This season Teatro La Quindicina celebrates its 30th anniversary, an incredible achievement for a small, and independent theatre troupe in Alberta.

Following a successful run of The Adulteress, A Grand Time in The Rapids and the Fringe’s Angels on Horseback, playwright-director Stewart Lemoine closes the season with one of the company’s most successful plays in the past three decades.

Pith!, the troupe’s most well-traveled production, is being revived with a completely new cast and opens Thursday at the Varscona Theatre for a 17-day run until Oct. 27.

Andrew MacDonald-Smith plays the enigmatic Jack Vail. Kristi Hansen is the grieving widow about to embark on a journey. And St. Albert’s own Jenny McKillop is the vivacious and intrepid Nancy.

“It’s all about the power of the imagination and how theatre allows you to explore it,” says McKillop.

Set in 1931, Pith! is the adventurous tale of Virginia Tilford, a woman whose husband went searching for a silver mine a decade ago and never returned. Along with Nancy, her loyal maid, Virginia has mourned the loss for 10 years.

Nancy attends a church function, meets Jack and invites him to the house. A roving sailor and keen observer of humankind, Jack quickly gets to the heart of Virginia’s grief and loneliness.

He creates an epic and exhilarating tale of travel that takes them deep into the South American jungle without leaving the house. Using only four chairs and a phonograph, the threesome leave Providence, R.I, escaping to New Orleans, Panama and Ecuador.

During their living room odyssey they meet a progression of explorers, shysters, gigolos, natives and tropical plants that have life-changing effects on the ladies.

At times poignant, at times comical, the real “power of the play is that it allows Virginia to let go,” adds McKillop.

Lemoine has developed a reputation for suspending audiences in a Noel Coward-esque stylish world of wit, sophistication and glamour.

“This is one of his more thoughtful plays and it definitely hits a chord with me,” McKillop said. “It’s very affecting.”

For more information visit www.teatroq.com.

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