Whimsy delivers with funny performances

Sheldon Davis, left, Graham Percy and David LeReaney play the founding fathers of Outer Baldonia.

Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte, Calgary Herald

Note: Several weeks ago, we posted about an interesting play being produced by Lunchbox Theatre. If you're interested in attending, you've only got this evening and tomorrow to fit this into your schedule.

Whimsy delivers with funny performances

Novice playwright's smart idea is given its due by cast

By Bob Clark,

Calgary Herald

April 9, 2012

REVIEW

Lunchbox Theatre presents The Whimsy State or the Principality of Outer Baldonia by AJ Demers through April 21. Tickets: 403-265-4292. Rating 3 ½ out of five

Stories where the little guy gets to play the big guys' game are always fun.

And the truer the story, the better the fiction.

The new Lunchbox comedy - The Whimsy State or the Principality of Outer Baldonia by Loose Moose improv alumnus and novice playwright AJ Demers - is no exception. That's thanks to a tight script - based on a little-known footnote in Canadian history - and some amusing performances from the four-person cast.

The intriguing premise of Demers's 65-minute play dates from the establishment in 1948 - complete with charter, flag, and a small contingent of military-minded (sort of) fishermen - of the Principality of Outer Baldonia. The island nation of barely four acres lay about 15 kilometres off the coast of Nova Scotia from Yarmouth.

The founding fathers, according to the Demers' version of events, were a U.S. lawyer/Pepsi Cola lobbyist/avid sport fisherman, Russ Arundel (played by Graham Percy) and two likable Nova Scotia commercial fishermen, Ron and Elson (Sheldon Davis and David LeReaney, respectively).

The show unfolds as a flashback introduced by former Outer Baldonian ambassador Ron and chancellor Elson over a couple of beers at the start of The Whimsy State's howitallbegan-and-then-what-happened-next scenario.

The two return at the end of all the funny business with an epilogue that nicely puts finis to a tale about several decades of semi-serious goings-on.

As director Pamela Halstead points out in her program notes, they're men acting like boys at the clubhouse/tree fort stage of development.

In the case of the Outer Bal-donians, "clubhouse" rules of exclusion extend to such things as taxes, inhibitions and the presence of women on the island; fish stories are encouraged and lies are the substance of belief.

Back at the office, Arundel's secretary (Karen Johnson) gets the title of Princess while Arundel, as chief architect of Outer Baldonian fishy political and fish-based economic strategy - the currency was the "Tunar" - takes on the rank of Prince of Princes. He apparently showed up (as he does in this show) at official functions wearing a service club-meets-Oktoberfest get-up festooned with bottle caps and empty sardine cans.

Things begin to unravel when the tiniest, unofficially official speck on the world map is noticed by the fledgling United Nations and incurs the scorn of the mighty U.S.S.R., over fishing rights and Outer Baldonia's apparent lack of sense. The Soviets pick up the latter - via their sneering, cliche-spouting, white-furred and ambivalent mouth-piece, Anna (Johnson-Diamond, chomping on a stereotype) - as the latest gross manifestation of Western Imperialism.

The cast works well together in injecting a winning, human element of credulity into a history that is incredible, but true.

You've got to love the way the very simplistically pragmatic trio of Russ, Ron and Elson chum together, for example, to make their own little country, which, as far as Demers's clever comedy is concerned, amounts to a briskly paced, intelligently drawn par-able about big ideas and ideals in a very small world.