Artspace: Poor Theatre playing the Fools

Arts/Life

A hilarious send up of romantic love

Posted By Lorne Stelmach

Posted 1 month ago

A scene from the Poor Theatre Company production of Fools featuring Attieh Mardli in the role of Sophia Zubritsky, and Jeremy Rampton as Leon Tolchinsky.

There was a Russian man and a Ukrainian girl who fell in love but suffered a terrible curse.

It does, however, make for good drama, so the Poor Theatre Company's latest theatre production is in the final rehearsal stages for this summer's production of Neil Simon's Fools.

It opens at the Kenmor Theatre Wednesday, July 21 at 7:30 p..m and continues nightly through Saturday, July 24.

THE PLAY

In this hilarious send up of romantic love, playwright Neil Simon serves up an evening's worth of droll witticisms about life, love and the enduring nature of human folly. Fools applies a scalpel to the idea of the power of romantic love in a world where people's capacity to love and be loved is in doubt.

At the centre of the story is Sophia Zubritsky, the nineteen-year-old beauty, and the nebbish schoolmaster Leon Tolchinsky, who has just arrived in the remote village of Kulyenchikov for his very first professional assignment. He is instantly smitten by his young charge.

Not only does the course of their love not run smoothly, it veers off the beaten path entirely and gets lost in a maze of moronic misunderstandings.

The obstacle that dooms Leon and Sophia's love is a curse – a curse of grave and ineducable stupidity that renders all the inhabitants of the village incapable of love.

Unless Leon can raise Sophia's intellect, she will never be able to love him. But he is warned that if he cannot dispel her ignorance in 24 hours, he will fall victim to the terrible curse as well.

THE CAST

The directors of Fools - Jaclyn Kozak and Andrei Mardli - have assembled a talented and diverse cast for this production including six returning actors and seven newcomers.

Anchoring the play are three veterans of past PTC productions. In addition to co-directing duties, Andrei Mardli appears onstage in the role of the well-intentioned but dim-witted Dr. Zubritsky, who declares that the answer to the purpose of man's existence is – Twelve!

The character of Leon Tolchinsky, the foolhardy schoolmaster and would-be-hero who dares to fight the curse of stupidity that engulfs the village, is played by Jeremy Rampton, while Reid Sloan takes on the role of the villainous Count Gregor Yousekevitch - a rival for Sophia's hand in marriage and descendent of the sorcerer Vladimir, who placed the evil curse upon the village 200 years ago.

Also returning this season are Chicago Dyck (Playing Doctor), Kiera Sigurdson (Mrs. Sorken) and Katrina Reimer (Mrs. Sorken). Katrina brings unique comic flair to the character of Lenya Zubritsky, the dim-witted doctor's better half and mother of the beautiful but woefully ignorant Sophia.

As Mishkin, Kiera redefines the postal profession as someone who excels at collecting mail but fails to understand the part about delivering it. And in a twist on the nursery rhyme character of Little Bo Peep, Chicago Dyck plays the villager Something Something Snetsky, the sheep loser, who can't remember his name, let alone find his sheep.

Actors new to the PTC stage include Attieh Mardli playing the feeble-minded Sophia Zubritsky who only recently learned how to sit down, Kara Harder and Katrina Kozak as Yenchna the vendor with two heads but only one brain, Nathan Mackrith who doubles as the magistrate and village idiot, Gavin Mckneil as the village priest, Kathryn Lapenskie as Slovitch the village butcher, and fellow villager Chrissy Wall.

THE COMPANY

Fools is Poor Theatre Company's seventh summer production and keeps up the tradition of presenting comedies written by some of our greatest contemporary comic writers.

Poor Theatre also continues to support young people in theatre arts with a scholarship for a Morden Collegiate Institute graduate pursuing post-secondary education and training in the Dramatic Arts. This year's winner is Chicago Dyck, who performed in last year's PTC production of Playing Doctor and most recently performed the role of Zangler in MCI's production of On the Razzle. A portion of the proceeds from each PTC production is directed toward the scholarship fund.

Tickets will be on sale at the Pembina Hills Art Gallery, Morden Tourism Booth, and if still available, at the Kenmor Theatre a half hour before each show. All tickets are $10.

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