Rosebud Theatre hosts final Wingfield episode

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Wingfield Lost and Found, the seventh and last play in the series about stockbroker-turned-farmer Walt Wingfield, will be performed at Rosebud Theatre, March 8-10.
“(This episode) continues with Walt’s quest to become a gentleman farmer, which he still after seven years hasn’t managed,” said Rod Beattie, who performs all the characters in Walt’s community. “He still has to go back to the brokerage to subsidize his farming habit.”
The occasion for writing Wingfield Lost and Found was when the well on playwright Dan Needles’ farm ran dry, Beattie said, and he entered the world of well drillers and dousers and water witches.
“Water, the most essential element of life, is what’s literally lost and found in this one. But there are also other things that are lost and found. There’s something about the act of searching which often turns up more than what is sought and can give surprising answers to questions you didn’t know you had.
“The Wingfield plays, progressively through the seven plays, deal more and more with the human relations in rural communities and how they are dealt with and how they’re sometimes covered over, and how sometimes they surface,” Beattie added. “In Wingfield on Ice, we had the ice literally, but we had also the ice that freezes people’s hearts against each other. Walt’s becoming aware of that… and there’s a different take on that in this play too.”
The favourite characters from previous episodes are back in Wingfield Lost and Found.
“All the neighbours are back,” Beattie said. “The Squire and Freddy and Don, and of course Walt’s wife Maggie and daughter Hope. And Spike the dog has a few more lines.”
Walt’s daughter Hope is now almost two years old, and Gertrude Lynch, the retired obstetrical nurse who delivered Hope, has become Hope’s babysitter while Maggie goes to work at the fabric shop.
There are new characters too. The father of Don the dairy farmer, who was mentioned in previous episodes, is now a main character. And of course the community’s chief well-driller is an important figure.
“We also meet Mariella, Maggie’s assistant at the shop, who’s an Italian immigrant, so I have to speak some Italian,” Beattie said. “Which I apparently do fairly well, because a number of Italian people who have seen the play have come up to me and simply started speaking Italian. But Mariella’s lines are all the Italian I actually know. These are short conversations.”
This play will have as much humour as previous Wingfield episodes, but it will also have heart.
“The thing that most moves me about it is that it actually contains the power of art to change life,” Beattie said. “Again and again in Shakespeare’s plays, the emotional crux happens when the world of art brushes against the world of life and leaves it changed. It’s something Shakespeare believed in and we believe in that too.”
Rosebud Theatre is hosting four evening and matinee performances of Wingfield Lost and Found between March 8-10, including an added matinee on the 10th. For tickets and more information, see rosebudtheatre.com.