Rosebud Theatre opens season with sweet, quirky romance

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Rosebud Theatre opens the 2016 season on April 1, with Outside Mullingar, an Irish romance between middle-aged Anthony Reilly and Rosemary Muldoon (resident actors Paul Muir and Heather Pattengale). Guest performers John Innes and Judith Buchan complete the cast, performing on the Opera House stage from April 1 to June 11.
“Being in the middle of this show and this story is like being part of a dream cast in a dream play,” Muir wrote in an e-mail. “Everyone is so good, and the story and the writing are some of the best there is. (Playwright John Patrick) Shanley is a master!”
“It doesn’t matter whether you live in Ireland or on a farm outside Standard, Alberta, the story of Outside Mullingar could be your story,” said Morris Ertman, artistic director. “It’s so wonderfully true to life and authentic and delightfully funny and full of heart.”
After Outside Mullingar, Rosebud Theatre takes us from Ireland to South Africa for Valley Song, playing on the BMO Studio Stage from May 19 to June 2. Veronica (Lennette Randall) is a young woman dreaming of being a big-city singer – though leaving her grandfather will break his heart.
The theatre brings us back to the Canadian prairies with Tent Meeting, from June 24 to Aug. 28, in the Opera House. A traveling gospel quartet sets up meetings on the edge of a prairie town. They create controversy, but end up restoring broken friendships and mending a struggling marriage.
The Sunset Limited, on the BMO Studio Stage from July 8 to Aug.27, takes us to a run-down apartment in New York City, where an evangelical ex-convict holds a suicidal professor hostage. Playwright Cormac McCarthy “knows the depth of human despair and the depth of human hope,” Ertman said. “The Sunset Limited reaches into both those places in a way that’s going to rock the audience.”
In the fall, An Inspector Calls, performed on the Opera House stage, will take us to England from Sept.9 to Oct. 29. The play is a whodunit, exploring a wealthy family’s apathy about the death of a girl who worked for them.
The season closes by returning to New York for Miracle on 34th Street, the classic tale about whether Santa Claus is real. It plays on the Opera House stage, Nov. 11 to Dec. 23.
“One of the magical things about the theatre is that we get to explore stories from all over the world,” Ertman said. “Sometimes when we take a story and put it outside of our own context, it becomes even more powerful.”
Yet he didn’t intentionally choose international stories this season.
“I picked these plays because of what they were saying, and because I believe that they would be entertaining for our audience, and I discovered that they took place all over the world. And I just think that’s timely,” he said.
“Especially right now where so much of what the conversation, certainly world-wide, is all about what are the ties that bind us, as we invite people of other cultures to join (us in Canada),” he said. “As we realize that we are citizens of our world, not just a country.”
Learn more about Rosebud’s 2016 season and get tickets at rosebudtheatre.com or 1-800-267-7553.
“It’s going to be the coolest season ever,” Ertman said. “People just have to come.”