weekend journal

Friday - Look who’s getting better

We took Mom out for a walk to White Rock Beach. (We walked, she rode). After a walk down the pier and the sea wall we spent few minutes sitting with this bear. Then we went up to Marine Drive and had a feed of fish and chips at a table outside one of the shops.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Saturday - “A Bright Particular Star” - Pacific Theater.

I love live theater and this world premiere, written and directed by Pacific Theater’s own Ron Reed, was no exception. It’s the story of Lilia MacDonald, daughter of writer George MacDonald and her passion for the stage and acting – this at a time when the stage was no place for a Christian young woman.

As always, I wished I could see it again. Rebecca deBoer, who played Lilia, was brilliant – a true star. We also especially enjoyed Dan Amos whose playing of Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll and Bicknell provided the comic relief. And the wonderful script / lines went by me far too fast. One needs to take something like this in more than once to catch all the nuances.

But I am too star-struck to ever be a credible theater critic. Probably even a bad performance would take me in. So I will quote from some reviews of others.

This is from Tim Anderson:

“A Bright Particular Star” is a play well-named. This historical drama about the family of Christian literary giant George MacDonald can also be seen as an apolgia for Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre, who present its premiere. The play focuses on George’s daughter Lilia, whose love for truth – both scriptural and aesthetic, takes her to the boundary places of righteous Victorian society.

“Playwright Ron Reed’s gift for multi-threaded dialogue shines throughout, where unintentional confessions flow from misunderstandings and assumptions. A measure of his accomplishment is how much is left unsaid, yet remains ever-present – rare is the script that writes silence so well.”

And this from Donald Adams (who played the father in PT’s last production Prodigal Son):

“I must say you have a BPS in Rebecca. (We) were bowled over by her luminosity. That’s a fairly rare quality...”

(Yep - ‘luminous’ is a good way to describe her performance.)

Finally, from Ron Reed’s write-up in the program notes:

It was deeply rewarding to use the occasion of living in Jack Lewis’s shoes (while rehearsing and performing SHADOWLANDS) to dig back into the life of his predecessor and mentor, preparing to revise and produce the premiere performance of A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR.... Often during the research and creation of this piece I’ve felt God’s hand in quite unusual ways – which, by the way, is not to claim some sort of divine inspiration for the piece or to blame God for any of the works’s shortcomings, but only to express gratitude and give credit where it’s due.”

It plays till June 3rd. So if you’re in the area...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sunday - church. Pastor continues in his series on the Holy Spirit. (Please, can I have some more?!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today - We had thought of going to the Cloverdale Rodeo where “If it ain’t wild, it ain’t worth it!” (talk about going from the sublime to the....)

But it’s raining. So we’ll see.