To say the Gabriola Theatre Festival “opened” with this production would be an understatement of epic proportion.

This whirlwind of a play exploded on the stage and hauled the receptive audience along on a wild roller coaster ride filled with changes: changes of character; changes of costume; changes of tempo; changes of gender, and most profoundly, changes, (no, swings), of emotion from elation to despair and back to elation, at the drop of a hat, or a shawl, or Grandma’s panties. The minimalist sets and costumes provided ample backdrop for a complex tale of loss and redemption.

The narrator and protagonist, Lucy, played with a fine touch of restraint by Renee Iaci, has become pregnant as a result of “grieving wrong” for her dead mother, and has gone into self exile from her rural Manitoba roots, washing up in a “social housing” tenement in Winnipeg and thrown upon the dubious mercy of Canada’s social safety net. Her struggles with her conservative background and a disapproving welfare system provide the material for much of the humour and pathos in the plot.

Both Daune Campbell and Thomas Conlin Jones, who between them play the other 24(yes, that’s right: 24) characters in the cast, leap madly from persona to persona, changing hats and genders with abandon. The skill and talents of the actors involved (and some tight choreography) make it possible for the audience to juggle the many voices and to keep track of who is doing what to whom at any given time.

The audience, to their credit, stayed with the complex changes and laughed at all the right moments. During the more sombre scenes the tent echoed with sniffles worthy of the finale of “Titanic” during a Saturday matinee. 

In the final analysis, the script, the cast and the crew did their job admirably. The strength of live theatre lies in its ability to engage the members of the audience; to shake them and make them care about what’s happening before them. This “voluntary suspension of disbelief” is the life force of theatre and dramatically and technically, “Summer of My Amazing Luck “gives evidence that with Shameless Hussy Productions at least, theatre is alive and well. 

A triumph: Shameless Hussies, indeed!

From a review by Bob Weenk, Gabriola Theatre Festival News - August 20, 2010

~ posted by Deb Pickman