Witness to a Conga and Other Plays by Stewart Lemoine

CA$20.00

Witness to a Conga is the winner of three 2011 Sterling awards, including Best Production, Best New Work, and Best Actor for Edmonton's Jeff Haslam.

The Sterling Award-winning author of At the Zenith of the Empire and A Teatro Trilogy returns with a new collection of charming, heart-warming comedies. Originally written for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, these three plays combine Lemoine’s trademark sparkling banter and fanciful settings with often unexpectedly emotional explorations of marriage, love, and family. In Happy Toes, a husband’s faith is tested when he begins to suspect his wife is having an affair with a close friend; in The Oculist’s Holiday, a World War I widow falls in love with an American eye doctor on vacation in the small Swiss city of Lausanne; and in Witness to a Conga, a young man’s impending marriage stirs up memories of his troubled relationship with his father, his parents’ divorce, and the woman who never knew she was the great love of his life.

Witness to a Conga is the winner of three 2011 Sterling awards, including Best Production, Best New Work, and Best Actor for Edmonton's Jeff Haslam.

The Sterling Award-winning author of At the Zenith of the Empire and A Teatro Trilogy returns with a new collection of charming, heart-warming comedies. Originally written for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, these three plays combine Lemoine’s trademark sparkling banter and fanciful settings with often unexpectedly emotional explorations of marriage, love, and family. In Happy Toes, a husband’s faith is tested when he begins to suspect his wife is having an affair with a close friend; in The Oculist’s Holiday, a World War I widow falls in love with an American eye doctor on vacation in the small Swiss city of Lausanne; and in Witness to a Conga, a young man’s impending marriage stirs up memories of his troubled relationship with his father, his parents’ divorce, and the woman who never knew she was the great love of his life.

REVIEWS

“In 2008, Teatro La Quindicina returned to the Edmonton Fringe with a buoyant new Stewart Lemoine comedy, Happy Toes. While light on its feet, Lemoine's exploration of happiness, what it means to have a sense of possibility and what it means to lose it, had a palette that didn't shy away from sad and wistful shades.

These rich, warm nuances reappeared in The Oculist's Holiday (2009) and Witness to a Conga (2010), where comedy, regret, sadness, disappointment, and desperation come together to reveal an emotional amplitude and maturity that gives 'comedy' complex new dimensions.”

~ Liz Nicholls, Edmonton Journal

“... a series of acute observations rendered in dialogue (and often in monologue) on how we construct versions of ourselves that bear little relation to how we really are. This is the theme of most (all?) of contemporary drama, and Lemoine's contributions succeed very well at what they do.”

~ Alex Rettie, Alberta Views

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Paperback - Illustrated

Print Length: 192 pages

Language: English

Publisher: NeWest Press

Publication Date: July 15, 2011

Dimensions: 13.97 x 152 x 22.61 cm