Scapin...

[fajrdrako]

I went yesterday to see Moliere's play Scapin that Odyssey Theatre was presenting in Strathcona Park. I went with the kids from the Summer Drama Camp.

I wasn't familiar with this play, but it has all the familiar Moliere themes of stingy, unreasonable fathers, and well-meaning sons in love with the wrong girls, and confused identities and (always my favourite) clever servants with convoluted schemes - which work. It reminded me of Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters, but that's unsurprising, they're the same sorts of plays.

Odyssey Theatre's hallmark is that they present their plays as commedia dell'arte, with masks - the only theatre in Canada to do so. But unfortunately, it started to rain about ten minutes into the open-air show and the rain could destroy the masks. So they called a break to decide what to do for ten minutes.

The kids in the Summer Drama Camp got busy doing reverse-rain dances to make the rain stop. And it did stop, or at least dwindled to a manageable level, so they started the play again - without the masks. I think I liked it better that way.

Afterwards, they thanked the kids who did the rain dance for making the rain go away.

The translation was clever. It was really an adaptation, with modern references thrown in. The costumes were colourful, goofy and timeless. Made me want to do some more costuming myself.