Summer is only a month away, and that means that 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook is preparing to launch its 2025 season.
The outdoor theatre company’s 33rd season will begin on Canada Day with the world premiere of The Housekeeper, a mystery romance written by Ian McLachlan and Robert Winslow that ponders the duality of the welcoming and easy nature of small towns with how small towns can be suspicious of outsiders.
Directed by Winslow, the play tells the story of a mysterious woman named Eleanor Gwyn who arrives in Millbrook in 1955 looking for a job, and being the housekeeper for widower Walter White might be the perfect fit. Gwyn is hoping to make a fresh start in life and to find a place to call home, but is Millbrook ready for her and her progressive world views?
Featuring a cast of 22 professional and volunteer actors/musicians, The Housekeeper is the fourth in a series of acclaimed plays by McLachlan and Winslow about the Barnardo children — 2005’s Doctor Barnardo’s Children (restaged in 2006 and 2014), 2014’s Wounded Soldiers, and 2019’s Carmel being the others — and their impact on Canadian culture and history.
Between 1870 and 1930, Irish philanthropist Dr. Thomas John Barnardo sent thousands of destitute and orphaned children to Canada, including to Hazelbrae, the Barnardo’s home for girls in Peterborough and the namesake of Barnardo Avenue. Called home children, the orphans were sent to Canada to be adopted and to be used for labour, with many girls becoming domestic workers and boys becoming farm labourers.
Winslow was inspired to co-write The Housekeeper after hearing stories from Ben Olan, a local retired farmer, surveyor, and 4th Line volunteer who has since passed away, about young women who came to the area to work as housekeepers for local farm families, often for older widowers who badly needed domestic support. Sometimes, the women would marry the farmers and even inherit the farms.
“I got the impression from Ben’s stories that there was a certain prejudice against these women in local circles,” Winslow says in a media release. “This was enough to send Ian and me on our way.”
That led Winslow and McLachlan to write one of the most complex characters yet in their series of plays about the Barnardo children.
“I’ve always been bored by two-dimensional characters and Eleanor certainly isn’t that,” observes McLachlan. “On the contrary, she’s fascinatingly complicated: warm, loving, selfish, creative, (and) capable — possibly — of violence. She wasn’t the reason we started the play, but she was the magnet that drew me into it.”
Eleanor Gwyn will be portrayed by Julia Scaringi, who performed in 4th Line’s 2022 production of Alex Poch-Goldin’s The Great Shadow and the 2023 production of Winslow’s The Cavan Blazers.
In his 4th Line debut, Canadian actor and singer Jay Davis will be playing widowed farmer Walter White — one of the Barnardo children featured in the original Doctor Barnardo’s Children and Carmel.
Davis, who just starred in the Mirvish production of Britta Johnson’s celebrated musical Life After in Toronto, has spent more than three decades performing on screen and stage, with some of his Canadian credits including Baco Noir, Bittergirl, Dracula, Evangeline, Maggie, Anne of Green Gables, Colours in the Storm, and Little Woman.
Also returning to 4th Line for The Housekeeper are Kiana Bromley, Matt Gilbert, Mark Hiscox, Darius Maliha-Evans, and Hilary Wear. Community volunteer actors include Kaleigh Castell, Richard Holt, Cody Inglis, Debbie Hudson, Ian McGarrett, Adam Murray, Zach Newnham, Gus O’Reilly, Ash Street, Lew Street, Hanna-Marie Toll, Evie Wallace, and Gillian Woodhouse.
Along with Winslow as director, the creative team includes assistant director Hilary Wear, costume designer Bonnie Garland, set designer Esther Vincent, musical director and composer Justin Hiscox, sound designer Steáfán Hannigan, and fight director Edward Belanger, with Gailey Monner and Mikayla Stoodley on the stage management team.
The Housekeeper will run at 6 p.m. from July 1 to 19, with preview nights on July 1 and 2, opening night on July 3, and performances on Tuesdays to Saturdays from July 8 to 12 and 15 to 19, with an additional Monday performance on July 14. The play contains mature content and is recommended for audience members 16 and older.
Tickets are $52 for adults and $45 for youth, with a discounted price of $38 for both adults and youth on preview nights, plus tax and fee. Tickets, season subscriptions, and gift certificates are available by phone at 705-932-4445 (toll-free at 1-800-814-0055), online at 4thlinetheatre.on.ca, and at 4th Line Theatre’s Box Office location at 9 Tupper Street in Millbrook.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of 4th Line Theatre’s 33rd season.
