Mechanically Inclined At The Foster Festival
Mechanically Inclined by Stratford Festival star Steve Ross (Chicago, La Cage Aux Folles) is part of the Foster Festival’s recent effort to foster (get it?) new Canadian plays.
In a programme note director Jamie Williams, second in command at the Foster Festival, describes Mechanically Inclined as “a love letter to the theatre.” I certainly can’t improve on that descriptor.
The play is set during rehearsals for a community theatre production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the troupe’s first foray into the thickets of Shakespearean comedy.
Dream’s director Abby (Shauna Black) is working with the cast of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude, the play put on for the duke’s pleasure by, if you remember your high-school Shakespeare, a group of workingmen known to posterity as the “rude mechanicals,” hence the title of Ross’ play.
Her thespians are a cross-section of the community: Robert, a family doctor (Pierre Simpson); Terry, the owner of a mens’ store (Brad Austin); Ben, who works on the town’s roads (Ben Skipper); Jacob, a stay-at-home dad expecting another kid (Chris Vergara); and Mason, the company’s resident ham and a college prof (Blair Williams).
If you’ve ever been involved in high school, college, or community theatre you will find many of the things that go on during these rehearsals familiar: the line problems, the schedule conflicts, the gossip, the backbiting, the nerves, the disasters (“Can anyone else hear that dripping?”).
It all culminates in a godawful rendition of the the Bard’s play within the play that is extremely well done.
There are a few standouts in the cast. Brad Williams is excellent as the college prof whose theatrical posturing and florid language lead some of his fellow cast members to suspect he is gay. Pierre Simpson does well by the doctor who overcomes his jitters to turn in a commanding Pyramus, and Ben Skipper is a stitch when he has the brilliant idea to channel John Wayne in his portrayal of Thisbe.
Since Ross grew up in the Niagara region and got his first taste of show biz in that area’s many amateur groups, it’s hard not to suspect that Mechanically Inclined has its autobiographical elements. I’ve noted elsewhere that Ben Skipper looks an awful lot like a young Steve Ross. If Ross ever played Thisbe in his youth I’m sure he was brilliant.
I’ve seen two Ross one-acts produced by Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, Life Without and 12 Dinners, both of which I quite liked. Mechanically Inclined may be his first full-length play to be mounted, but it is the first play he wrote, and it shows many of the hallmarks of a tyro effort. It is earnest and shows promise but it is decidedly slight, albeit with flashes of comic gold. The one-acts, which were presumably written later, show greater maturity.
In a programme note, Ross tells us that he has been “revisiting” Mechanically Inclined for years. Now that it has received its official world premier I hope he will be able to set it aside and concentrate on his next full-length work.
Mechanically Inclined continues at the Foster Festival through August 24, 2025 at the Mandeville Theatre at Ridley College. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Foster Festival website.
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