Photo Wayne Eardley, Brookside Studio
Jalen Brink, Danny Waugh, Robert Winslow and Naomi Duvall in a reconciliation scene from last month’s 4th Line Theatre production called The Other: A Strange Christmas Tale.
Inspired by the Christmas Classic, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, last month the 4th Line Theatre ran seven performances of their new original Christmas play, “The Other: A Strange Christmas Tale”, featuring company founder Robert Winslow and local actor and director Linda Kash in the lead roles supported by Jalen Brink, Naomi Duvall, Emma Khaimovich, Danny Waugh, Hilary Wear, Carly Webb and Mosun Fadare as the Christmas angel.
Like most 4th Line plays, the production took full advantage of its surroundings. The play began and ended in the beautiful sanctuary of St. Thomas’s Anglican Church, but to follow the action the audience accompanied the actors as they walked the streets of Millbrook. Participants were also travelling through time as they proceeded on their journey in search of a mysterious young woman who disappeared the night of the local Christmas Pageant almost as soon as she arrived in town.
Being a Christmas story, music was prominently featured in the production. Music Director Justin Hiscox took full advantage of the fiddling talents of Saskia Tomkins in scenes that took place inside the church. Outside, members of the community choir accompanied the audience on its journey through the streets, singing carols and hymns along the way. The play culminated with rousing renditions of several popular Christmas songs and carols in the church sanctuary, embracing the audience with a Christmas spirit of brotherly love.
Rather than the love of money, playwright Beverly Cooper tackled a different human weakness in this version of the classic Scrooge story. As the title suggests, this new play addresses attitudes of intolerance and discrimination towards people who are different. The lead character, “Ebie Krank” walks through time, seeing the implications of fear and indifference on the struggles of familiar faces from his past and eventually on his own life.
This theme of intolerance has provided fodder for 4th Line Theatre productions in the past, in plays such as The Cavan Blazers, The Road to Pontypool and even Doctor Barnardo’s Children. There are always “others” in our midst if we choose to see them that way. In this production the strangers were Roma people in the 1920’s, in some Canadian communities during WWII they were Japanese immigrants and today they could be Syrian refugees. It’s an issue that is also very timely for the community today.
Perhaps this is a cautionary tale directed at us; a gentle suggestion that we take care to avoid seeing our soon-to-be new neighbours as “others”. With a potential influx of newcomers who will easily triple the town’s population, the fear that the town will be transformed is well founded. What is not a given is that the transformation will be undesirable. There will be growing pains, certainly. More traffic, more school portables, doctor shortages. Ebie Krank shows us that with the right attitude, we can see opportunity in welcoming strangers into our community and become richer for it. KG
