what fairies really, really want

Clearly the highlight of the weekend for Jude and me was the Theatre Quadra production

of Sleeping Beauty, in the pantomime tradition.  We got to see it for free by volunteering

to take tickets at the Saturday night performance, then mix with stage royalty at a pot luck/

cast party Sunday.

Reimagined by our island’s own Darcy Mitchell, the play had everything but the kitchen sink.

But with the huge cast, that might have been under the proscenium arch as well. I counted 22

folks on stage for the finale.  Maybe 24, they all kept moving around in frantic fashion.

Darcy one-upped herself from last year’s pantomime, Dick Whittington and His Cat.  Besides a

a cat named Fido, a king with a migrating moustache, and three rollicking fairies you’d love as

your godmothers, she dared to give us a 6′ 6″ (two metres) sprite in rainbow gossamer wings

and an orange wig belting out the Spice Girls’ Wannabe.  It was rural surrealism.

Like Dick . . . and His Cat, genders were blended, animals talked, villains were booed and magic

filled the air.  Children in the audience challenged the evil Lord Mortimer and Mathilde the

Miserable.  Four penguins dropped by.  The packed room ate it all up.

As if that weren’t enough, I got to meet Scott Elam at the cast party.  He played Father Time,

the one-man Greek chorus in the production.  Scott is the second person I’ve met on Quadra

who is on the imdb website.  He is the son of Jack Elam, who had a phenomenal half century

career in Hollywood, practically defining the role of “grizzled sidekick”.  More on Jack next

post.

Scott and I didn’t talk long.  We shared how we’d ended up on Quadra.  Our paths couldn’t have

been much different.  I got here as a disillusioned Vietnam vet, he as a draft dodger.  He told

his story first.  He had actually been pursued by federal agents at one point.  When I told him

I’d been in the Marines, he seemed uncomfortable.

I assured him that I thought what he did was braver than what I did.  After all, I had been in

the bosom of the U.S. government and he’d been chased by it.  I don’t know if that helped.  He

soon asked directions to the dessert table and we parted ways.