Neptune Theatre: Mrs. Parliament's Night Out

You know how sometimes I go to my local theatre and review plays? Well, I saw another on Sunday evening!

One of the perks of being famous being locally famous having a successful blog...OK, one of the perks of having a blog and a few Twitter followers is that sometimes people invite you to stuff. I love that Neptune Theatre invites me to see their shows, because I always want to go anyway and I never turn down free stuff.

So on Wednesday night, I went to see Mrs. Parliament's Night Out!

Mrs. Parliament's Night Out stars Sheila McCarthy of CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairie. That's not a show I watch, but I recognized her because I see commercials all the time for the show when I watch Jeopardy. Because I am a huge nerd, and have a series recording on my PVR for Jeopardy. I also get weirdly competitive about it, like recently when the players on the show failed to complete the category "Reality TV Shows By Winner" in time, and I screamed at the top of my lungs:

"Those jerks! They didn't finish the category that I was bound to nail! I bet I would have gotten all five of those! They suck! I didn't get to run the category because they're a bunch of nerds who don't know anything about real life!" 

Yeah. It was an ugly moment.

To be fair, I'm pretty sure the category that they were going for was something really obnoxious like symphonies or history. Anyway, that's a digression. The point was, I was familiar with Sheila McCarthy. That said, I still didn't know what to expect from the play.

OK, so the play. It was written by Norm Foster, and it's about a middle-aged woman named Theresa Parliament who realizes her life has gotten into a serious rut. Her husband is more interested in watching the news during dinner than talking to her, she rarely leaves the house, and she's generally feeling unfulfilled. Doesn't sound like a laugh and a half, right?

I'm pleasantly surprised to say that I thought the play was truly, genuinely funny. Not like laugh-because-everyone-else-is-and-you-feel-like-you-should funny, but funny. There were jokes. The delivery was good. Even the music had a peppy feel that made me feel like I was maybe watching a sitcom at times.

Theresa Parliament decides to start making the most of her life, by joining various clubs and groups and taking lessons in whatever she can find - whether she demonstrates a skill for it or not. She meets lots of wacky, interesting people and realizes that other people find her interesting as well.

One of my favorite characters in the play was Mrs. Parliament's elderly neighbour Carl Lewiki - I don't want to ruin the play by telling you too much about him, but I found his scenes hilarious. Major kudos to the actor, Wade Lynch, who himself is not old but managed to absolutely nail everything about the character.

I think you'll be surprised with the direction the story takes, and I definitely think you'll find yourself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. I went to the play with my boyfriend Rob, and he really enjoyed it as well. (FYI, local folk, we had dinner at the Foggy Goggle before the play and my mac & cheese was off the hook. Creamy wine sauce, caramelized onions, breadcrumbs...delicious!)

So often I'm already familiar with a story before I see the play, and I really wasn't sure if I'd like Mrs. Parliament's Night Out. Now I'm really glad I saw it!