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Friday, October 11, 2013
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Rod Beattie delivers a cast of characters Teresa Mallam arts@pgfreepress.com Letter from Wingfield Farm stars Rod Beattie along with a cast of characters he knows very well. Indeed, the actor has played the role of Walt Wingfield thousands of times but he never tires of him. He also portrays Ed, a Larkspur newspaper editor, Jimmy, the nervous mechanic, old farmer The Squire and many more. Seven plays have been based on the Wingfield characters and Beattie hopes his debut performance at Theatre North West this month will win over new fans. The plays written by Dan Needles are based on a series of letters written to Walt’s friend Ed about his “mid-life crisis” change of career from stockbroker to farmer. They are set in a small (fictional) town in Ontario called Persephone Township. The story is about Walt’s misadventures and Beattie says that he never gets tired of bringing Walt and all his friends to life on the stage with every performance. “It’s strange really because I have gotten sick of other roles I’ve played a lot but I never get bored with this one. It’s always fresh. Part of that is the great characters – the other part is that Walt is talking to a new audience all the time, as is Ed, and the audience is a partner, so that makes it a new experience every time out.” Performing Wingfield 150 to 200 times a year doesn’t leave the actor much room for enjoying time off. However Beattie recently got in some vacation time and he spent it on the road in a fast car. “I took a week off to travel to Newfoundland – where I’ve never been – and I drove in the annual Targa road rally. It’s sort of a [non competitive] car race, they take you to places where you can drive on off roads at high speeds you otherwise could not do. “ I love driving, I love driving fast ... and I’ve had a little experience at it so we just had a ball,” said Beattie. Asked how difficult it is for him to shift from one Wingfield personality to another, Beattie immediately changes his “regular” voice and slips into character. “There is a sequence at the beginning of the third play where Ed says to Doreen, ‘Lock the door will ya. I feel an editorial coming on... When you run a small town weekly some days are worse than others. ‘I just had a fellow in here who said he wanted to buy the paper. I said that will be 50 cents. ‘No,’ he said he wanted to buy the whole business. And I said, ‘that’s what I meant too.’”
There are days you see, said Beattie, when Ed’s not so keen about his job.” As an actor, Beattie agrees people often confuse him with his character – but he rather likes that. “I answer to Walt [he laughs] and I don’t mind doing that. I suppose it’s a form of typecasting but I don’t mind. For one thing, I’m being typecast as about 50 different personalities, so it’s not so limiting.” One actor playing multiple characters is challenging but it also comes up as a good opportunity, he says. “It doesn’t come up very often. Most one person shows are really based on one main person. Even Billy Bishop [Goes to War] which does have other characters in it, is really about Billy Bishop and he’s by far the main character.” How hard is it to be the only actor that is physically present and talking on stage for the duration of the play? “It’s a lot of talking. When I performed Macbeth at Stratford Festival years ago [an interviewer] said: ‘What’s it like playing one of the big parts ... with all the memorizing and all that?’ And I said, ‘Actually it’s kind of a step back because it’s not as physically demanding as what I used to do.’ You have to be in shape to do this stuff and you have to give it your full concentration.” Beattie says that he’s looking forward to being in Prince George and introducing his characters to the local audience. “I know for someone who hasn’t seen the Wingfield plays, it’s going to be a hard thing to grasp. These are apparently letters to the editor of a newspaper and they are about a man who’s in mid-life crisis and he decides he’s going to change his life. “Instead of becoming a stock broker he went back to the farm and then he joined the newspaper. He’s had both sides of it, rural and city life.” With a long list of acting credits to his name, Beattie says his career has offered many rewards, not the least of which has been knowing that audiences take away something positive. “Film and TV are often a lot of fun but I am a stage actor,” said Beattie. “There is nothing that appeals to me more than being in front of a live audience, in a unique situation, at eight o’clock one evening, having to do something for them that is faithful to the text, during a two-hour interlude in their lives which I hope will leave them changed somehow.” Dan Needles’ Letter From Wingfield Farm, directed by Douglas Beattie, plays at Theatre North West in Parkhill Centre from Oct. 2 to 23. Tickets are for sale at Books and Company or phone 250-614-0039.
Terry MANZO/Special to Free Press North Rod Beattie performs in Theatre North West’s production of Letter from Wingfield Farm which runs until Oct. 23 at TNW in Parkhill Centre.