Stages Are Active in Grand Forks

It’s a busy time for live theatre in Grand Forks, with three plays being staged this weekend by local and regional groups, the UND Theatre Department opening a show next Tuesday for a five-day run, and a national touring company in town next Tuesday and Wednesday.

On top of that, my movie “Dangers from Within” (shot last summer in Grand Forks) is scheduled to run the week of February 22-28 at the River Cinema in East Grand Forks.

Disney’s “High School Musical on Ice” plays at the Ralph Engelstad Arena at 7 pm next Tuesday-Wednesday, Feb. 19-20. UND’s production of the absurdist comedy “Swimming in the Shallows” will run at 7:30 nightly from Feb. 19-23 in the Burtness Theatre.

The Thief River Falls, MN touring company known as Big Al’s Theatre, will present the romantic comedy “The Seven Year Itch” at the Empire Arts Center in Grand Forks this Saturday Feb. 16 at 7 pm and Sunday Feb. 17 at 2 pm. The following weekend the show will travel to Fosston, MN, and the week after to Bemidji.

The Grand Forks Community Actors Theatre Service (CATS) is putting on “Winnie the Pooh” at the Masonic Temple February 14-17 and 22-23, with the evenings of the 14th and 22nd being done as dinner theatre. Profits from the production will benefit a boy from Reynolds ND who has leukemia.

Opening tonight at the Fire Hall Theatre is another benefit production. Award-winning Grand Forks playwright Kathy Coudle King’s recent play “Trees” will benefit local breast cancer programs. “Trees” plays at 7:30 nightly through Saturday, a 2:30 matinee on Sunday, and again next weekend at 7:30 from Feb. 21-23. Directing the play is Adonica Schultz-Aune and the Tech Director is John Thompson. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for students.

“Trees” is a character drama (with generous helpings of comedy) that takes place in a Minnesota lake cabin over the Summer Solstice weekend. The play is so new that King has been revising and rewriting sections while the actors have been rehearsing. Local audiences will be the first to see it performed.

Erin Hendrickson plays Beth, a woman who has undergone breast cancer treatments for the past year and is hoping to set her life in order for the sake of her 12-year-old daughter Lily (played by Hendrickson’s real-life daughter, Audra). They plan to spend what is likely their last summer together at the family cabin, but Beth has also invited her two best friends to visit from New York on this particular weekend, both working women whose careers have kept them apart more than they’d like.

Marsha (Miriam Clapp) is a busy office executive, practical, but bitter that she has never been able to make close friendships in her position. Wendy (Deb Todhunter) is a flamboyant, free-spirited actress touring the country with a one-woman show, and loves to live life to its fullest wherever she happens to be.
Beth has not yet told her old friends that her disease is terminal, and is hoping that one or both of them will agree to take care of Lily (her ex-husband has remarried and does not want to add a child to his new family). Meanwhile, she is constantly bothered by the opinionated and often sarcastic interruptions of her dead mother (Pat Jordheim), whose ghost haunts the family cabin but only Beth is able to see.

Then there is Beth’s lawyer and good friend Adam (David Henry), whose Native American heritage and previous experiences give him a different perspective on life, and who has already formed a close bond with Lily.

Throughout the weekend all the characters come to learn a great deal more about each other, about themselves, and about life itself. While its subject material may sound either downbeat or of narrow appeal, the play is less about the impact of cancer or simply about female bonding than it is about the importance of strong friendships and family relationships. It also emphasizes how any individual’s actions and apparent outward attitude may actually be concealing inner concerns and private issues.

Under Shultz-Aune’s direction, King’s script and the cast take what could easily be touchy and/or maudlin material and give it a strong dose of humor with an underlying North Dakota/Minnesota sense of practical fatalism - the feeling that life and death must be dealt with but need not be dwelt upon. There are a few speeches, especially during the last half-hour, that tend to overanalyze the situation from each character’s point of view, dragging out the ending a bit. For the most part, however, “Trees” presents an involving glimpse into the lives of several very different people, with a bittersweet but satisfying and ultimately upbeat conclusion.