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Girl in the Goldfish Bowl (2008) >
Village Life|Ledger Dispatch|News and Review
Meet Iris, a precocious 10-year-old girl who is the only grownup in a house full of adults. She lives in a small town where nothing ever seems to happen. That is, until one eventful week when her best friend, Amahl, her pet goldfish dies. Then Iris meets Lawrence, a stranger who she believes is her reincarnated goldfish. She invites him to her house, believing he’s the key to making her dysfunctional family right again.
Written by one of Canada’s most acclaimed playwrights, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl is hilarious, heartfelt and heartbreaking.
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Village Life
Girl in the Goldfish Bowl Wows Jackson Audience
By David Jacobson, Village Life
(8.13.08) Main Street Theatre Works scores a coup with its latest production. A regional opening of a play by a successful playwright usually demands a company under Actors’ Equity contract. Yet MSTW, though professional but non-union, got the nod for the West Coast premiere of Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, by Canada’s provocative and prolific Morris Panych. Now on stage at the Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre in Jackson, the production lives up to expectations of a demanding audience.
Set in the Northwest Coast of British Columbia in October 1962, the dark comedy tells the tale of an unstable family in an unstable world. A kind of memory play, it frames a universe as seen through the eyes of a precocious 10-year-old, Iris (Amanda Aldrich), as she mourns the death of her goldfish and the last days of her childhood. Her world is in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, possibly Armageddon, and her family is falling into loveless decay.
Her mother, Sylvia (Bonnie Antonini), married her father, Owen (Earl Victorine), on the rebound after the death of Sylvia’s true love, a casualty of World War II. A good-natured drug addict, the aimless Owen has only one asset, the house he inherited. He spends his days at a drafting board, hoping to produce something worthwhile out of his geometric doodles. Meanwhile Sylvia, on the verge of walking out, consoles herself by fussing in the kitchen. And when the hyperactive Iris puts her head in Sylvia’s lap, the distant mother brushes her off.
The lone boarder, Miss Rose (Shaleen Schmutzer-Smith), is a booze-hound who throws herself at any male who crosses her path, including Owen. Mr. Lawrence (Dan Featherston), a recent guest, washed up out of the sea and, discovered by Iris, is agitated and confused. He may be an escaped prisoner or mental patient, but Iris believes him to be the reincarnation of her beloved goldfish.
In the hands of Director Susan McCandless, the action unfolds more subtly than in the traditional memory play. Instead of standing aloof as a narrator, reciting her past, Iris is both character and chorus. She flits about, ducking under furniture, bouncing everywhere as she reassembles fragments of the past. And the able cast, through fast-paced action, maintains the atmosphere of borderline hysteria, delivering witty dialog loaded with one-line zingers.
While delivering lines with fine comic timing, the actors define their characters sharply. Of particular note are an adult Aldrich as Iris, who convinces us that she's a mixed-up child, and Featherston's dithering and disoriented Mr. Lawrence, who makes us half-believe that he was recently a fish.
Carol Sethre’s set captures the paradox of the environment, the youthful energies of Iris struggling with the adult decay surrounding her. At stage right, mostly in shadows, we see a pile of rusting outbuildings emphasizing decay, and at left we have a pagoda-like anteroom hinting a dreamy reverie. They echo the conflict between the family’s Catholicism and the Buddhist vision attracting Iris.
At center is an all-purpose livingroom where the characters collide. Upstage is a staircase leading to a single door, behind it the bedrooms and the erotic hints of what might, or might not, go on there.
E-mail jacobsondb@aol.com.
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Amador Ledger-Dispatch
MSTW's 'Girl in the Goldfish Bowl' dives into fun complexity
By Scott Thomas Anderson, Amador Ledger-Dispatch
(8.12.08)
Rating: 3 out of 4 stars
On the heels of a tour-de-force production of "To Kill a Mockingbird," Main Street Theatre Works is using its Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre to host the West Coast premiere of the award-winning Canadian play, "Girl in the Goldfish Bowl."
Written by Morris Panych, the play is a lively exploration of childhood innocence crashing into the drab, irreversible colors of the adult world.
"Girl in the Goldfish Bowl" is set in the fear theater of the Cuban missile crisis and tells the story of Iris, a 10-year-old whose goldfish dies at the same time as her parents' marriage. Portraying Iris is actress Amanda Aldrich, who handles the challenge of an adult playing a child convincingly. Aldrich offers a fast-moving character that's hyper, inquisitive and blunt. The energetic spirit she brings to the role keeps the production on sound comedy footing, even when it ventures into its more serious thematic moments.
In the part of Iris' demoralized, couch-potato dad, Owen, is MSTW regular Earl Victorine. Owen is a caring father but underachieving husband. He's introduced as a lofty daydreamer who thinks a stroll through Paris will make his wife fall back in love with him. Victorine is thoroughly good in his performance, achieving a kind of silly realism that enforces the story while making his character genuinely familiar and empathetic.
Bonnie Antonini plays Iris's mother, Sylvia - an ever-suffering victim of life's cold monotony. Full of second guesses and unrequited needs, Sylvia is only too ready to be interested when Iris brings a strange man into her home. Antonini is solid in her role, though at times grows a bit invisible when opposite cast members who appear to be taking more chances in their performances.
Rounding out the production is Dan Featherstone as Mr. Lawrence, the jittery, off-center mystery man who wanders into Iris's life from the chaos of an uncertain world. Mr. Lawrence represents something different to each of the family members he's intruding on - an exciting distraction to Sylvia, a threat to Owen and the reincarnation of a dead goldfish to Iris. His ability to have these effects is a testimony to his neurotically confusing behavior, which Featherstone pulls off brilliantly throughout his time on stage. With a gift for physical timing and perfect expressions, Featherstone makes the riddle of his character an added bonus to the story from start to finish.
For a comedy, MSTW's version of "Girl in the Goldfish Bowl" is more than just entertaining, it's downright thought-provoking in its best moments. Good set design, stage management and direction all contribute to making this a worthy West Coast premiere of a play that throws the most difficult questions of childhood in the multi-prism lens of a goldfish bowl.
"Girl in the Goldfish Bowl" plays at the Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre Fridays and Saturdays through Sept. 6. Patrons are encouraged to bring their picnic dinners and wine and sit under the stars. Gates open at 6:30 p.m. for picnics with the show beginning at 8 p.m. Tickets are available at LizzieAnn's/Bubblegum Books in Sutter Creek, Hein and Co. Bookstore in Jackson or at the gate. Cost is $16. Students 18 and under are $12.
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Sacramento News and Review
Sitcoms: Girl in the Goldfish Bowl
By Jeff Hudson, Sacramento News and Review
(8.14.08)
Morris Panych? The Canadian playwright’s name may sound familiar.
Panych specializes in dark, quirky comedies, and the B Street Theatre has staged three of his plays, starting with Vigil (featuring Tim Busfield and Boots Martin, in ’97), followed by Lawrence and Holloman (’98) and Earshot (’01).
B Street undoubtedly considered Panych’s Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, which premiered in Canada in ’02, but the first Western U.S. production is by plucky Main Street Theatre Works, an upscale community group in Amador County. Their artistic director, Susan McCandless, saw the play up north, and she’s doggedly pursued the rights for years. (And she’s not averse to borrowing B Street strategy; last summer, she staged Escanaba in da Moonlight, which the B Street’s mounted three times.)
Girl in the Goldfish Bowl is set in coastal British Columbia in ’62, at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Viewpoint character Iris (played by grown-up actress Amanda Aldrich, with her hair in girlish pigtails) is a precocious, motor-mouthed 11-year-old, who uses big words, gets in trouble with the nuns at school and sees through dysfunctional adults all too well.
There’s her father Owen (Earl Victorine), an affable loser who pads around in pajamas and is fascinated by geometry. There’s her mother Sylvia (Bonnie Antonini), a bored spouse who keeps threatening to walk out on her husband. There’s Miss Rose (Shaleen Schmutzer-Smith), a boozy boarder who smells of fish because of her job in a cannery. And there’s the mysterious Mr. Lawrence (Dan Featherston), who the pre-teen Iris believes to be the reincarnation of her dead goldfish.
This production’s community actors bring energy to their performances - they’re likeable and fun to watch. They aren’t always quite as precise as the Equity cast you’d find in a B Street show . . . which is to say that while many laugh lines in this production connect, a few others don’t. But overall, the "oddness" of this very situational comedy comes through. And the Kennedy Mine Amphitheatre remains a favorite location to enjoy a summer show (even if an "indoor-oriented" comedy like this one doesn’t derive any direct benefits from the moonlight and evening air).
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