The first play to kick off the Ladysmith Little Theatre’s 2014-15 season is a murder mystery comedy full of twists and turns, dead bodies and drinks.
Flemming, An American Thriller is about Henry Flemming, who arrives home one day and tells his wife, Karen, that he has sold his lucrative brokerage firm to become a detective. On his very first case, to the horror of his wife and friends, their living room begins to fill up with dead bodies. Every day, Henry shows up more disheveled and beaten up, but he couldn’t be happier.
The play, which spoofs film noir thrillers from the 1940s and 1950s, features many familiar faces, such as Bill Johnston as Flemming and Shellie Trimble as his wife Karen. Stephen Hall Lewis, Lesley Lee, Scott Bastian, Greg Heide and newcomer Erin Elderfield round out the cast under the direction of Charles L. Harman.
Flemming, An American Thriller, was written in 1978 by Sam Bobrick, who wrote Murder at the Howard Johnson’s, which Ladysmith Little Theatre (LLT) presented in 2013.
This is the first play Harman is directing for LLT, and when he put his name forward to the theatre’s artistic committee offering his services as a director, he was excited when he was asked to direct Flemming, An American Thriller.
“I’d done other murder mysteries before; it’s fun,” he said. “I’ve always liked the genre. I find them very intriguing, whether they are comedy or not. It’s the whodunit, trying to figure it out. It’s the misdirection involved, and I’ve tried to do a bit of misdirection in this one as well, as allowed in the script.”
The actors auditioned for the play in June and worked on their lines throughout the summer, and they’ve been rehearsing at the theatre since the third week of August.
Harman, who most recently acted in the theatre’s production of Man of La Mancha, has been involved in theatre for “50-some” years as an actor and director.
His first leading role was Prince Chulalongkorn in the musical The King and I when he was in Grade 8.
“I laugh jokingly that it went downhill from there because I couldn’t stay away from it,” he said with a smile. “Theatre feels like home.”
Flemming, An American Thriller will be the sixth LLT production Harman has been involved in since moving to south Nanaimo last June.
“It’s been quite a joy here,” he said. “There are wonderful people, and there’s a lot of real theatre stuff. There’s such a great group of people who work in this for the love of theatre. It’s a neat place to work.”
Harman, a retired teacher, says being a director is quite different for him because he is usually on stage, but he enjoys sitting back and creating a show.
“It’s like you’re painting a picture,” he said. “You’re the captain of a ship, and then sitting back and seeing it come together. It’s also giving the actors the freedom to do what they do best … allowing them to grow and be the character.”
Harman says it’s nice to have young people like Elderfield, who recently graduated high school in Nanaimo, involved in the theatre and to see them grow over the course of a production.
“It’s like teaching in school – you’re watching them grow within the confines of the show,” he said. “It’s great. I’m a conductor too, and I can equate [directing] to moulding a piece of music and interpreting it to the way you want it to sound. It’s that creative thing.”
Flemming, An American Thriller opens Sept. 25 and runs to Oct. 12. For more information and tickets, call 250-924-0658 or visit www.ladysmiththeatre.com.
