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Driftwood turns to drama for laughs

What are Driftwood Players thinking? Instead of their usual lighter-than- laundry-lint Christmas comedy, the Coast's venerable theatre troupe chose a drama this year for their three week run - Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables.

What are Driftwood Players thinking? Instead of their usual lighter-than- laundry-lint Christmas comedy, the Coast's venerable theatre troupe chose a drama this year for their three week run - Terence Rattigan's play, Separate Tables. Could they finally have had enough of the Farndale follies, those strained buffooneries that have crossed the Heritage Playhouse stage for several holiday seasons?

I confess I've had enough of them. Putting on a drama is always riskier in building an audience, but I applaud it. It's a smart, professional move. This play is a drama that turns on character and human foibles. As such, it invites the director, David Short, to really push his cast and it asks for performers to stretch their skills.

Thus we are offered the best performance to date from Roberta Sainsbury. She was last seen in Cash On Delivery and several other comedies. In Separate Tables she plays the role of Miss Cooper who runs a hotel. The play is actually two linked stories that focus on characters residing in a genteel boarding house in Britain's Bournemouth, a seaside town, during the 1950s.

At first, proprietor Miss Cooper is so much wallpaper to the other interesting characters: Miss Meacham (Nest Lewis), Mrs. Railton-Bell (Colleen Elson), Lady Matheson (Gail Lewis), a retired professor played by Richard Lund and two young people, Rebecca Smith and Patrick Harvey, who serve as mirrors to the elderly guests. By the second act, Miss Cooper is the keystone of the action squaring off against the meddlesome Mrs. Railton-Bell over a guest's transgression. This play is not without humour. Colleen Elson is in fine form as the aging Bournemouth belle in control of her tongue-tied daughter. She could have portrayed the part as shrill and waspish, but she chose the larger, comedic role and she gives the play many of its very funny moments. Nest Lewis, too, plays her role for laughs, as the eccentric Englishwoman who loves a bet on the gee-gees. As the femme fatale who follows a Marxist journalist to the resort town, Driftwood newcomer Karla Blocka is a hit. She and the journalist, played by Randy Schmidt, create sparks on stage, though the outcome of their love affair is predictable.

In the second act, Bryan Carson as the fraudulent major looms large in stage presence and manages to bring compassion to his rather repugnant role as a groper. His relationship to the downtrodden daughter (played by Jennifer Holczer who risks anonymity by hanging her head so thoroughly throughout the play that her face can rarely be seen) is the focus of the second act. In all, it's an engaging, two-hour drama that is well-worth watching, especially by students of life. It runs today, Nov. 26, and Saturday, Nov. 27, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $12 at the door of the Heritage Playhouse.