If you haven’t bought your tickets yet for Globus Theatre’s production of The Beaver Club, you won’t want to delay much longer.
Tickets are selling fast for Barb Scheffler’s hilarious and empowering comedy, which opens Wednesday night (September 24) in Bobcaygeon and runs for 11 performances until October 4. One matinee performance is already sold out, with limited seating for some of other performances. All optional dinners before the eight evening performances are also sold out.
One reason for the play’s popularity is undoubtedly the story — it’s about four older women with very different personalities who embark on a road trip from Toronto to Newfoundland — and another may be that the playwright herself is performing as one of the characters.
Scheffler’s first full-length play, The Beaver Club premiered at the Port Stanley Festival Theatre in 2023 to rave reviews and a sold-out run, with Sookie Mei of Entertain This Thought calling it “an instant Canadian theatre classic.”
The story begins when uptight and fastidious Karen invites three of her Toronto condo neighbours — recently widowed Québécoise Yvette, adventurous free spirit Radiance, and Newfoundland native Eunice — to a scrapbooking session so they can get to know each other. When the group learns that Eunice has been invited to go to her nephew’s wedding in Dildo, Newfoundland but she’s reluctant to go on her own, they decide to go on a road trip together.
In the Globus production, Scheffler will play Eunice, Globus Theatre’s co-founder and artistic director Sarah Quick will play Karen, regular Globus Theatre performer Anna Silvija Broks will play Radiance, and veteran stage and screen actor Linda Goranson will play Yvette.
Toronto native Scheffler, who will acting in her own play for the very first time, works primarily as a performer and is a graduate of Sheridan College’s musical theatre program. While raising her three children, she spent several years working for Mysteriously Yours Dinner Theatre and wrote several murder mysteries for the company before going on to write several short plays and collaborating with her husband Michael Harms on several musicals.
In an interview for Bruce County Playhouse, Scheffler described the origins of The Beaver Club.
“At the start of the pandemic I was invited to participate in a Zoom read-through of a script about four older women that were all American stereotypes,” she recalls. “You know, one was from the deep south, one had a Brooklyn accent, etc. And I thought to myself, why are we doing an American play? We have Canadian stereotypes too!”
“So I set out to write a comedy that drew on the regional characters we have here in Canada. And because I had been touring all across the country performing in Menopause the Musical Canada, I decided to send the characters on a road trip, drawing on some of the funny experiences that I had had travelling with a bunch of women.”
Calling the play “my love letter to Canada,” Scheffler says she tried to incorporate all of the places she got to see, while also making the four characters more than just Canadian stereotypes.
“I really wanted to write a play about older women that didn’t just draw on cliches,” she says. “Even though they are stereotypes, each woman in The Beaver Club has a rich inner life and a complex history. I want the audience to laugh, to cry, and to ultimately fall in love with these characters.”
“I think that older women have so many fascinating stories to tell, and my goal as a playwright is to amplify those voices.”
As for the name of the play, Scheffler says it reflects both the bawdy humour shared among the group of women and the fact the play is unabashedly Canadian.
“The Beaver Club just came to me as the perfect title because it’s a little bit salacious, but also very Canadian,” she says.
The Globus Theatre production of The Beaver Club runs at 8 p.m. Wednesdays to Saturdays from September 24 to 27 and October 1 to 4, with 2 p.m. matinee performances on September 27, October 2, and October 4. The October 2 matinee is sold out, and seating is limited for some of the remaining performances.
Tickets are $50 for the show only, or $100 for the show and a pre-show dinner (all dinners are sold out, but you can call Globus at 705-738-2037 or 1-800-304-7897 to be added to a waitlist). For tickets, visit www.globustheatre.com/shows-all/the-beaver-club.
