Kate Bush once said in a song that every old sock meets an old shoe. Isn't that a great saying? And just being alive, it can really hurt. And these moments given are a gift from time.
When Billy Vickers starts a sentence, it isn't uncommon or unnatural for Karen Wood to finish it for him. It goes the other way, too. Neither interrupts the other, they just flow their thoughts into a single narrative. They've been married so long, it's as if their lives intertwine like an old sock slipping comfortably into an old shoe.
They are far from elderly, but they are experienced at this life thing. They have been holding hands a long while as they hike into the hills of time.
They are the perfect fit as well for Ralph and Carol. Vickers and Wood must inhabit these fictional people in the Miracle Theatre production of The Last Romance, a story about the sparks of love flashing anew just when these two senior citizens begin to assume those fires are going out. Ralph is full of vim and vigour, Carol is aloof and conservative in her emotions. Their yins and yangs become alluring to each other, but traditional sensibilities and shallow-buried secrets make it more complicated than a simple courtship.
"They have a lot going on inside," said Vickers.
"They are lonely seniors with different circumstances in their histories, and both heavily contemplate the wisdom of starting a relationship that late in life. They are conflicted," said Wood.
"He has the energy of a young man, and he's an eccentric firecracker," said Vickers explaining Ralph, an old-school Italian in a cooler world than his fiery familia. "He's quicksilver, which throws your character."
"Yes," Wood agreed, mulling Carol's personality traits. "My character is shut down, a little more, and she'd become resigned to spending her time alone, at that stage in her life."
They each had personal experiences within their families and close friends that provided some real-life templates for portraying Ralph and Carol. Vickers and Wood are busy people, they are at the height of their acting powers, but they are at a point in their lives where the mentalities and realities of elder life have been shown to them.
For one thing, both Wood's mother and Vickers' father got places in the same seniors' housing complex in Ontario at the same time, so visitations became more positive and practical. It was also close to where Vickers works as a regular member of the cast of the Shaw Festival based in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.
Wood, too, has been a veteran of the Shaw Festival cast, and, like Vickers, also has a multiyear connection to the Stratford Festival on her resume.
They are demonstrably peers in real life and the playwright (Joe DiPietro) made sure Ralph and Carol were peers as well. They were written as being financially independent, physically independent, and mentally engaged in the world. This allows their budding Last Romance to have a natural, organic personality.
"Manners are more concrete in Carol's mind. It's important to her how people behave and how people dress," said Wood. "She hankers to get those times back, and the idea of this relationship doesn't quite fit with her view of propriety. It isn't appealing to her at first, but he is persistent and she begins to see what he brings to her. He starts to get to her."
"He's vital. He's virile. He wants her. She's electricity, to him," said Vickers. "Oh yes, this attraction is very physical. He's a man, he's a guy, after all. He's also an Italian man, he's been raised in this big family where everyone is close, there's a lot of touching and hugging and looking after each other, and he misses that a lot because all that is gone. It's just him and his sister left from that big, boisterous family, and he's a tactile guy. He wants that human touch."
But he has his hang-ups, too, about this possible relationship. Part of the dynamics are attached to that sister figure (played by Jessie Award-winning actor Sizanne Ristic, well known as an actor and playwright in B.C. and a past performer in Prince George in Theatre NorthWest's production of Brighton Beach Memoirs).
To bridge the thematic time gaps discussed within The Last Romance is the appearance of a young man, awash in singing talent and youthful handsomeness. He is portrayed by Acadian tenor Jacques Arsenault, a virtuoso in music who also brings his acting talents to Prince George for the first time in this production.
There is also a dog. Few productions in Prince George's considerable theatre history have included live canine actors, and that holds all the way across Canada.
It has been rare, but Wood has performed with dogs before. Like many aspiring actors, she had more than one experience doing The Wizard of Oz.
"One version of it didn't have a Toto," she said, still puzzled all these years later. "It was some bizarre version of the script I've never known anyone else to do. And it was an amateur production, so they just felt it was easier to skip the part of a dog on stage."
"Have I ever been on stage with an animal? No, I don't think so," said Vickers, giving it some thought.
"Well," Wood recalled, "you were in that production at Shaw with a real live lamb, but you didn't have any scenes with it."
"Oh, that's right," he said, and they started swapping memories of the way it bleated and the pervasive stink on the costumes.
It was the director of this play that gave them the confidence to pay no worry to the challenges of acting with a dog. Ted Price was the founder of Theatre NorthWest before he retired from that year-round commitment to form the part-time arts company Miracle Theatre. Vickers worked at TNW seven times, while Price was director, starting with the role of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol in 1998. He was most recently seen at TNW two years ago in The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon.
Wood has also made time in her busy theatre schedule to become a TNW alumnus, first in The Kite and then, when one of the actors had to suddenly withdraw from the cast only a week before showtime, Price pressed her to step into Kitchen Witches, trusting her ability to handle that high-pressure task.
"You know, when preview night arrived, I felt better about our position to perform than I do on a lot of shows with a full run of rehearsals, and that has a lot to do with how well Ted just laid out the challenges and got us all to work on it," she said. "He is so organized, he never wastes a moment of rehearsal time, we are always bang on the arch of the rehearsal process, and you have no idea how rare it is in this business to have a director who knows what he wants but has endless ability to hear the actors and take their feel for things into his consideration. He never says no, and still, the vision is never lost."
"He shapes the piece from the rhythm of the text. He really knows how to interpret a script," Vickers added. "We love working with Ted. We adore him. He's just the best, and I mean, compared to all across Canada."
When Price and partner Anne Laughlin formed Miracle Theatre in 2014 it was to do more than continue plying their considerable production skills in amongst their other directing/producing jobs. Every play has a built-in charitable flow that directs ticket and sponsor money to worthy local causes. The Salvation Army Food Bank and 27 Million Voices have so far been the recipients, and the charity of their choice for The Last Romance is the Spirit of the North Healthcare Foundation.
For more information on Miracle Theatre, look up their website (miracletheatre.ca) or their Facebook page.
The Last Romance runs Feb. 17 to March 5 at ArtSpace. Tickets are $30 each and on sale now at Books & Company.
