Artichoke in season

BY HOLLIE WATSON

There is a distinctly Canadian flavour to this year’s bill of fare as Lakeshore Players serves up its 43rd season beginning tonight in Pointe Claire.

“It’s pretty much an all-Canadian season,” said Steve Gillam, who marks his fifth stint in the director’s chair with Joanna Glass’s Artichoke, a “dramatic comedy about the long road to forgiveness.”

The play was well-received by theatre-goers when it was first mounted in the Seventies, and it later went on to a successful run in New York City.

“It’s a bittersweet, roller coaster-type story about the effect a grudge can have on people’s lives. It examines the pain people go through; it also takes a light look at society,” explained the Beaconsfield resident, who directed the 2006-2007 production of Enchanted April.

The play is set in the kitchen of a farmhouse in Saskatchewan. The plot revolves around a family and an indiscretion 14 years earlier which has shaped the characters’ lives, and how the inability to forgive can destroy relationships.

It’s a sudden visit by an enigmatic professor from Vancouver that proves to be the catalyst for change, said Gillam, who is also a seasoned actor and has appeared in over a dozen Lakeshore Players productions.

Artichoke’s talented, seven-member cast features faces familiar to local audiences as well as newer members.

The play continues through Saturday and from Nov. 7 to 10.

Recipients of two preview benefit performances (last night and Nov. 6) are Literacy Unlimited, the Learning Exchange, and Union United Church in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue.

“Our second show of the season in the New Year is called Kindly Keep it Covered. It’s a British farce but it’s being set at a spa/inn in the Eastern Townships. Our final production is Silver Dagger, a murder mystery that takes place in Toronto,” Gillam said.

Lakeshore Players productions are staged in the theatre at John Rennie High School, 501 St. John’s Blvd. Curtain time is 8 p.m. For ticket reservations and further information call the box office at 514-631-8718.