BUZZon - Weird Sisters

The Attic, The Pearl & Three Fine Girls (photo ©pixbylorne) Good or bad or somewhere in between, nobody pushes your buttons more effectively than a sibling—and in exploring the love-hate relationships of three grown sisters, The Attic, The Pearls & Three Fine Girls pushes more buttons than George Jetson.

A bitingly funny, sometimes dark, often silly and surprisingly touching meditation on the nature of family relationships, especially the mixed blessing of having siblings, Attic was originally produced by Toronto’s Theatre Columbus in 1995 and co-written by five women: Jennifer Brewin, Leah Cherniak, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Alisa Palmer and Martha Ross.

The Guild’s recent production of Attic was also co-crafted by five women, all PEI stage veterans—director Laurel Smyth, stage manager/set designer Anne Putnam, and actors Kathleen Hamilton, Gill Mahen & Melissa Mullen, a formidable quintet dubbed Beyond the Bridge (a nod to their successful 2005-2006 production of Marion Bridge).

Your prodigal reviewer having wandered the western provinces for much of the 21st Century, this new Attic marked his first good look at the Bridge performers in about a decade—and by an eerie coincidence, his first look at an Attic production in about the same time, since Theatre New Brunswick’s superb version visited PEI in 2001.

The Guild show isn’t quite the equal of its TNB predecessor—the latter had the luxury of a more expansive venue (the Jubilee) and a cast of physical comedy specialists from the Jest in Time troupe (one of whom, Sherry-Lee Hunter, serves as physical comedy trainer for the Guild show)—but the solidly professional Guild version does the script ample justice.

That funny, often moving script sees the long-separated Fine sisters Jo-Jo (Mullen), Jayne (Hamilton) and Jelly (Mahen) reunite as adults to bury their father, unearthing assorted memories, mementos, secrets and grudges in the process.

The story often time-shifts into the family’s past, especially flashbacks to the sisters’ childhood, scenes that all three actors embrace with gamely hammy gusto. Thanks in part to those childhood scenes, there’s plenty of physical comedy to make the show visually as well as verbally lively. Hunter’s teaching stands The Guild cast in good stead.

Speaking of that cast, Hamilton is a picture of tightly-wound patrician poise as frosty financial whiz Jayne, a pleasingly nuanced Mahen is quietly charming throughout as quirky artist Jelly, and Mullen again proves herself one of PEI’s most expressive and versatile actors with the many moods of neurotic professor Jo-Jo.

If the show has a weakness, it’s cramming so much movement into The Guild stage’s close quarters—for instance, the space’s flat sight lines sometimes make it hard to follow close-to-the-ground action.

That being said, the production mostly overcomes its spatial challenges. Smyth and Putnam do a clockwork-smooth job of slotting a detailed set, three actors and plenty of props into limited space, and all the moving parts mesh smoothly in this nimbly jam-packed show.

Sugar Plums Dance ←		The Theatre of Life →

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