Front Row Centre Theatre Review: THIRTEEN HANDS

Theatre Review by Mark Andrew Lawrence, Front Row Centre

Many plays (and especially musicals) have used show business as a metaphor for life, but a game of bridge?

In Carol Shield's 1993 play THIRTEEN HANDS this popular card game becomes the glue sustaining friendship among a group of four women. Their passion for dealing, bidding, playing and scoring sees then through good times, bad times and everything in between. 

The play is currently being given an enthusiastic staging by eight ladies of the graduating year of UTM's Theatre and Drama Studies. As directed by Ron Cameron Lewis, the play acts as a showcase allowing each performer plenty of moments to shine.

Though it is a not a musical, the show interpolates a couple of songs beginning with the delightfully obscure "So it's Bridge Again tonight" from 1934. Other musical interludes include a Gilbert and Sullivan pastiche, and rousing blues song that is passed from one player to the next.

Each actress undertakes a variety of characters through 4 generations. It sounds confusing but it really isn't – not when you have a cast like this who can effortlessly guide you along the way.

Clair Acott, Laura Braslins, Thea Britton, Amanda Calder, Amy Hack, Kathryn Kurt, Lisa Li and Sonja Seiler portray the ladies obsessed with their weekly Bridge games. During these sessions they discuss just about everything under the sun. No matter what happens they have each other, and the game to sustain them. In time the passion for Bridge is passed along from generation to generation like a family heirloom.

Shields' play is a study of the richness of ordinary lives, but its main point is almost completely undercut when it is hammered home repeatedly. We must rely on the performers to keep us entertained and interested, which they do through a set of sharply drawn characters vividly brought to life.

The most telling moment occurs late in Act Two as four generations sit down for a game. The great grandmother can barely remember recent conversation but she neatly takes each trick: you never forget how to play Bridge.

13 HANDS continues at Erindale Studio Theatre on the campus of the University of Toronto at Mississauga until Saturday January 28. Performances begin at 7:30 Tuesday thru Thursday, 8PM on Friday and Saturday with a 2 PM matinee on Saturday. Tickets are $12 and may be purchased by calling the Theatre Box Office at 905-569-4369.