Written by Stina Nyquist, the play is meant for children but with parents in mind.
Stina Nyquist’s latest offering has it all: a good story with a humanitarian message, beautiful costumes and an enthusiastic cast.
Rehearsals are well underway for Dinosaurs and Dreams, which plays at the Algonquin Theatre March 30 and 31 at 7 p.m. and April 1 at 2 p.m.
HARNESSING FELIX: Rex the dinosaur (Richard Watling) attempts to tie up Felix (Nicholas Carpenter) in the rehearsal scene of Dinosaurs and Dreams, a new family play from Stina Nyquist and the North Muskoka Players.
“It’s a crazy story, a fantasy, but the bottom line is that it’s about the environment and the dangers we are facing on that score. I didn’t plan on it, but it happened,” said Nyquist, during a dress rehearsal at the theatre on Saturday.
The costume designers, namely Celia Finley, Lynn Fletcher, Pam Smyth, Diane Bickley, Rosemarie Robertson, Pat Babb and their crew have outdone themselves with this production. The costumes are colourful and imaginative, especially the dragon suit worn by Richard Watling.
Dinosaurs and Dreams is a one-act play that tells the story of Felix, who lives in a perfect Utopian world, but he is bored after 1,000 years of sameness and yearns for something different.
Thanks to a 9,000-year-old woman’s magic, he is instantly transported to the Other Country where life is miserable and on the brink of extinction.
When the prime minister learns that the newcomer is from Happy Valley he demands a share of that happiness, but Felix can’t help him since
happiness can’t be touched or seen. Alternately the young stranger is regarded as a hero and a villain. Rex, the dinosaur and sole survivor of the Jurassic age, serves as the prime minister’s guard, but he also feels that he is an outsider and nostalgically sings:
We ate our prey and had our day, million ages long,
I’m living in a legend, surviving in a song.
The play features a cast of 16 characters, many of whom are well-known members of the area’s thespian community. Sherisse Stevens is Big Sister, Gregg Evans the prime minister and Richard Watling plays the dinosaur Rex.
Felix is played by Nicholas Carpenter and the prime minister’s daughter is Taryn Christy. Derek Shelly plays the minister of fresh air, Eyan Wheatley is Pierre, a French chef, and Suzanne Riverin, is the toothless Very Old Woman.
Dinosaurs and Dreams, with its unreal, outrageous and hilarious happenings and characters, aims to amuse but also has a humanitarian message, said Nyquist.
“Inside the story of conflict, crazy fantasy and even a little romance, there is the somber message that unless nations realize that the world is one unit and all of us, in our search for comfort and security, have to work together for the common good, humankind will not survive,” Nyquist said.
“So, at the end of the play, the two countries come together and become one in the realization that Happy Valley was only a dream because the ideal world is not possible, but striving together in that direction is the only feasible policy.”
Concluding, Nyquist quoted an old Cree saying: “When the last tree is cut down and the rivers are empty, then we will know that money cannot be eaten.”
Tickets for Dinosaurs and Dreams are $15 for adults, $10 for children and $45 for a family (2+2). They are available from the Algonquin Theatre box office, 789-4975, or online at www.algonquintheatre.ca.
The following images are some of the photographs taken by Jon Snelson during a performance of Dinosaurs and Dreams.
