Rod Beattie returns to Rosebud in Wingfield’s Inferno

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Wingfield’s Inferno, sixth in a series of one-man comedy plays performed by Rod Beattie, comes to Rosebud Theatre, March 9-10.
Walt Wingfield, a Toronto stockbroker, left the big city in favour of a simpler life – farming in the small, rural community of Larkspur. But Walt quickly discovered that farming isn’t as easy as he expected. And, as fans of the Wingfield series discover, with Walt, nothing gets accomplished as easily as one expects.
In Wingfield’s Inferno, Larkspur’s Orange Hall, which has been the focus of community activity for 60 years, has burnt down, and Walt has been appointed chairman of the committee to rebuild it.
“But, of course,” said Rod Beattie in an e-mail, “it’s not as simple as it was 60 years ago.”
In this episode, Walt is also learning what it means to be a father. His daughter Hope, born during Wingfield On Ice, the episode performed in Rosebud last February, is now 18 months old.
Beattie performs all the favourite Larkspur characters – Freddy the Squire, Don, Maggie, Spike, Willy and Dave – as well as Harold the clerk of the town council and Windy Hallett MP.
Each of the Wingfield plays, Beattie said, was inspired by something that Beattie and writer Dan Needles observed in Needles’ rural community, a community that Beattie said might be a lot like Rosebud.
“It’s a place where people and the land are not two separate things, where each nourish the other and a place in which the best thing you can say about a person is that he or she is ‘a good neighbour.’
“Inferno was occasioned in part by an incident in a town near Dan’s farm,” Beattie added. “The town has a pond in the middle of it, which kids have used to skate on since skates were invented – more than 100 years. The older kids learned to test the thickness of the ice for skating and passed on the knowledge to younger kids, for generations. For 100 years, no one got hurt. Then a lawyer told the town council they would be liable if a kid fell through the ice and they would be sued beyond their insurance coverage. Now there’s a big fence around the pond and it isn’t used for anything.
“It started Dan and me thinking about the ways in which the quality of life is diminishing, especially in Dan’s sort of community. Somehow we’ve begun to think of safety as the absence of danger rather the awareness of and management of danger.”
In Wingfield’s Inferno, Walt, as a new father, wants to make Hope’s life as safe as possible.
“But he finds that this has made him buy into our society’s misconception about danger and safety,” said Beattie.”
And Maggie, Walt’s wife, states, “If you try to make life risk-free, you end up not living it.”
Wingfield’s Inferno will be performed in Rosebud Theatre’s Opera House the evening of March 9, and in matinee and evening performances on March 10. Performance tickets include a meal in Haskayne-Kenney Mercantile. The March 9 performance also includes a silent auction fundraiser.
For tickets or more information, see rosebudtheatre.com or call 1-800-267-7553.