Tag: show review

Review – Murder, mystery, big laughs highlight Lighthouse’s best show of the season

This review of The Real Sherlock Holmes was originally published in The Haldimand Press on September 8, 2022

By Mike Renzella

The Haldimand Press

PORT COLBORNE—If you’re looking for an evening of non-stop hilarity, wrapped around an entertaining old-fashioned murder mystery, then look no further than Lighthouse Festival’s world premiere of the new play The Real Sherlock Holmes.

This play is a true showstopper, with the wizards at Lighthouse turning an incredibly versatile set into a wide variety of locations, including laboratories, Scottish castles, a stormy sea at night, a prison cell, and more. Utilizing dazzling lighting and sound effects, the work is remarkably seamless, creating the illusion that you are travelling across the countryside along with the main characters as they chase down a murderer.

Canadian playwright Peter Colley knows how to blend comedy and menace with near surgical precision. While the show features several over-the-top characters meant to draw big laughs, the central mystery at its core remains interesting throughout, and has a great twist ending.

The story focuses on a young Arthur Conan Doyle, long before he created the iconic Sherlock Holmes, as a young medical student who gets drawn into a murder investigation thanks to his instructor, Professor Bell. Jeff Dingle as Doyle and David Rosser as Bell have a terrific chemistry right from the first scene, with their interactions playing out like scenes from a classic British sitcom. 

Their investigation leads them to the doorstep of Lady Louisa and her relative Jenny, played by Susan Johnston-Collins and Blythe Haynes respectively. Along the way they meet a rogues’ gallery of characters, deftly brought to life by a small cast of actors handling multiple roles. The acting chops on display across this range of broad side characters makes for excellent comedy. Each time an actor appears as another, even more outlandish character, the resounding bouts of laughter from the crowd grew larger and more sustained.

Nicole Wilson shines in multiple roles as a mysterious hag, a morgue attendant, and more, while both Alan Cooke and Mark McGrinder repeatedly appear as a series of recurring characters, each completely distinct and with their own set of hilarious tics. Honestly, it’s an acting showcase that needs to be seen in person to fully appreciate.

It’s ultimately up to Dingle as the young, intrepid Doyle to anchor the show and keep the narrative momentum flowing. He is able to imbue the famous author with a nervous energy that fits the story perfectly, serving as a perfect straight man to the madness unfolding around him. Pulling from research on Doyle, the character is presented as highly susceptible to mystical elements, such as ghosts, selkies, and other creatures of folklore – something that allows the play to achieve a certain otherworldly charm as Doyle occasionally encounters what he believes to be apparitions or fantasy creatures.

After playing to sold out audiences at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, the show is now playing at the Roselawn Theatre in Port Colborne through September 18. If you like to laugh, The Real Sherlock Holmes will give you exactly what you want, enough belly laughs to keep you entertained from beginning to end, and enough technical wizardry on display to leave you dazzled. What are you waiting for? Go get your tickets and enjoy the show!

Show Review: The Real Sherlock Holmes is an elegant first-rate production that will make you laugh

Allan Cooke, Jeff Dingle and David Rosser in The Real Sherlock Holmes | Director: David Nairn, Set: William Chesney, Lighting: Wendy Lundgren, Costumes: Claudine Parker,

This show review by Gary Smith was originally published in The Hamilton Spectator on August 27th, 2022.

So, just who is “The Real Sherlock Holmes”?

Fans of the legendary fast-talking sleuth, know he sprang from the fertile imagination of feisty Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Or did he?

Did the deerstalker detective have a different provenance? Did someone influence Conan Doyle’s penning of all those dark-hearted Sherlock mysteries? Did “The Hound of the Baskervilles” and “Sherlock’s Last Case” really spring from Conan Doyle’s fertile brain without assistance?

If you don’t know you need to go to the Lighthouse Festival Theatre in Port Dover. That’s where lean and lanky actor Jeff Dingle spills the beans, as he trots across the Dover stage in search of adventure and romance.

Dingle, a terrific Conan Doyle, has exactly the right sense of style and pace to make this spirited Peter Colley comedy work.

He knows the perfect way to send up the drama, give the comedy a sly twist and create comic moments of perfect silliness. Dingle is aided and abetted by a smooth and smug Professor Bell from actor David Rosser.

Together this agreeable partnership gives this lunatic adventure story a sense of tremendous fun and wide-eyed innocence.

Add to the mix, wonderful Hamilton actress Susan JohnstonCollins who gives haughty and imperious Lady Louisa a perfect twist of sour lemon. JohnstonCollins is capable of controlling a scene when she’s simply standing around, artfully dabbing her nose with her always handy lace hankie. Or even better, lifting those incredibly arched eyebrows in mortal disdain.

These three actors, light up the Dover stage, dominating Colley’s play with intentionally elevated acting that makes their performances linger in the imagination long after the baddies are carted off to jail and Conan Doyle, not yet a Sir, kisses sweet little Jenny, (Blythe Hanes) who gives his crank an American twist. 

A terrific set from William Chesney is evocative and imaginative

with its several levels and hidden pop-out surprises, it is a perfect landscape for the play’s nefarious goings-on.

Then too, Claudine Parker’s lived-in costumes have just the right touch of cheesiness about them to suggest old-time melodrama.

Add Wendy Lundgren’s mood-drenched lighting and you have a sense of mystery.

Mark McGrinder and Allan Cooke, playing an assortment of outrageous characters, from a fiendish bagpipe player to a One-Eyed Old Salt of the Sea, tend to veer somewhere over the top, but my goodness they do make you laugh.

To read the full review please click this link to visit The Hamilton Spectator website

Show Review: ‘Halfway There’ is Norm Foster at his most beguiling

This show review by Gary Smith was originally published in The Hamilton Spectator on July 8th.

Want to laugh until your sides ache? Want to cry until your heart breaks?

Want to see Canada’s most prolific playwright at the very top of his game? Want to see a cast committed to theatre as a place of moving and insightful entertainment?

OK, so enough with the questions.

Go grab your favourite device and book seats for “Halfway There.” This wonderful Norm Foster comedy, with its sly comic invention and generous dollop of truth, is one of the best things I’ve seen all year. That includes Broadway, London’s West End and the Stratford Festival.

It’s in Port Dover at The Lighthouse Festival Theatre, the home of Canadian theatre comedies. But oh my, it’s so much more than you might think.

Some years back Foster wrote a play about male bonding called “The Foursome.” Well, now he’s done something even more winning.

With “Halfway There,” he’s written a rueful, first-rate love story about women. I don’t think anyone’s done this sort of thing better.

It’s “Steel Magnolias,” “Morning’s At Seven” and “Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean” all rolled into one. Except for one thing special. It’s uniquely Foster in every possible way.

Laughs, and believe me there are dozens and dozens of them, punctuate some of the warmest and loving moments I can remember on a stage.

Yet, these whoppers that make you laugh until you can’t take it anymore never encroach on the humanity and the truth of the play. Foster’s characters grow naturally out of a series of crises and challenges that face Rita (the wonderful Susan Henley), Vi (the irrepressible Debra Hale) and Mary Ellen (Melodee Finlay, one time Queen of Port Dover Lighthouse comedies, who is happily back with a vengeance).

These three lovable women are a triumvirate to reckon with. Their performances bristle with a kind of exquisite energy and truth that radiates from the stage like a warm hug and a great big kiss. These three friends face the losses in their lives with a will to shrug off sorrow and the strength to hold on tight to what makes them strong. They are so real you want to join their group hugs on stage, grab their hands and take them all out for a drink and a fish fry at Dover’s vintage Erie Beach Hotel.

They aren’t the centre of the story here, but they are the steamrolling heart of Foster’s wonderful play. They are what gives it its joy, laughter and tender moments of female bonding, moments that transcend life’s sometimes awkward and painful annoyances.

We are in a little diner in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia. That’s the place that is halfway to the North Pole. Now you get the play’s title, right? But that’s only a small part of what it really means. More about that later.

Into this evocative spot — where waitress Janine Babineau, played smartly by Kristen Da Silva, dreams about finding real love and a hold on life — walks handsome Sean Merritt, who’s terrific as a visiting doctor in town for a month or two, working at the local hospital. And isn’t he just about perfect in a quiet, no-nonsense way.

Just maybe, he’s what Janine is looking for, someone to give her life meaning.

To read the full review please click this link to visit The Hamilton Spectator website