Dry Streak At The Blyth Festival
The Blyth Festival has mounted any number of terrifc comedies over the years – Liars At A Funeral and Cakewalk come to mind – but I can’t remember when I last laughed as hard as I did at the astonishing comic payoff of Leeann Minogue’s Dry Streak.
Minogue is a Saskatchewan grain farmer, so when she sets Dry Streak in 1988, on a prairie farm caught in the grip of a biblical drought, she knows whereof she speaks. She finds plenty of humour in farm life, but she doesn’t gloss over the harsher realities of a hardscrabble existence that non-farmers can scarcely imagine.
The farm of Peter (Benedict Campbell) and Olive (Robin Craig) Richards in tiny Stony Valley (pop. 300) was in trouble even before the drought, but now things are looking particularly grim. Peter depends on his son John (Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski) to help him keep things going since his other son, Charlie (Cameron Laurie), has turned his back on farm life and is working the graveyard shift at the local radio station as a DJ.
As Dry Streak opens, John is returning from Calgary, where he has been working during the winter to earn some extra money. Olive and Peter are looking forward to meeting his new girlfriend. Well, Olive is anyway. But neither of them are quite prepared for free-spirited world traveling vegetarian Kate (Brontae Hunter).
Dressed all in black, with studded wristbands and a taste for head banger music from the likes of The Dead Kennedys, she is the antithesis of a country girl. But she is bright and bubbly, filled with enthusiasm, and ready to embrace farm life as the next big adventure.
As the blistering heat and the unremitting drought grind on, folks repair to the local bar where at least the beer is cold. When the beer runs out they switch to rye and when the moaning about the drought reaches a crescendo Kate, by now quite tipsy, shouts in a loud voice, “If this drought ends I’ll run naked down Main Street.”
There are witnesses to this outburst, including Rob Armstrong (David Kirby), a life-long buddy of Peter and editor of the local newspaper. Much to Peter’s distress, Rob writes an article about Kate’s pledge and the game is afoot.
Peter’s daughter, Denise (Hallie Seline) has the bright idea to sell tickets to the pending “Lady Godiva Run” to raise money to repair the town’s hockey rink. Since Rob’s article has been picked up by newspapers across the country and even television, ticket sales are brisk.
Eventually, the drought breaks in a torrential storm and . . . well that’s as much of a spoiler as you’ll get out of me. I will reveal that the payoff to this build up is as hysterically funny as it is utterly unexpected.
Director Kate Lynch has orchestrated yet another Blyth triumph with a uniformly excellent cast. I will only mention a few.
To start with, Campbell is Canadian theatre royalty – his grandmother was Dame Sybil Thorndike! He is a veteran of both the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, which for reasons that defy understanding have dispensed with his services. Their loss is Blyth’s gain.
Much of the humour in the role of Peter comes from his reactions to others and Campbell can do more with a sigh or a growl than most actors can do with pages of dialog. His performance is an unalloyed joy.
Shepherd-Gawinski, tall, gawky, and lovable makes a most engaging John. Transitions between scenes are done in semi-darkness with actors moving furniture and props as needed, while country songs play (excellent sound design by Lyon Smith). It’s a necessary evil that tends to slow things down a bit.
One of Lynch’s best directorial touches is to have Shepherd-Gawinski dance to Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man” as he assembles tables and chairs for the barroom scene. His movement is as stylish as it is funny and this throw-away bit becomes one of the show’s many highlights.
Kudos, too, to Hunter as Kate. At first, I thought this big city head banger should be a little more hard-edged, but this is a family-friendly comedy after all, not a stage version of Sid and Nancy. Eventually her fresh-faced wholesomeness won me over and I realized that Lynch’s take on the character was just right.
Craig has fun taking Olive from fretting about her son and his girlfriend living in sin to a more worldly wise outlook on life that might even be called <gasp> feminist.
Set and light designer Steve Lucas has, in typical Blyth fashion, made a virtue of a modest budget and Megan Choma’s costumes are period perfect.
I realize that I have neglected to mention many of Dry Streak’s funny lines and comic bits. There are a lot of them.
To accommodate vegetarian Kate, Olive has baked some rutabaga muffins, which both Peter and John spit out in disgust as soon as they bite into them. The audience roared with laughter. It seems that, in addition to its Festival, Blyth is famous for its rutabagas, a fact that was lost on this city boy. A Good Samaritan had to explain it to me in the lobby.
Another crowd pleaser was the line about how the national press syndicate liked Rob’s story about Kate’s pledge because it was the first prairie story that wasn’t depressing. It’s a funny line, but the much deeper resonance it had with the folks around me was evident in their laughter.
It’s moments like these that make me realize just how intimate is the relationship Blyth enjoys with its audience. The feeling is, of course, mutual. For people like me, whose day to day experience is far removed from country life, half the enjoyment of seeing a comedy like Dry Streak is experiencing it with a Blyth audience that gets every joke faster and appreciates it more deeply.
Dry Streak continues at the Blyth Festival through August 16, 2026. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Blyth Festival website.
[image: Blyth Festval]
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