The timeless classic "Treasure Island" is coming to the Westman Centennial Auditorium for one night only, Friday night (November 1st), courtesy of Looking Glass Theatre company. The professional theatre troupe has been touring the production across Southern Manitoba in recent weeks with stops in Steinbach and Morden.
Marc Moir and Laura Kathleen Turner are co-founders and co-artistic directors of the group based in Steinbach, and both shared with DiscoverWestman they are excited to bring the story of Treasure Island to Brandon.
"It is a rollicking seafaring adventure for the whole family," shared Turner about the story. "It's a timeless coming of age story, complete with sword fights, live music, lots of comedy. It's a really beautiful story about a young boy who comes into possession of a pirate's treasure map, and then he has to decide, is he going to go try and find the treasure. While he's doing that, is he going to become a man, is he going to become a pirate? What's going to happen there, and then there are some really timeless characters that you meet all along the way."
Turner noted the goal with the production was for it to be a family movie night out without the screens, with special pricing for kids tickets of just $10 each.
Both Turner and Moir are performing in the show, with Moir Long John Silver and Turner the lead Jim Hawkins. Turner's husband Scott Moir wrote the adaptation of the script for the production.
"He really took that challenge onto his own shoulders, and did such an amazing job with the script," she said. "The things he's pulled out of the story, and decided to highlight from the book and then transfer onto stage, are just really beautiful and really funny. It's quite an amazing adaptation that we know fans of the book will really enjoy and fans of 'Muppets Treasure Island' will really enjoy."
Moir echoed those feelings, "Scott's adaptation is fantastic. It's incredibly faithful to the book, while it's still, at the same time, being very, very friendly for the stage."
A unique aspect to this particular production is there will be live music for the show, rather than pre-recorded and played throughout.
"One of the really happy accidents of doing this show is we did the casting for the show, we did the auditions, and we cast our actors, and then we looked back and we said, "Well, hang on a second, all of our actors play multiple instruments, so instead of canned music, let's do live music for the show."
Looking ahead to the Friday night only performance, Turner pointed to the audience as what she's most looking forward to.
"I'm most excited to see what kind of an audience we get," she said. "The audience is always the final character in the show. I'm excited to see what are they going to laugh at? What are they going to enjoy the most? Which characters are they going to connect with the most, because it really is different, not even in each location, but for each performance."
Moir is really looking forward to performing on the Westman Centennial Auditorium stage.
"This is a show we've really geared to families," he said. "We've had a lot of families, and a lot of kids, come out to see the show. For a lot of kids, it's their first time coming to the theatre. We've had a lot of first time people come, and kids have really, really loved it."
And if that isn't encouragement enough to take your family, check out this review.
"We've got just rave audience reviews all the way through from people of all ages, but the the one that really struck us is the little girl who was six years old in Steinbach, and she wrote our website, and said 'I loved it. I liked all the music. I'll never forget that play. I would give it 20 stars," shared Moir with a laugh.
Due to recent reports of scam websites selling tickets to the show for much more than the actual cost of the tickets, Turner and Moir are strongly encouraging you to buy yours directly from the Looking Glass Theatre website or the WMCA's to ensure the authenticity of the tickets and also the correct price is being charged.
You can get tickets to Treasure Island by clicking here.
You can listen to the conversation with Scott Moir and Laura Kathleen Turner, below.