Review of Book Club by Kristen Da Silva at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre, July 25th to August 18th, 2018
I don’t have any empirical evidence about whether book clubs as a social activity are on the rise or fall, but there is no question that as subject matter for plays and movies, there is an explosion of interest. The July 26 opening of Book Club, directed by Liz Gilroy at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre, is a wonderful confirmation that perhaps outwardly staid book clubs provide infinite comedic material to be mined. The six person ensemble of young actors did a wonderful job with Canadian playwright Kristen da Silva’s very humourous and fast paced dialogue.
This play pre-dates and is not related to this spring’s popular movie take on a Book Club. That movie’s who’s who cast of age 70+ Hollywood talent spend their days enjoying glamorous California and Arizona settings while exchanging laugh out loud trivialities and moving inexorably toward a highly predictable romantic conclusion. The play on the other hand involves twenty-somethings, living in simple apartment digs, bantering with sitcom style dialogue, while also moving inexorably toward a similar, highly predictable romantic conclusion. That predictability in no way reduces the enjoyment of the experience and in some ways makes us co-conspirators in the effort. In the Book Club movie the cast becomes deeply involved with the book selections, the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, and the books become a key plot device. In the play the book selection, The Dovekeepers, is completely peripheral to the tale. Another excellent movie which uses the devise of the book club to good effect is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society released in 2018 on Netflix.
The acting in the Book Club is spread fairly equally among the energetic all Canadian cast of Tracey Beltrano (Annie), Iain Stewart (Josh), Brittant Kay (Julia), Josh Hohnston (Brad), Franny McCabe-Bennet (Eilen) and Jeff Dingle (Hossler), with Tracey and Iain shining in their lead roles. This play, combined with a trip down Kettle Creek to Lake Erie to enjoy the galleries and restaurants of Port Stanley, is a wonderful, light confection for a hot summer day or evening. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed our outing, my first return visit to Port Stanley since a somewhat blurry UWO Frosh Week visit to the Stork Club in 1970.