Big, fun, the craziest show in town: the Mayfield celebrates the big 5-0 with Flashback Fever, a review

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

It’s the craziest show in town.

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Flashback Fever: the Mayfield Dinner Theatre is throwing a time-travelling bash onstage in honour of the theatre’s 50th anniversary. It’s big and it’s fun.

Think about the improbability of it all, the Mayfield arriving at the big five-oh, in commercial theatre, in Edmonton. Half a century of shows, distinct entertainment phases, TV celebs in their golden years, the rise of local triple-threats, musical revues containing Elvis or Patsy or Roy or Buddy alongside rom-coms, spoofs, bona fide musicals both Broadway and Off-…. All served up after a buffet dinner (and theme cocktails).

Western Canada’s first dinner theatre hasn’t always been called the Mayfield, to be sure. The owners have changed. So did the name (in 1993); remember Stage West? The theatre caught fire one night in 1987 during a sold-out run of the female Odd Couple (starring Stella Stevens and Sandy Dennis), burned to the ground, got rebuilt. Renos and re-thinks have happened, to the theatre and the programming.

Seth Johnson and Christine Desjardins in Flashback Fever, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Here’s a show to match the story. Flashback Fever, the 25th annual edition of the Mayfield’s perennially popular Christmas show, is a high-speed topsy-turvy segue-free barrage of scenes and moments, songs from Adele or KISS, Madonna or The Proclaimers, comedy riffs, song and-dance production numbers — from productions gone by. Hey, isn’t that Tina Turner (Celeste Catena) singing Proud Mary? Elvis has apparently never really left the building; Matt Cage makes sport with that thought in his version of Suspicious Minds. “We’re caught in a trap,” he sings over and over, shoulder-acting madly, and hunting for a way to end the song.

And Leona Brausen’s costumes, a Mayfield celebration in themselves,  just keep coming.

The operating principle of the show, by mystery team of Will Marks and L.N. Magill, sure isn’t chronology, or theme. Think of it not as a history but a sort of flashback collage. Or psychedelic free-association. Or maybe an explosion in a wig factory  — there are at least 60 along wIth 300-plus outfits in the glorious profusion of Brausen’s design for the eight-person ensemble of singer-dancers of director Van Wilmott’s cast.

Brad Wiebe, Celeste Catena, Jahlen Barnes, Seth Johnson, Matt Cage in Flashback Fever, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

The spiralling projections of Matt Shuurman’s clever, consistently amusing video design take us careening topsy-turvy through the half-century at the Mayfield. My companion for the evening kept seeing flashes of vinyl record albums he’d once owned spinning end over end through the space/time continuum.  And Doc Brown (Seth Johnson) and Marty McFly (Christine Desjardins) of Back To The Future fame touch down in the DeLorean here, there, and everywhere, Great Scott!, in the epoch since “the harmonious partnership of theatre and dinner began.”

This homage to the Mayfield at 50 is, thanks to John Dinning’s design, a glowing set of proscenium cubes, stained glass,a and lights (lighting design by Gail Ksionzyk), like Vegas the church of the material world, so to speak,

If there’s a recurring showbiz riff in this kooky show it’s a wink at the “classic” dinner theatre door-slammer farce, with the obligatory pert French maid (Pamela Gordon) with the obligatory bad French accent, and doors that slam for absolutely no reason. And, as someone says, “if in doubt, cue the band.” Which makes total sense at a theatre where the musical values and sound have always had consistently high quality.

If you have a history with Mayfield shows, you’ll get a kick out of spoofy scenes like Family Feud. They remind you of the period when the theatre found its stars again and again in TV alumnae from cancelled small-screen shows: Team M*A*S*H vs Team Three’s  Company and The Jeffersons. In 1987 (a year that will live in infamy since Gretzky got traded), Father Mulcahy prays that Peter Pocklington “chokes on one of his own over-priced hot dogs.” And as for Jamie Farr as Klinger … I’ll leave you to the fun of that.

The Act I closer is “The Time Warp.” The Mayfield production of The Rocky Horror Show ran in the Dancing Shoes Club next door to the theatre in 1987 (post-fire), and then went to the Fringe. In Act II, musicals enter the Mayfield repertoire in a big way: scenes from Cabaret, Chicago (“he had it comin’”), Rock of Ages, Grease. Incidentally, artistic director Wilmott has told .ca in the past that the first time he ever entered the Mayfield Theatre, in 1993, Grease was playing, with (Maralyn and Kate Ryan were in the cast).

Brad Wiebe and Matt Cage in Flashback Fever, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

The six-member band rise to any style Flashback Fever throws at them (and the show has a short attention span and changes its mind constantly). Buddy Holly emerges from the band late in the show (in the person of Tyler Check), where he’s been playing guitar all along, to rave on. Van Wilmott’s cast is as versatile as the band.  And they throw themselves into Christine Bandelow’s inventively demanding and sexy choreography. As one example, Seth Johnson, the Doc Brown, also does a John Travolta-esque dance number, and plays Nicely Nicely in Sit Down You’re Rockin’ The Boat from Guys and Dolls.

What just happened there? I hear you asking yourself. In a pretentious word, well two, it’s performance art. In one word, it’s a celebration, both of the expandable possibilities of ‘dinner theatre’ and of the actor/singer/dancer/musicians who perform there. And it’s fuelled by the thought that, as one character says late in the show, music might just be the best time travel machine there is.

This is a theatre, unique in this theatre town, that has travelled distances, with considerable ingenuity, on its small stage. From the olden days of finding its star power in fading TV celebs (“not quite shiny enough for Hollywood,” as Wilmott puts it) in flimsy door-slammers, onward and upward. To original revues that showcase theatre artists who have chosen to live and work in Edmonton. And to an anniversary season with, as a birthday bonus, not one but two big Broadway musicals back to back starting in February: The Full Monty (last seen on the Mayfield stage, directed by the late great Tim Ryan 17 years ago) and Jersey Boys.

Meanwhile, there’s a party, with a terrific band.

REVIEW

Flashback Fever

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre

Written by: Will Marks and L.N. Magill

Directed and Music Directed by: Van Wilmott

Choreographed by: Christine Bandelow

Starring: Jahlen Barnes, Matt Cage, Celeste Catena, Christine Desjardins, Pamela Gordon, Seth Johnson, Devra Straker, Brad Wiebe

Running: through January 26

Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca, 780-483-4051