When Nicole Winkler moved to Blaine from the UK, she hardly expected to make such a stunning debut. The experienced actor just scored an outstanding review from Jack Kintner, entertainment editor for Blaine?s local paper, The Northern Light.
Winkler appears in BCT?s production of ?The Fat of the Land,? a two-act comedy by Pat Cook and directed by BCT board member Sandy Brewer. The play is set in the fictional Thelma Underwood Health Resort, where overweight women go to shed hang-ups along with weight. The production opens March 31 and runs Friday, Saturday and Sunday for two weeks.
The Blaine newcomer makes her local stage debut as Glynnis Mondello, secretary, receptionist and general factotum at the fictional resort. She has mixed feelings about Duncan Hennessee, a new employee of the resort played by Ferndale actor John Gonzalez. Reviewer Kintner described the problematic relationship.
?Duncan?s meanwhile become enamored of the 20-something Glynnis, played to earthy and hip perfection by Birch Bay newcomer Nicole Winkler, who looks almost embarrassingly skinny but at the same time manages to look as unmistakably voluptuously sexual as a cave painting. Her powerful stage presence has every guy in the house in love with her five minutes after her first entrance. She moves around in ways that confound and draw out the sexual tension between her and the sometimes too inert Duncan, all silliness and random movement without anything of gravity for her to hook on to as a woman might, obviously not really the playboy we expect him to be for her so much as the neighborhood paper boy. If these two ever get together it will be like trying to cook an inch-thick sirloin over the pilot light.?
Kintner was equally enthusiastic about another newcomer to the Blaine stage, Cathy Hollander.
?So it makes sense that these gals and many like them put their flabby asses and wiggling wattles under the iron-fisted rule of their slightly sado-masochistic (always dressed in black) guru, the perfectly shaped and perfectly flawless Helga, played to Claus Barbie Doll perfection by Cathy Hollander. She?s the kind of woman who, if someone leaves the seat up, will vibe the toilet to put it down all by itself when it sees her walk into the ladies room. Everyone and everything?s afraid of her but wants what she can provide. Her insistent need for everyone to do things her way leave you feeling like your karma has been worked over by a sadistic orthodontist. ?There, but for the grace of God, goes God,? one might say, the center of nurture and the center of fear.?
The comedy centers on four inmates of the resort, portrayed by four veterans of the Blaine theater scene.
?The rubber-faced quartet of Reubenesque lovelies is played by local favorites Kerry Walker, Gayle Staker, Sarah Bressler and Mel Finnson, and the very funny Laura Nelson plays Frances, who?s actually lost weight and thinks Duncan?s little more than a ditz in yuppie clothes. The play hits its stride when, stung on the tongue by a bee, she ends up sounding like an alto version of Peter Boyle in Young Frankenstein as she resorts to doing charades to be understood.?
Judi Joyner, long-time costumer for the BCT, plays a nosey journalist who just happens to be related to one of the inmates.
?The truth-loving reporter Margaret Flynn, who?s the same age as Glynnis, shows up looking about as sexy as a fence post...and gets everything wrong. Flynn?s played perfectly as a meddling, humorless and unbending little nazi by Judi Joyner, who also coordinated costumes.?
Rounding out the cast are two well-known local actors who find the women of the resort more than a little intimidating.
?Supporting all this wonderful nonsense are Christopher Key as the cab driver Ajax, who puts more heat into three lines than Duncan could into three years, and the veteran and relaxed funny man Rick Collier as the long-lost husband of one of the fab four.?
Curtain times for ?The Fat of the Land? are at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 2:00 p.m. on Sundays. Blaine Community Theatre is located in the H Street Shopping Center next to Rite Aid. Admission is $ 10.00; $ 8.00 for under 12 and over 55..
Contact:
Mel Finnson
(360) 392-0582
mellerella@comcast.net
http://www.blainecommunitytheater.org
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