St. Albert Theatre Troupe spoofs love

Everyone has a story about the pitfalls of dating. Most are funny and everyone laughs as we shake our heads knowingly. Others are sad or even chilling.

Either way, romance and relationships are a major preoccupation for most folks and like most of his countrymen, Canadian playwright Norm Foster is along for the ride.

Few subjects are off limits for Foster. In Looking, an adult romantic comedy opening at the Kinsmen Banquet Hall on Thursday, Nov. 6, he spoofs our inherent neediness and insecurities.

Brought to the stage by St. Albert Theatre Troupe – now in its fourth season of dinner theatre productions – Looking peers at a topic we all enjoy scrutinizing.

In this relationship arena, we meet two middle-aged men and two women who are single and looking for love. Val (Laurie Borle), an operating room nurse answers a personal advertisement put in a newspaper by Andy (Kevin O’Connell), a worker in the storage business.

They decide to meet on a blind date, but bring along their best friends, Nina (Anne Marie Smythe), a police officer, and Matt (Cory Peter Christensen), a radio show host as a buffer.

One of the big issues facing the characters is since they are older, some have gone through painful events such as divorce and are cautious about taking romantic leaps.

“Where do you go to meet someone? In this play there is no Internet, so how do you find the right person? And you get to a certain point when you say ‘maybe all the good ones are taken.’ And all the insecurities about what you have to offer or don’t have come up. They have to battle who they are and what they want,” says director Katie Elliott.

And then there’s the question of who the other person at the end of the ad could be. Are they funny and sexy or a total psycho?

“They’re also on an adventure. They’re going into something and they don’t know what to expect. Part of the reason they like to bring a friend is to have a sidekick or a wingman.”

To keep the momentum clipping along, Elliott notes that Foster’s use of dialogue leans toward short, quick sentences with snappy jokes and a great deal of light banter – especially since the road to romance doesn’t always follow the easiest path.

“Foster intends to encourage us to be brave enough to seek something that is important to us whether it’s love or a job. It may not come the way you plan it. But if you fight for it, it may work out in your favour. It’s all unknown, but you have to be able to trust in yourself.”

She believes Looking’s great strengths are the characters’ charms and their ability to make immediate connections to people.

“It’s a clever little journey and the characters may not find everything they want, but it’s still pretty upbeat.”