St. Albert Dinner Theatre Season Opens with Over the River and Through the Woods

St. Albert Dinner Theatre took a big gamble last season.

“A lot of the plays we've done in the past are a little more obscure,” explains Donna Beeston, the theatre’s board president. They were good scripts, certainly, just not always the most well-known shows. But last year, the company programmed Neil Simon’s beloved The Odd Couple—something much pricier to get the rights to perform, but bringing with it the possibility of a whole new audience. The Odd Couple went up in April, to close out their season, and, well…

“It paid off,” Beeston says, of the audience's response. “Last year we had under a hundred season ticket holders. This year we have about 250. That's a huge jump. And these are people that are coming to see all three shows. ”

So, of the 70-some scripts that St Albert Dinner Theatre considered for this upcoming season, the three that made the cut have some familiarity to them: Over the River and Through the Woods is an off-Broadway hit that ran for 800 performances, while season-closer Lend Me a Tenor is a Tony-winning smash that’s seen multiple revivals over the years. And perhaps you haven’t heard of Nanna’s Naughty Knickers, but the premise—a rom-com about a grandmother illegally selling lingerie to her fellow seniors—is pretty hard to pass up.

There isn’t necessarily a throughline to the shows, Beeston notes, but they were looking for scripts with heart, comedy, and an intergenerational cast. And Over The River… kicks things off with all of those: It follows Nick, a bachelor in New Jersey who visits both sets of Italian grandparents weekly, until a blossoming romance threatens to take him away from them, spurring his family into damage control mode.

“Our aim was to find something else that really touched people,” Beeston notes. “It's funny because everybody can relate to some of the things that go on in this family. It's set with Italian-Americans, but I'm Filipino and I see exactly the same type of attitudes and ways that people approach things as are in this play. …  It is extremely funny, but even in our first read-through, people were very teary at the end.”

Beeston’s been involved with St. Albert Dinner Theatre since 2018; she had a background in technical theatre, and when her husband got involved with the company as an actor, she found herself drawn in as well.

The appeal, she notes, is in the sense of community. “Within our theatre group, we all feel very much like we're family,” she says, but that carries over to their audience as well: Especially after the last few years, a live group experience, especially when paired with a delicious meal, can’t be understated.

“It enriches the community outside of our group,” she notes. “We're providing a place for people to go see live theatre, to have dinner with a bunch of friends—and people that are also at their table that they may not know—and give them a night out."

Article written by: Paul Blinov

More information about the St Albert Dinner Theatre Season can be found at www.stalberttheatre.com

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