In his quest for tourism dollars (or a way to make Islanders stay home and spend money as though they were tourists), PEI Tourism Minister Philip Brown could take pointers from the Victoria Playhouse. The Playhouse relies on a strong core of Island theatregoers who, if they like a show, send along all the folks from away who enjoy their Island hospitality. The Playhouse’s August production of Culture Shock attracted a packed house of tourists and locals to Victoria.
The show’s popularity has much to do with the popularity of the play’s actor/writer/director, Lorne Elliott, host of CBC’s Madly Off in All Directions. With Culture Shock, Elliott again proves he is a very funny guy. The farcical plot of the play follows Newfoundlander Hillyard Philpott’s trip to Montreal and its aftermath—including adventures with bankrobbing brothers, heist money, and an elaborate drug deal. According to his father, Hillyard is “stunned,” and it’s his stunnedness that gets him into trouble and makes his poor father poorer.
Newfoundlander Rory Lambert is a likeable Hillyard—entirely winning as a fella who’d rather be “blastin’ rats” than almost anything else, and who goes to Montreal with a single mispronounced French phrase: “Où est la plume de ma tante?”
Lambert is well supported by a curmudgeonly, mumbly Elliott as Hillyard’s long-suffering father and an expertly spoofy-goofy Paul Broadbent as Cyril, a mailman who delivers telegrams and the good news that “Jesus saves.”
Each of the three main actors also plays a secondary character, though none are memorable in these stock roles. Recorded voices (for TV reports or unseen additional characters) work poorly. Unlike the experienced comic actors, who know timing is everything in comedy, recordings are unresponsive to audience laughter and deliver lines whether they’re hearable or not.
Elliott is a brilliant writer of monologues, and the monologues in Culture Shock are predictably strong. But moving from monologue to monologue, Elliott throws in more twists than surprises. Particularly in the wild second act, the plot goes “madly off in all directions” and offers at least three red herrings and a shaggy dog.
In the end, the story is not about the “culture shock” of a guy from Jarvis Arm, Newfoundland, travelling to the big city of Montreal. Instead, it’s really about a guy who is presumed to be “stunned” shocking us and himself with how smart he is after all. Perhaps being presumed to be “stunned” is part of the Atlantic Canadian cultural condition—and only those not in on the joke are surprised stunnedness is just a guise for resourcefulness with no resources.
Culture Shock earns popularity with good humour and good performances. The set design by W. Scott MacConnell deserves special mention; it’s as deceptively simple and as witty as Hillyard.
Culture Shock fits Victoria Playhouse’s formula for success. As for PEI’s slow tourism year—well, anyone who thought the boom brought on by the Confederation Bridge opening wouldn’t go bust when the novelty wore off…now, that’s what I call stunned.
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