Screwball Comedy At The Foster Festival
Norm Foster built his reputation as a comic playwright by being a keen observer of the foibles and follies of Canada’s suburban middle class. In his 2017 Screwball Comedy, currently at the Foster Festival in St Catherines, he ventures into a world where he is on somewhat less familiar ground.
Screwball Comedy is something of an homage to the so-called screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s that spilled from the typewriters of Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, and others.
Screwball Comedy is set in the cut-throat world of post-Depression newspapers. Shades of His Girl Friday! Editor Bosco Godfrey feels his ace reporter Jeff Kincaid is losing his touch, so he decides to dispatch both Jeff and Mary Hayes, a neophyte looking for her big break, on the same assignment.
They are to write a suitably admiring puff piece about the approaching nuptials of the dumb as dirt son of the paper’s owner, the rich widow Delores Diddle, whose surname is the cause of much merriment. If Jeff turns in the better piece he keeps his job; if not the job goes to Mary.
A central conceit of the play is to juice up the screwball in the comedy by having two actors appear in three roles each. Thus is it that Courtenay Stevens plays Bosco, Mrs. Diddle’s butler Reginald, and her son Chauncey.
Claire Jullien portrays Mrs. Diddle, the vampish Gloria who has her heart set on Chauncey, and Jonesy, Bosco’s assistant.
Foster tries mightily to capture the voice of the screwball comedy classics that are his inspiration but falls short. The period slang seems tacked on rather than natural and he tries way too hard to make things funny.
Perhaps his most grievous misstep is Reginald the butler, who emerges as something of a Frankenstein character cobbled together from bits and pieces of Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, and Franklin Pangborn.
Of course, since Screwball Comedy is a Norm Foster play, all is not lost and there are more than a few clever wisecracks and funny lines to keep Foster fans like me satisfied.
If Foster hits the notes too hard, director Emily Oriold follows his lead. I couldn’t help thinking that a lighter touch that mimicked the rapid-fire, throwaway dialog of the aforementioned His Girl Friday might have been more effective.
Still, the cast is exemplary and they serve the material well. Tyler Rive captures the egotistic reporter Jeff quite nicely and the pert Zoë O’Connor makes an endearing Mary although she doesn’t have the crooked nose the script calls for. Probably just as well.
It is to the credit of the actors tripling that each of them has one incarnation in which they give no hint that they are responsible for two other roles. Stevens is best as editor Bosco and he makes Chauncey, who is not as dumb as he lets on, quite believable. He also does what he can with Reginald.
The estimable Jullien is terrific as Gloria, most amusing as Mrs. Diddle, and unrecognizable as Bosco’s assistant Jonesy.
Set designer Beckie Morris has contributed a simple set with nice Art Deco-ish touches. There is a clever central revolve which much be spun by actors, resulting in some to the evening’s most genuine laughs. The costumes by Alex Amini capture the period well and Alex Sykes adds some nice effects with his lighting.
Screwball Comedy continues at the Foster Festival through August 3, 2025 at the Mandeville Theatre at Ridley College. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Foster Festival website,
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