No Great Mischief: "All of Us Are Better When We're Loved"
VANCOUVER - No Great Mischief - a tale of transplanted hope and heartbreak opens at the Vancouver Playhouse on April 20. Based on the award-winning Canadian novel by Alistair MacLeod, Geist Magazine called the play,“magical and mystical and leaves the taste of Gaelic in the mouth."
Every weekend Alexander MacDonald drives the four hours from his home in Windsor to Toronto to check in on his older bother Calum. Or more to the point, to check that Calum hasn't killed himself, yet. He's an alcoholic and lives in a flop house in one of the city's seedier neighbourhoods. Alexander is torn between being angry at his brother's self-indulgence and the inevitable looking-up-to that a younger brother does.
Infused with a Cape Breton sense of humour, No Great Mischief is a tale of family love and cultural bonds. The story follows three generations of Clan MacDonald from the shores of Scotland to Cape Breton Island. The two present-day brothers, Alexander and Calum, are the fulcrum around which the clan's history comes to life on stage.
Uproarious laughter, tears and live Celtic music infuse the play, which shoots out of the starting gate and never comes to rest until the final moments. The truism that, “all of us are better when we're loved,” is the defining theme of the story.
Starring Allan Morgan and Duncan Fraser and directed by Dean Paul Gibson, the cast includes Stephen Guy McGrath, Peter Jorgensen, Fraser Mackenzie, Janet Michael, Ryan Reid and Jonathan Teague.
This is only the third staging of No Great Mischief. The play premiered in Toronto in 2004 at the Tarragon Theatre. The novel won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction; the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award; The Trillium Award for Fiction; the CAA-MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction; and at the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards, author Alistair MacLeod won for Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year. No Great Mischief was also a finalist for the Pearson Canada Reader's Choice Award at The Word on the Street.
The play opens April 20 and closes May 6. For more information please visit www.vancouverplayhouse.com. To purchase tickets, call (604) 873-3311, or call Ticketmaster at (604) 280-3311.
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