Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor in How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

You know you’ve been truly dumped when the teacher just stops coming to the Thursday night beginner adult tap dance class you’ve signed up for — and it’s Christmas time.

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Talk about seasonal abandonment issues, a stab of holly through the heart, really. That’s the situation in which the two characters we meet in Trevor Schmidt’s delightful, beautifully cast new holiday comedy find themselves in the last studio on the left at the FreeBody Dance Station. No wonder the first line of How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, premiering at Northern Light, is “are you f-in kidding me?”

That would be Joanne (Kendra Connor), the feistier of the two, reflecting on the unseemly departure of Miss Amber on the eve of the big dance competition. Patty (Jenny McKillop), the more tentative of the two and chronically resigned to setbacks as the mother of six, confines herself to a sad shrug. “Miss Amber. She’s blonde.”

As we learn, in a weave of alternating monologues interspersed with snippets of rehearsal moves for “the single ladies routine,” the beginners class has been a Survivor-type chronicle of attrition (people move, they get busy, both Cathy-with-a-C and Kathy-with-a-K have quit in a tandem departure). Only Patty and Joanne remain.

And, this is the fun and the heart of it: they can’t stop coming on Thursday night from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. to the mirrored dance studio (designed by Schmidt and lighted by Rae McCallum). We sit and watch Patty and Joanne, from the front and the back, and see ourselves too. Each character has her own reasons, as they reveal in amusing little glimpses into their lives, deftly written by Schmidt. And the performances by Connor and McKillop in Schmidt’s production, comically precise and very funny, make little wisps of information about them really count.

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor, How Patty And Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

Joanne, who evidently lives alone (except for mysterious roommate Karen), is the kind of person who knows what year Gypsy premiered, and how Irving Berlin’s White Christmas debuted in the 1942 film Holiday Inn. She’s crazy for musicals, a fan who yearns to be part of that magical world. Tap is a ticket to ride. And Connor, a petite firecracker in a Cats sweatshirt, negotiates a comical blend of brisk and dreamy, Joanne has a prosaic job in a bank, tapping invisibly behind the counter, a mental image of thwarted desire that makes you re-think your tedious exchanges at the TD.

Joanne, who has a wistful and melancholy quality about her in McKillop’s vividly funny performance, is a study in contrast. She’s tall and droopy, squinting to hike her glasses up, always a little late, dazed and distracted by the unremitting busy-ness of life with six demanding kids — five, plus Emma “who bites” — she calls The Monsters. She is not, to say the least, imbued with the can-do spirit of showbiz. She’s an unofficial spokesperson for the can’t-do. “It looks better with 10 people,” she says dispiritedly of their chances of re-working Miss Amber’s routine as a duo.

Patty just wants, needs, to get out of the house and do something for herself. And she’s already tried pottery classes (too messy) as a hobby initiative.

When Patty and Joanne decide to keep on, and create their own routine for the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition, it’s a case of “I’m not a quitter vs “I never really liked Charmaine,” the office manager at FreeBody Dance Station.

What do they have in common, as a basis for the friendship that the play heads towards (not really a spoiler alert)? As it turns out in the course of this heart-warming little holiday comedy, they have loneliness. They have Lindsey Walker’s droll, apt sound design. And they have tap. There is absolutely no logical reason for tap dance. Taps on shoes aren’t useful, like cleats, or grips on snowboots, or cushion treads on pricey runners (don’t you have relevance fatigue?). But somehow tapping is the sound that happy makes.

There’s something valiant about the act of creation, no matter how fumbling its origins, as How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold… proposes. And Jason Hardwick’s comic tap choreography makes you laugh and feels kind of inspirational. The birth of an unlikely friendship in the improbable act of creating something together, that’s where we’re going with this sweet seasonal comedy. And the fun of getting there, an apotheosis realized in a big finish (costumes by Logan Stefura), makes this an hour to give yourself as a holiday treat.

REVIEW

How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition

Theatre: Northern Light Theatre

Written and directed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Kendra Connor and Jenny McKillop

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: through Dec. 13

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com