Old Stock

To the Belfry Theatre the weekend just passed to catch “Old Stock”, the last production of the current theatrical season there.

You may recall – should you be a continuing consumer of this random reportage – that The Girl and I are long(ish) standing season ticket holders at the home of Victorian fringe theatre. Each year at about this time we have to decide whether or not to renew our subscription for the coming season (the which commences in the autumn). We do this by contemplating just how impressed (or otherwise) we have been by the season just closing and by studying the advance notices of next year’s programme. No surprises there…

It has to be said that there have been years in which we have come close to giving it a miss; this coming year conceivably – until the weekend just gone – being one of them. It would be no exaggeration to say that, for the past couple of seasons, we have not been exactly enthralled by what we have seen. Whereas we must be fair – noting that the tail end of the Covid pandemic has made things a whole lot more difficult for theatre companies far and wide – we cannot ignore the fact that sitting packed together with others in a theatre audience (the majority these days going un-masked!) still carries a fair degree of risk. Should we choose to take that risk it really had better be for something worthwhile…

…which brings us neatly to Halifax-based 2B Theatre’s production of Ben Caplan, Christian Barry and Hannah Moscovitch’s musical play – “Old Stock” (which bears the subtitle “A Refugee Love Story“).

Let us not beat around the bush. This quite brilliant production has gone a long way towards restoring our faith in Canadian theatre. It is witty but sensitive, riotously risque but touching, beautifully performed by musicians and actor/musicians alike and splendidly directed and staged. The show made us fall about laughing one moment and blub like babies the next. It had plenty to say without being puritanical about it. Most importantly it took the sort of risks that theatre must take to be any good (in any sense!) without being mealy-mouthed about it.

Brilliant!

If theatre companies on this side of the pond really want to win the ongoing and unflagging support of folks like us then they need to do a lot more of ‘this sort of thing‘!

IMHO…