New Magic Valley Fun Town Play Reflection
By Erik Weinhart
This week I had the pleasure of watching the new Daniel MacIvor play New Magic
Valley Fun Town, and I believe that it has a lot of potential in which I felt the performances did
not live up to.
The plot follows a character named Dougie, played by Daniel MacIvor, anxiously
prepares with his family a reunion with an old childhood friend, Allan. We soon learn that
Dougie has cancer, and Allan has only come to remind him that their traumatic and abusive past
in the catholic church system is what made their current lives so messed up. He does this by
showing tapes their priest took at an old fieldtrip to an amusement park of sorts called the “New
Magic Valley Fun Town”.
One of the lasting effects of what happened to Dougie is when dealing with stressful
scenarios (such as the cancer), he must be alone. This made him live away in a trailer home,
which is where the play is set. My biggest compliments towards the play is the many layered
depth provided in the set. The inside of the home is beautifully crafted to recreate a small home
with a kitchen and a living room, containing unique nick-nacks and decorations that make me
believe this is where an actual person lives. The entire trailer portion of the set is raised, so that
what is to be “outside” can be found the normal stage levels. This allows characters to leave the
trailer and we can see what is happening inside the trailer simultaneously, which created a ton of
great dynamic stage pictures.
The detail in direction was also something to be applauded. Due to Dougie’s traumatic
past, there are many small details that he was directed to demonstrate that I could only respect
reflecting on the show afterward. For example, Dougie most likely developed OCD, which
resulted in him needing his life to be “clean”. So, from the top of the show we could see him
make very small adjustments to set and props, and we could see his anxiety/anger when things
were not clean. At first, I thought this was just a weird quirk of Dougie’s, but soon learned this
was a heartbreaking quality that was developed.
My only complaint with the production would probably be the performances. Despite
Daniel MacIvor’s status as one of our greatest Canadian theatre artists, I was not too impressed
with him. Honestly, I think it may have something to do with the fact that he is also the
playwright. When watching him perform, I never felt him truly connect with the reality of his
character, I only felt him wanting jokes or dramatic moments he wrote to land. He also had a ton
of internal gestures and private moments that didn’t feel believable at all, because it seemed that
he was aware of the audience and playing to them despite the fourth wall not being broken.
Andrew Moodie who played Allan seemed to want to present himself as a “cool” guy, as he
delivered all his line like he was in some sort of action film and resulted in his moving moments
seeming too melodramatic. Caroline Gillis as Cheryl played the “50 year old mom” archetype
well, I just felt she never connected to the stakes of the scene and rather was trying to maintain
her comedic archetype. The only performance I was impressed with was that of Stephanie
Macdonald, who played Sandy the daughter of Dougie and Cheryl. Stephanie was hilarious, and
also seemed to be the only one actually caring for another person on stage.
In conclusion, I believe the writing of this play to be phenomenal, the set beautiful and the
direction to be quite detailed. However, the performances really took me out of it. I hope this
gets re-mounted so I can see it’s full potential.