Canada's Blyth Festival Of Canada is known for producing only original Canadian productions. This season The Blyth Festival reached a benchmark of their 100th production! Where is the future of Canadian theatre headed?

2007 Blyth Festival Season

By: Kindah Mardam Bey

Canadian theatre, Canadian playwrights and Canadian productions; if you have an interest in any of the above, you will be lead to The Blyth Festival of Canada. A small theatre about 40 minutes away from the Stratford Festival of Canada, the Blyth Festival sticks to its mandate of Canadian Theatre to great avail it would appear, as this season marks the 100^th original production from a Canadian playwright to touch the stage at Blyth.

Four key productions were held at this year’s Blyth Festival with a common theme of four plays about four women; Queen Milli Of Galt, World Without Shadows, Reverend Jonah, and The Eyes Of Heaven.

Queen Milli of Galt is a delightful tale spun from a legend that Prince Edward, in line to be King, married a Canadian woman called Milli, before his dissent to Wallace Simpson and consequent abdication of the crown. The play is not accurate enough for royalists’ tastes; however it is a wonderfully romantic comedy about love, romance and a Charming Prince! Read The Review

The Eyes OF Heaven is a dissection of a mother-daughter relationship after the loss of the father figure in the family. Small towns and ‘the other’ play a large part in this play, and even with a simple premise this production has depth, intelligence and a heart wrenching tale to tell. Read The Review

World Without Shadows, a play about the life of Canadian painter Maud Lewis. A quiet, crippled and ill woman, Lewis had a heart full of dreams and enough where-with-all to make a livelihood on her sweet and tender paintings. Lewis is a Canadian artist definitely worth celebrating and remembering! Read The Review

Reverend Jonah tells of a new minister helming his first Church in a small-minded and geographically small community. Jonah is in for a few lessons of his own on how small town Churches work, and Jonah imparts a few lessons on his own to his parishioners with the help of one woman’s struggle. Read The Review

My favourites would have to be The Eyes of Heaven for substance and Queen Milli of Galt for enjoyment. The season seemed to be divided up between ‘on the mark’ productions and ones that left you scratching your head. All in all, this year’s season of The Blyth Festival seemed to have a uniting theme and a focus towards the future. Artistic Director Eric Coates seems to live, eat, and sleep the Blyth Festival, which is exactly the kind of enthusiasm Canadian Theatre needs at the helm. I would have liked to see more ‘out of the box’ productions, but going out on a limb can often hit the box office sales, and as theatre audiences are majority retired theatre-goers it can be difficult to veer away from traditional storylines.

I look forward to seeing where the Blyth Festival goes next season as it seems to have started to devise changes in their program and with a history a hundred original productions long they seem to be moving forward with a little of the tried and true and a little of the new.

To learn more about the Blyth Festival Of Canada, go to their website at: www.blythfestival.com