Donna Orbits The Moon, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic by Curio Studio.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The moon, in all its feminine mystery, figures prominently in the trio of plays — one British, one American, one Canadian — announced by  Northern Light Theatre Monday for their upcoming 48th season.

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“Under The Same Moon: Romance, Rage, and Rituals” launches in October with a rarely produced one-act play by the notable post-war English playwright poet Christopher Fry. A Phoenix Too Frequent, which dates from 1946, is in its vintage an unexpected choice for a company that in the last decades has tended to skew modern in its choices.

“It’s quite funny and quite contemporary, and not quite raunchy,” says NLT artistic director Trevor Schmidt of the romantic comedy in blank verse that retells the Greek story of a grieving widow and her maid determined to rejoin the deceased in the Underworld by starving themselves to death in his tomb. Until, that is, the arrival of an attractive soldier. Hmm, wifely duty vs. love and new life….

A Phoenix Too Frequent, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic by Curio Studio;.

A Phoenix Too Frequent is “a throwback to our history,” says Schmidt of the play, produced by NLT in 1978. That it’s not one of Fry’s better known plays (his big hit is The Lady’s Not For Burning), is a plus for Schmidt. “I like the obscure; it’s one of our trademarks,” as he says.

In addition to its complement of new Canadian work, a glance at the NLT archives reveals productions by playwrights from elsewhere whose names we likely don’t know — Aaron Marks (Squeamish) for example, Mickle Maher (The Hunchback Variations), Alexa Wyatt (The Look) — or little known pieces by the famous, like Something Unspoken by Tennessee Williams. A Phoenix Too Frequent falls into the latter category.

“Most people haven’t heard of the plays we’re doing. And our audiences, I think, really appreciate coming to something that they’re not sure about and being surprised….” Not least, he says, because of “a track record of quality; (the productions) are always beautiful to look at. I’m very visual.”

A Phoenix Too Frequent will “subvert audience expectations of an NLT play,” Schmidt thinks, alluding to an archive that leans into the edgy and dark. “It’s a sweet little play, a rom-com … deceptively simple, in a complicated, heightened poetic language.” That it happens at night in a tomb, by moonlight” has a particular allure for Schmidt, who frequently designs Northern Light productions as well as directing them. The visual world he plans is “Edward Gorey/ Tim Burton in style.”

Schmidt directs the production that runs Oct. 5 to 21 at the Studio Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barn, NLT’s home for the season. His three-member cast includes Julia Van Dam and Brennan Campbell, with Ellen Chorley as the comical maid.

The moon has a less romantic role in Donna Orbits The Moon, a 2019 solo comedy-drama by the American playwright Ian August. In Trevor Schmidt’s production (Jan. 18 to Feb. 5, 2024), Patricia Darbasie plays the title character, “a middle-aged woman with grown children, behaving badly and reacting in anger,” as Schmidt describes. “To the point that people start to wonder what’s not right with her. She’s not sure herself; we as an audience aren’t sure.…”

“She’s in denial, resentful and defensive,” he says. “And why is that? In the moments when she loses control, she goes into space and talks to astronaut Buzz Aldrin.” Darbasie, he thinks, is ideal for the role. “She has such a charming, endearing quality …. She’ll make Donna relatable, and you’ll root for her.”

Candy & The Beast, Northern Light Theatre. Graphic by Curio Studio.

The finale of the 2023-2024 season (April 4 to 20, 2024, is a new “multidisciplinary murder mystery thriller with music” by Trevor Schmidt. Like last season’s original prairie goth song cycle Two-Headed/ Half-Hearted (by Schmidt and Kaeley Jade Wiebe), Candy & The Beast takes us to a small prairie town with a dark underbelly. In Black Falls, on the dark side of the moon so to speak, there’s a serial killer — “a person? a monster?” — on the rampage. Candy and her little brother Kenny, marginalized outsiders from the trailer park, set forth on a journey to track down the killer.

Schmidt wrote the character Candy with the actor Jayce MacKenzie (last seen by NLT audiences in Ellen Chorley’s Everybody Loves Robbie) in mind, he says. And she’s joined onstage by newcomer Bret Jacobs as Kenny, a character who writes songs.

For further information and (from June 1) season subscriptions, consult northernlighttheatre.com.