Photo: Maureen O’Neil

What do you do if you take on a play that is essentially a one-joke piece?

If you are Ottawa’s Linden House Theatre company you attempt to paper over the cracks and smother the deficiencies with a superior production of Peter Quilter’s comedy, Glorious!

So you do have to applaud actress Janet Uren for her success in delivering a warmly human performance of a real-life figure named Florence Foster Jenkins, an aspiring concert-hall diva who seemed impervious to the realities of her appalling singing voice.

We’re subjected to various displays of uncertain pitch, strangled high notes and faltering technique in the course of the evening. And initially we do get some some amusement from our initial encounter with that voice and from the scarcely veiled horror displayed by Kurt Shantz in the role of a young pianist who, until then, has no idea of what he’s getting into when he applies to become Florence’s accompanist.

But this is a comic situation that is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Keep attempting to ring more fun out of Florence’s awful singing, and the well runs dry.

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