Skin Flick: OLT opens its 101st Season with Porn Light.
Photo. Maria Vartenova
Expect no profound messages or, for that matter, much skin in Norm Foster’s latest comedy. Beyond the underlying theme that poverty makes respectable folks take risks, Skin Flick is intended as a send up of the “adult film” industry and is written for laughs.
Rollie and Daphne Waters, an ordinary suburban couple whose son has just started a pricey university program, are out of work and out of cash. Their rough cameraman friend, Alex — a juicy part that Foster wrote for himself — has just been fired. When, Jill, an out-of-work actress with low self-esteem, mistakenly delivers a balloon-gram to the Waters’ house, the group decides that making a DIY porn movie is the way out of their financial troubles. All they need is an appropriately endowed leading man. Enter Alex’s mild-mannered, shy bookmaker, Byron Hobbs.
As directed by Venetia Lawless, Ottawa Little Theatre’s season opener is book-ended by movie excerpts. Amusing as this is, the last line of the on-stage script is so good that it is a pity to dilute it by going on. Beyond this, Lawless and her cast keep the pace at a fast trot throughout, focusing on laughter and incongruity of the match between this group and their X-rated financial saviour. Only once is the delicate balance lost. Seeing Daphne apparently reach near orgasm as she listens to Jill’s description of what a woman wants is an out-of-tune jolt with the tone of the humour of the rest. (An attempt to maintain control would have been funnier and fit the overall mood of the script better because Skin Flick is not meant to be porn. It is mocking the genre.)
Each member of the ensemble cast is clearly having fun, enjoying such moments as the running gag of the narrator editing out any swear words. Among a group of effective and credible characterizations, Kenny Hayes, as the innocent Byron, and Geoff Gruson, as the rough Alex, are particularly strong.
Skin Flick, a cute, lower-case-x beginning for OLT’s 101st season, continues at Ottawa Little Theatre to September 28.
Skin Flick
By Norm Foster
Ottawa Little Theatre
Director: Venetia Lawless
Set: Emily Soussana
Sound: Melinda Roy
Lighting: John Solman
Costumes: Glynis Ellens and Tiara Wallace
Cast:
Jill…………………………………………….Rachel Davies
Daphne Waters……………………………….Irish O’Brien
Alex Tratt…………………………………….Geoff Gruson
Byron Hobbs………………………………….Kenny Hayes
Rollie Waters…………………………………Dale MacEachern