Hot fools hit the stage

One of Alberta’s finest film and television actors returns to his stage roots to help Shadow Theatre celebrate its 20th anniversary.

Shaun Johnston, best known to viewers as the patriarch on CBC’s successful family series Heartland, has nabbed a role in Sam Shepard’s quintessential American drama Fool For Love.

This modern western, which incidentally was the first show presented under the banner of Shadow Theatre at the 1989 Edmonton Fringe, runs Feb. 15 to March 4 at the Varscona Theatre.

“It’s our 20th anniversary. We wanted to pay homage to the past and it seemed this play was the way to go,” said artistic director John Hudson.

“Shaun was one of the original founders and he was here for the first four years and then the world of television beckoned. He did the first three shows with us and wrote Catching the Train. We came smashing out of the gate with these four shows,” Hudson added.

Two decades ago Johnston developed the role of Eddie, a rodeo rider and stunt man desperate to rekindle a poisoned romance with May. In this contemporary co-production between Shadow Theatre and Calgary’s Sage Theatre Company, Johnston slips on the hat of the Old Man, a spirit living only in Eddie’s conscience.

“Shaun is a tremendously authentic actor. With him, everything is about the truth and everything is real, and he’s perfect for Fool for Love,” Hudson said.

The fools in this case are two battling lovers who meet at a motel in the Mojave Desert. Eddie, played by former St. Albert martial arts instructor David MacInnis, has driven thousands of miles to find May (Jamie Korchak). She’s found a job as a short-order cook and is waiting for her boyfriend Martin (Kevin Rothery) to take her to the movies. May has started a new life and going back to Eddie means they will repeat their same destructive patterns.

Fantasy and reality overlap as the lovers’ love-hate relationship plays out and examines how the unstoppable desires of one generation can wreak havoc on the next.

“It’s a major American classic and Sam Shepard’s most produced play. He wrote it right at the time his marriage was breaking up and he had met Jessica Lange. He was exorcising his demons and working on his own guilt,” Hudson said.

Hudson also mentioned that he’s never directed a play that starts hot and just keeps getting hotter, putting huge demands on the actors.

Hudson initially cast MacInnis in large part because of his tremendous masculinity.

“He has a strong sense of the male self and Eddie is totally confident in being a guy. Eddie is a complex character. He has a need to be loved, but he doesn’t want to be tied down. He’s self-centred – a child in many ways. Even though he’s in his 30s, he’s still part of the circuit, drinks in bars and gets into fights.”

And as for Korchak, well “Jamie is fearless. Shepard puts May through the wringer. The shock of having Eddie show up rattles her world. She wants a normal life and knows she can’t have it with him around.”

Pure passion is complex and for these characters it promises to implode their lives.