The Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble (ELATE) group’s three-year hiatus from staging public plays didn’t do anything to dull its actors’ keen sense of humour delivered in a timely fashion to those attending their most recent production.
April Foolery is the most recent comedy delivered to packed houses on Friday and Saturday and set again for this upcoming Friday and Saturday.
Getting tickets to the final show of the four performances may be difficult with few tickets if any still available for sale at Alpine Flowers.
Next Friday’s performance is already sold out as were this Friday and Saturday.
The show is being put on in the drama room at Elliot Lake Secondary School (ELSS) with a capacity of 60 people each night. It’s an intimate venue which brings the audience and actors closer together to take in the comedy and share the laughs.
April Foolery consists of five short skits, put on by two actors in each, dealing with ordinary life experiences with a slight twist. It’s the twist that gives the skits their comedic appeal.
The opening act Please Help Me takes on the somewhat strange requests store help-line agents find when they encounter a customer with some strange questions about a product the customer purchased. Director Murray Finn and Tom Turner came up with a strong performance in the skit.
The Job Interview featuring Astrid Turner and Martin Turner took the audience through the exchange between a boss and potential employee during the preliminary hiring process.
It was another zinger.
Bank Experience as the third skit on Saturday evening featured show producer David Black and stage manager Twyla Nicholson putting on a hilarious performance of potential frustrations a customer may face when dealing with the bank. The frustration is compounded when the bank’s main computer decides the customer can’t take out any cash because they are deceased or known as “computer dead."
Prior to the performance opening, and in the brief break between skits, the audience was treated to emcees and musicians Jim Graham and Mark Robinson delivering great music and lyrics close to the edge but delightfully hilarious.
Following the intermission, Kathy Mitchell and Sheila Gannon delivered The Audition, a play about fledging actors vying for a spot in an upcoming dog commercial. Mitchell believes she has what it takes, having studied and embracing the finer points of acting, while her counterpart takes the experience with an eye to having fun.
The Art Lesson featuring Astrid Turner and Cindee Torok started with a discussion over coffee between two friends as they recall an art lesson they once shared.
The two originally believed the lesson would involve creating paintings by viewing bowls of fruit. It turns out the lesson doesn’t involve bowls of fruit but instead the fruitier nature of a naked model they encountered when they were talking about what happened in their past.
April Foolery was a great performance and as Finn suggested prior to the show and its sold-out crowds, people may want to buy tickets early when ELATE announces its next stage performance in the future.