, it is the ultimate triumph of optimism over experience to mark your script in ink. As the blocking evolves, so does my script. I add to the effect by regularly dropping the book in the bath. If there was a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Books, I would be on the Ten Most Wanted List.

So back to fear. The thing about being a volunteer, any kind of volunteer – a fireman, for instance – is that the public is obliged to make do with what it gets, which in the case of firemen is probably a pile of ashes where the ancestral mansion used to lie.

My parents had this experience when I was a little girl. They had a log cabin up near Wakefield, which they had the bad luck to heat at least partially with a big iron stove. Have you ever heard of creosote? Well, we had it big, choking the chimney with highly flammable stuff. When the chimney finally caught fire one winter’s day, an excited crowd of volunteers arrived from the village, bringing with them a siren, some axes and a certain joie de vivre. I don't think they had had a fire recently, and they were inclined to see it as a "good thing."

Oh, they were grand. They leaped on the roof and proceeded to cut a big hole in the living room ceiling. Unfortunately, the fire was raging not in the living room at all - the firemen could have entered there by the door - but in the chimney about a dozen feet away. “Ooops,” said the fire chief and blushed. I believe he then walked across the roof and poured some water down the chimney. Anyway, the house did not burn down on that occasion. It burned down later.

I tell you this because, as an actor, I have always been a volunteer among volunteers – you know, pitching in to lug tables around, delivering flyers door to door and so on. Now, someone is paying me to act. Gosh! (Another "involuntary response cry,” expressing awed amazement.)

The play is The Communication Cord, by Irish playwright, Brian Friel. It opens at The Gladstone on March 28. For three full weeks after that, I get to pretend that I am an Irishwoman who in youth shared her house with a cow though, in terms of livestock, she has now been reduced to three hens and, apparently, no damn dog. During her lifetime, Ireland has changed and, with the arrival of weekenders – “the bucks with the money” – on the beautiful coast of Donegal, Nora has an eye open to the main chance. She is a chatty, friendly, manipulative soul who spends much of her day at the window spying out the doings of the neighbourhood. Her cousin Jack refers to her as “a lying, hypocritical old bitch,” but personally I think she is sweet.

Actually, Nora Dan turns up in an earlier, more sober play by Friel called Translations, which established some of the themes about language and communication, deception and understanding that he returns to in The Communication Cord. The first play was set in 1831, however, and the second in modern times.

Clearly, I am aging fast. Last fall, I played a middle-aged aristocrat. By December, I had been reduced to an 84-year-old servant. Now, it seems, I am playing a jolly peasant who, if she is the same Nora Dan as in Translations, has just celebrated her 200th birthday. If things keep going this way, I shall probably be dead in the next play.

At least I have learned what questions not to ask. Last year, when I played the elderly servant, I made the mistake of asking the director what make-up I should have in order to look 84. He said breezily, “Oh, you’re fine the way the way you are.” I looked at him coldly.

A lot of Canadians have Irish ancestors. I myself had an Irish great-grandmother, fondly referred to in the family as “that old devil." She came to Canada in a wooden sailing ship, set up shop in Montreal where she was bold enough to sell beer - atta girl! - and apparently devoted herself to making her relatives miserable. Oh well, nobody's perfect.

I know Ireland a little too. My experiences of that beautiful land date back to 1971, when I actually went to Donegal – pronounced “DunnyGALL” – which is the homeland of Nora Dan in the play. Oh, it was “beau-ti-ful,” as Nora Dan would have said. It was fall, and the fuchsia hedges were in full bloom. I was visiting a marine archaeologist who lived on a clifftop overlooking the silver-pocked sea where he spent his days diving in search of relics of the Spanish Armada. Have you ever heard anything so romantic?

It wasn’t all joy, however. I remember being invited out to dinner in a rather decayed mansion next door and being served a giant tankard of Guinness as an aperitif. Seriously, the glass was about a foot high, which is precisely 20 percent of my height. I still feel queasy when I think about that shiny black expanse of drink with an inch of creamy foam on top. Oh well, what doesn’t kill us makes us strong, and after all, I am descended from a woman who sold beer. I survived.

Even more exciting than a full tankard of Guinness was a cycling trip I took in 1984, when a friend and I decided to spend our holidays mending punctures on backroads in Ireland. At that time in my life, absolutely my only practical skill was the patching of bicycle tubes. I am not sure I could do it now, but I was an artist in those days. We especially enjoyed this recreation in the pouring rain, between bouts of poring over the map in a state of increasing confusion.

Ireland is a strange country in some ways. First, speaking as a cyclist, the whole of Ireland appears to be uphill. Isn’t that odd? You struggle uphill for about an hour and then, boom! A moment of wind in your face, a rapid descent, and there you are again, at the bottom of another blessed hill. Even more bewilderingly, the signs at country crossroads always point in the wrong direction. We got lost about 20 minutes out of Rosslare Habour and stayed lost for two solid weeks.

We finally solved the problem. A fellow in a pub told us that he and his friends made a habit of turning the signs at crossroads, “Jes’ for a crack,” he said, which means “joke,” I believe, in the Irish vernacular. I looked at him coldly.

Eight hundred years of occupation have bred an odd sense of humour into the Irish character. After a week or so of cycling through pretty steep country, we became wary of closely spaced contour lines on the map. Warned of an approaching mountain and a little confused about how to avoid it, we stopped at a village shop to enquire. “Oh, just take the road there, to the left, and yez’ll be grand,” cried the jolly shopkeeper.

A little while later, pushing my bike up a long, nearly vertical slope, I began to wonder – if this was the “easy” road, what would that dense swirl in the contours have been like? I think I even said as much to my friend. Finally, backs breaking from the strain, we arrived at the top of the slope and stood there panting, looking down an equally steep slope on the other side of the summit. We were silent for a while, until at last my friend said: “You know what I think?” I did. I knew exactly. We had just pushed our bikes up the highest, steepest mountain in Ireland. As I recall, that was the last time we asked directions or treated road signs with any respect at all. And, if the shopkeeper had had the bad luck to turn up at that moment, I would have looked at him coldly. (By the way: this is your warning. For the next five weeks, I am pretending to be Irish, so don’t bother asking me for directions.)

Now, let's get down to business. There are five very good reasons to see the upcoming production of The Communication Cord:

Reason number 1:The quality of direction. The Communication Cord is being directed by the Irish-born John P. Kelly. This is a talented and immensely experienced director, whom critic Alvina Ruprecht has described as one of the two most interesting English-language directors in Ottawa.

Reason number 2: The play itself. The Communication Cord is a very, very funny play, but it is also intelligent. Indeed, Brian Friel is considered the greatest living playwright in Ireland.

Reason number 3: The acting. The play is very well cast, and the characters are wonderful, to wit: a romantically challenged academic and his TWO girl friends (both of whom, for reasons that may be implicit in the number "two," are annoyed at him). As well, there is an Irish barrister (a serial dater), an Irish politician (who spends a good part of the play trying to connect with his inner animal), a German billionaire (who is learning English from the wrong teachers) and a French charmer who goes for gold. And then Nora Dan, of course.

Reason number 4: You have an opportunity here to improve your word power through exposure to the Irish vernacular – “to cod,” for example, which is sure to come in handy on your next trip to Ireland. It means “to play a trick.” Armed with this knowledge and aware of its role in Irish tourism, you will read the road sign. You will turn the opposite way to the one indicated, and you will be saved.

Speaking of Irish vernacular, wait till you hear my accent. John Kelly allows as how it’s “very good, though not exactly Donegal.” I asked him, if not Donegal, where exactly it belonged in Ireland. “Well, nowhere,” he admitted. “It’s what we call ‘Oyrish.’” I then asked an Irish friend if my accent sounded all right. “Stage Irish!” she exclaimed. “I hate it.” “Oh dear,” says I. “You’d better not see this play.” But she says she’s coming because she loves me, and I applaud that instinct. Which brings me to...

Reason number 5: You love me too and want to make me happy??? If this resonates at all - and I am acutely aware that it may not - I would appreciate your rallying round. The fact is, I am anxious to recruit enough followers to pay my salary at least. Then, if on opening night I find myself looking through a hole in the living room ceiling instead of down the chimney, the producer and I will be able to console ourselves that at least I came cheap.

I look forward to seeing you in the audience and knowing from your laughter that you are enjoying this lovely play as much as I am.

The Communication Cord
The Gladstone, 910 Gladstone
March 28 to April 14 at 8 pm
Tickets: 613-233-4523 or, to order online: http://thegladstone.ca/

PS I forgot! I was going to tell you about "response cries." I haven't got the time now, but come and see the play. It's all explained.

Also, I realize I should be changing the photos that go with this post ("Naughty Lady Kitty" is now officially out of date) but I CAN'T REMEMBER HOW!!! Curses.

The war on pugs

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.