LUCIDMEDIA

Jasper Station

Written by John Gould Monday, 25 June 2007 11:40

Jasper Station is as Canadian as a maple syrup. It is a mixture of a mountain setting, a railway station and a diversity of mainly tolerant and polite characters that is the essence of the Canadian myth. They have returned after five years so that they can share the experiences that resulted from their personal turning points. The plot unfolds as a flashback.

Norm Foster’s setting is a good one. He places people who have had personal mountains to climb in the context of mountainous national park, in the transitional location of a railway station, all within a house party concept of train travel in the West. The characters he created are intended to provide a balance. There is the aging minor league hockey player (Graham Coffeng) and the intelligent runaway wife (Rebecca Poff), a reporter with literary aspirations (Brenley Charkow) and a dithering accountant (Sam Owen), the philosophic station master (Laurie Murdoch) and the unstable star gazer (Naomi Zara). The mixture of personalities is the means for the play’s intended message of human connection, laughter and sadness. All of the characters need affirmation and acceptance. However, the play’s first weakness is that the characters are all the same. They lack depth and are not in believable situations.

Jasper Station is the first of Norm Foster’s three musicals with Steve Thomas. He is known for comedy with an ultimate message. His dialogue is intended to move the audience between comedy and pathos towards the point he wants to make. Given Norm Foster’s experience, it is surprising that Jasper Station lurches like a milk train. The station master’s part is presumably there to keep the plot moving in much the same way as the chorus did in ancient Greek drama. This does not seem to happen. Smooth transition is not there. Laurie Murdoch (Bert Calivetti the Station Master) changes persona and costumes many times to create humourous asides that add to the complexity of the plot but seem to do no more than fill out the running time of the play and jolt the plot back into motion when it begins to run out of steam. This is the second of the play’s weaknesses.

The songs are good. However, they are not toe-tappers. No one will remember them much past the performance. This is the play’s third weakness. Of the songs, “Frank Mahovlich,” “All I Want to Say,” “Whatever” and “Bob’s Your Uncle” are the most noteworthy. It is in the songs that the lurching milk train momentarily roars along like VIA Rail’s The Canadian up the Yellowhead Pass. The sound quality was clear, but tended to be too loud at the beginning of both Acts. At times, the sound mixing of the accompaniment overtook the female voices. The need for sound enhancement in such a small theatre is questionable.

The sustaining strength of this production is the cast. Each member brought a great deal of dramatic expertise to Jasper Station and carried their part well. In particular, Sam Owen as Sterling Mimms, the accountant, capitalized on his opportunity for comedy. Graham Coffeng, as Henry Keegan, the hockey player, sang well with Rebecca Poff, as Emeline White, the runaway wife. Laurie Murdoch, as Bert Calivetti, the station master, was dextrous in changing not only costumes but also persona. He is a versatile actor, comedian and singer. However, the quality of the cast cannot counterbalance the weaknesses of the play. See Jasper Station for the cast, not because it is a Canadian musical comedy.

CAST
Emeline White the intelligent runaway wife	Rebecca Poff
Rebecca Townsend the striving newspaper reporter	Brenley Charkow
Sterling Mimms the dithering accountant	Sam Owen
Nikki Dunn the unstable star gazer	Naomi Zara
Bert Calivetti the philosopher station master	Laurie Murdoch
Henry Keegan the aging hockey player	Graham Coffeng