Perfect Wedding presented by Joint Productions will be playing at the Barbara Barrett Basement Theatre from December 8th to December 11th.

The show stars Spencer Bellows, Hillary Bushell, Ian Campbell, Emily Corcoran, Irene Duma, and Sabrina Roberts.

Perfect Wedding opens with a groom-to-be waking up next to a stranger on the morning of his wedding just moments before his fiancé is supposed to arrive. In typical farcical fashion, his attempts to cover up the situation and save the big day lead to further chaos and confusion.

Creative director of Joint Productions, Ian Campbell, invited Janet O’Reilly to direct Perfect Wedding because he is a huge fan of the play and wanted to act in the show. O’Reilly fell in love with the campy script as soon as she read it.

“The script is amazingly funny, the twists and turns, the mistaken identities, there’s a lot of humour, there’s a lot physical comedy, it’s a wonderfully playful script,” O’Reilly says.

Although Perfect Wedding is playwright Robin Hawdon’s most frequently produced show, O’Reilly says the intimacy of the Barbara Barrett theatre gives this production of the show a unique depth.

“Normally farces are quite large and over the top but because we’re in a 78-foot theatre everything has to be really realistic,” says O’Reilly.

She explains that because the audience is so close to the actors in the small theatre the cast has toned down the exaggerated style of staging that’s often used for farces.

One advantage of this slightly restrained style is that it lends itself more easily to creating convincing characters.

O’Reilly says even in farces, a genre where playwrights sometimes slack on character development, actors need to make the characters feel multi-dimensional for the audience to become invested in the story.

“…they must be fully realized people because if you don’t empathize with the main character, the play’s just about a guy who cheated on his fiancé and that’s not what it’s about.”

O’Reilly says for a play about a man waking up hungover next to a woman he doesn’t recognize on the morning of his wedding, there’s a surprising amount of romance in the Perfect Wedding.

“The characters are real people and we feel for them, so when they fall in love we feel it.”

O’Reilly encourages people to take a break from hectic holiday preparations and sneak away to the theatre for an hour and a half to belly laugh at ridiculous productions we put on in the name of love.