Finding love on the romantic side of Sugar Road
There is a wonderful moment early in the second act of Kristen Da Silva's comedy Sugar Road."
A country and western singer has just sung a sweet song to the woman he knows he loves more than the screaming fans who crowd the edge of his stage.
Suddenly, a string of stars twinkles in the evening sky and a full and luminous moon winks down on the oh so romantic scene.
And that's it, the precise moment when all the hilarious nonsense going on in Da Silva's seductive comedy gives way to what we suspected all along.
Handsome Jesse Emberly, the sort of guy who writes romantic hurtin' songs, has fallen for Hannah Taylor, the Sugar Road Amusement Park owner who remains tethered to a tragic love affair that haunts her past.
Not her own past, you understand. It's the past of her mother, who, like Hannah, fell for a restless cowboy singer, not unlike poetic Jesse and was burned by the sting of regret.
This is the aha moment, the nanosecond when we know for sure, what we've suspected all along. Hannah and Jesse ought to belong to one another.
And so, here we are rooting for these frightened, star-crossed lovers, who are frightened to find a path of compromise and trust that will allow them to walk together into a touching golden sunset at the end of Da Silva's delightful comedy.
Certainly, Hannah and Jesse, as imagined by playwright Da Silva are warm and vulnerable human beings. More importantly perhaps, they're played with sensitivity and charm by Elana Post and Jeffrey Wetsch that radiates across the multihued amusement park setting of designer William Chesney.
Each of these actors helps to create an oasis of sanity in a comedy that often explodes quite frenetically, shaking the rafters of The Lighthouse Festival Theatre with laughter.
To give us the fairytale ending we long for, Jesse and Hannah must cleave to truth, stand outside the wild invention of director Derek Ritschel and his fast-paced production.
That production, with its hilarious visual seduction and right-on-target oneliners is frequently dominated by the sweet and lowdown antics of Hannah's friend, Caroline Dawn, played with dominating energy and attack by the irrepressible Sarah Quick.
Carol plays man-hungry Sarah with a combination of Lucille Ball's wry imagination and the smack-you-in-the-face comedy of some latter-day Jerry Lewis. Watching her struggle to escape from a tightly tied sleeping bag is worth the price of admission alone.
This madcap actress can slay you with a sudden twist of her body, or a shocked suddenly felt expression that comes creeping across her sweetly preposterous face.
With a welcome Brad Rudy, as amusement park grounds keeper Ray, these two second leads are a perfect complement to the soon to blossom romantic warmth of Jesse and Hannah.
There are a few caveats. There are times when you want this daffy comedy to calm down a little so you can catch your breath. And at the matinee I caught, I think the production hadn't quite settled down as it should. There were times when all four of the actors worked a tad too hard. They didn't need to. The comedy and romance are all there in Da Silva's ingratiating play.
That play has such a way about it. All four of her characters have such a touching need to find love and happiness that we just want to savour the agreeable moments watching these characters strip away the fears and demons that obviously haunt them.
At just over two and a half hours, Ritschel's production along with Da Silva's play needs tightening and that might mean throwing away some of the play's very funny lines and its robust business that sometimes seem contrived to get laughs at the cost of truth.
Visually, the production values in this Lighthouse production are fine indeed, with lived-in looking costumes by Claudine Parker and painterly lighting from Chris Malkowski.
In a theatre world increasingly obsessed with agenda plays and a need to force-feed us overt political statements, Sugar Road" makes its own important pronouncement.
It's all right to need love. And it's all right to laugh. And these matters are accomplished here with a kind of brave sophistication that doesn't ask us to do more than walk out of the theatre feeling good.
And what's wrong with that?
Gary Smith has written about theatre and dance for The Hamilton Spectator for 40 years. gsmith1@cogeco.ca
Sugar Road
Who: Lighthouse Festival Theatre
Where: 247 Main St. Port Dover
When: Through June 19
Tickets: $44 Regular- Students and Equity Members $15
Call 1-888-779-7703 or go to lighthousetheatre.com
Protocols: Masks must be worn