reviewvancouver: Fools

White Rock Players’ Club
Fools by Neil Simon

Dates and Venue 10 - 27 April 2013, Wed – Sat at 8pm | Coast Capital Playhouse

Reviewer Ed Farolan

During the 2013/14 season announcement, White Rock Players' Artistic Director Ryan Mooney mentioned that Neil Simon wrote Fools to purposely make it a flop in Broadway because his newly divorced wife wanted, as one of the divorce conditons, to get all the royalties from this production. It really didn't bomb because it performed 46 times, and his wife must have been half-happy.

The show was funny, in the typical Neil Simon way, with his laugh lines, sometimes catchy, sometimes corny. Simon probably meant it to be silly and corny, but it did get laughs from the audience. The story goes this way: Leon Tolchinsky has landed a teaching job in an idyllic Russian hamlet. Terrified, he arrives to find people sweeping dust from the stoops back into their houses and people milking upside down to get more cream! The chronically stupid town becomes Leon’s curse but instead, he falls in love and begins to succumb to a brainless lifestyle of his own.

Starring Hunter Golden as Leon, Ray Van Ieperen as Snetsky, Martin Perrin as Magistrate, Paul Ferancik as Slovitch, Clive Ramroop as Mishkin, Helen Volkow as Yenchna, Ryan Johnson as Dr. Zubritsky, Sheila Greentree as Lenya Zubritsky, Melissa Paras as Sophia Zubritsky and Scott Milne as Count Gregor.

This was an entertaining production. All the actors did their roles well, and the audience, from their laughs and the warm applause during curtain call, apparently enjoyed another night of escapist theatre. Kudos to all the actors and production staff-- director Ryan Mooney, producers Marlet Magnusson and Lori Conyers, costume designers Angie Koropatnisky and Heather Maximea, set designers by Andrea Olund and Ryan Mooney, and lighting designer Matt Davenport.

This play won the BC Theatre Greater Vancouver Zone Festival and will represent this zone in the upcoming BC Theatre finals competition in Kamloops in July..