Whit’s End At The Foster Festival
Norm Foster is back in form with the world premiere of Whit’s End at the Foster Festival’s new digs in the commodious Mandeville Theatre at Ridley College, a prep school for the over-privileged in St. Catherines.
As I become more familiar with the oeuvre of Canada’s most prolific (and arguably “most beloved”) playwright I have noticed that his plays often pair rather clueless but oddly lovable men with sharp-witted women who run rings around them. And so it is here.
The Whit of Whit’s End (Peter Krantz) is a 61-year-old widowed letter carrier from Calgary who has landed – Lord only knows how – in a loving relationship with Nikki (Melanie Janzen), a divorced fiduciary (i.e. financial advisor) of similar vintage. Nikki has it all. She’s smart, vivacious, sprightly, well-to-do, and she seems to genuinely love Whit despite his manifest shortcomings.
Whit and Nikki have been “shacking up” together for a bit now and both of them are planning to retire and move to Kelowna, BC, a series of major life events of which Whit’s two 30-ish kids are completely ignorant. Indeed, they don’t even know there is a Nikki in their father’s life.
So in what we quickly come to recognize as his typically clumsy fashion, he fires off a seemingly urgent message: Get to Calgary from Montreal a.s.a.p. I have something important to tell you. He even foots the airfare!
And so, as Whit’s End opens, Erica (Caroline Toal), who plays keyboards in a restaurant, and Steven (David Rowan), a pharmaceutical salesman, arrive convinced that their father is dying. What else could have triggered such a summons?
One of the pleasures of Whit’s End is the way in which Foster draws out the process of Whit revealing what’s going on in his life while Steven and Erica reveal their own halting progressions to committed relationships, even though their previous outings in the game of love have not met with Whit’s approval.
All of this is interwoven with some of Foster’s trademark grace notes. Whit was deprived of the pleasures of watching television as a child so Nikki’s frequent references to characters in beloved sitcoms of the past to serve as metaphors for the the interpersonal dynamics of the family leave Whit constantly befuddled.
Nikki, who is unfailingly cheerful and supportive, analyzes the dynamics of Whit’s relationship with his daughter with such matter-of-fact acuity that Erica frequently turns to her father to plead, “Daddy, please make her stop!”
Let me stop there lest I spoil all the fun of Whit’s End, which is considerable. It’s probably not too much of a spoiler – this is a Norm Foster play after all – to reveal that by the final curtain the fractious factions of this family have come together quite nicely. Whit’s end is a happy one.
Krantz offers up a more domesticated version of Dupuis Tarwater, the nutty sheriff he portrayed so hilariously in last season’s Outlaw, also at the Foster Festival.
In the character of Nikki, Foster has created one of his most endearing women (he’s good at that!) and Janzen makes the most of it. Indeed, Janzen is so enchanting as Nikki that I found myself wondering what she saw in the rather oafish Whit. Of course, as Pascal observed, the heart has reasons that reason knows not of.
As the kids, Rowan and Toal are spot on, but I especially enjoyed Toal’s Erica, who makes what could have been a difficult transition from brushing off Nikki to fully embracing her absolutely believable.
Much of the credit for these performances surely belongs to director Jamie Williams, whose contribution is every bit as invisible as it should be.
Beckie Morris has contributed another handsome set and Alex Sykes has lit it with a great deal of wit. Alex Amini has created costumes that ever so subtly comment on the characters who wear them.
I have really come to enjoy seeing these plays at the Mandeville and I have it on good authority that Ridley will be home to the Foster Festival for at least a few seasons to come.
Whit’s End continues at the Foster Festival through August 4, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Foster Festival website.
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