DLT’s mystery features secrets, murder, and star-crossed love

Dundas Little Theatre opens new season with melodrama Dangerous Corner, written by J.B. Priestley.

Dundas Little Theatre opens its 2024-2025 season with Dangerous Corner, a murder mystery and melodrama by the prolific writer, John Boynton (J.B.) Priestley. Long time DLT members and frequent collaborators unite for this production under director Tamara Kamermans and producer Rose Pye.

The play opens as Robert Caplan and his wife Freda are entertaining guests, most of whom are associated with the publishing company of which Robert is co-director. After dinner, the conversation turns into a tangle of increasingly devastating revelations about the group, involving secretive relationships, desperate motivations, and tragic consequences.

Over its long history, Dundas Little Theatre has staged Priestley’s plays four times before including, most recently, An Inspector Calls in spring 2023. There was also Laburnum Grove (2017), Time and the Conways (2011), and When We Are Married, way back in 1991.

J.B. Priestley was born in Yorkshire, England in the latter part of the Victorian era, and lived into the mid-1980s. The son of a teacher, he started as an office clerk in his mid-teens and began to write in his spare time. A veteran of the First World War, he was able to attend Cambridge after serving and eventually published a collection of short stories. 

Throughout the 1930s, Priestley produced a succession of highly popular plays and was considered a dominant storyteller on the London stage. Opening in 1932 in London’s West End and then on Broadway, Dangerous Corner was the very first of J.B. Priestley’s plays. It was turned into a film in 1934, and once again in 1949. Priestley, who became a broadcaster during World War II, continued to churn out a wealth of novels, non-fiction, and social commentary throughout the rest of his career. Many of his plays deal imaginatively with the concept of time.

Indeed, the notion of time and truth features centrally in Dangerous Corner, as the story veers into supernatural and spooky territory. In its synopsis for the play, Dundas Little Theatre asks, “Should we tell lies? Shouldn’t we tell lies? In this otherworldly, murder mystery, star-crossed love hexagon, you’ll have an in-depth look at the options.”

To ground the action in its 1930s setting, the production’s costume and set designers have played significant roles. In talking up the play, Kamermans, the director, said: “Our set designer, Graham Clements…(is) working up a great Art Deco fusion for the show.”

Clements has been involved in local theatre for over four decades, primarily as an actor, and began his relationship with Dundas Little Theatre in 1988 with a role in its production of Oh What A Lovely War. “I have mainly acted with most of our community theatre groups since 1983, having fun with 20 plus productions at DLT,” he says.

With the more modest budgets that community theatre companies have at their disposal, achieving a vision of the set for a production can be challenging. Clements revealed the part that other local companies can play in sharing resources and sourcing items. “We were most fortunate to borrow numerous properties and furnishings from the Players’ Guild of Hamilton.”

However, according to Clements, local community theatre does suffer from a bit of a personnel problem. “Live theatre nowadays just doesn’t have enough younger people interested in the art form. Our region has a wealth of talent on the acting side, but supporting production teams are aging or overused and then burn out,” he explains.

Working in DLT’s favour, Clements maintains, are the options available in the physical theatre space the company has in the Garstin Centre for the Arts. “From my perspective,” he says, “DLT has the most versatile space in the greater Hamilton area.”

Another rewarding aspect of his work as set designer on Dangerous Corner was the opportunity to “work with John Bello, who took my pencil drawings and made computer-generated graphics to scale, adding Art Deco details that gave our production team a good vision of the set upon completion.” He was also pleased to work closely with Marie Dickie, responsible for set decor, as together they were able to hash out the overall look.

“We would like to bring the audiences into the period of the play, 1932, that shows class, wealth, and a little upper crust England,” Clements says.

The cast of Dangerous Corner includes Dia Gupta Frid (Freda Caplan), Candi Zell (Miss Mockridge), Sara Burdulis (Betty Whitehouse), Andrea Adcock (Olwen Peel), Timothy Hevesi (Charles Stanton), Mike Wierenga (Gordon Whitehouse), Daniel Garrett (Robert Caplan), and Julie Gross (Maid).

Coming up next in its season, DLT switches gears significantly in January 2025, presenting Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

NEED TO KNOW:

Dangerous Corner
Dundas Little Theatre at Garstin Centre for the Arts
37 Market St. S., Dundas
Nov. 1 - 17
Nov. 1, 2, 8, 9, 15 & 16 at 8 p.m.
Nov. 3, 10 & 17 at 2 p.m. (Sunday matinees)
General admission, $25
Seniors (65+) and full-time students (with ID) can buy Sunday matinee tickets for $20.
Tickets: dundaslittletheatre.com or phone 905-627-5266
Warning: A strobe light is used during this show.

Also opening in the area:

Drury Lane presents…
Irving Berlin’s Holiday Inn
Music & Lyrics by Irving Berlin, Book by Gordon Greenberg & Chad Hodge
Director & choreographer Michael MacLennan, musical director Donna Dunn-Albert
2269 New St. Burlington
Nov. 1 - 24
Nov. 1, 2, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 & 23 at 8 p.m.
Nov. 3, 10, 17 & 24 at 2 p.m.
Assigned seating, adults: $40, youth (14-20): $20, children (13 & under): $15, seniors (65+): $35
Tickets: drurylane.ca/shows/holiday-inn or call 905-637-3979

Peninsula Players Community Theatre Company presents…
The Game’s Afoot (or Holmes for the Holidays)
Written by Ken Ludwig
Directed by Francesca Brugnano
100 Main St. W., Grimsby
Nov. 8 - 24
Friday and Saturdays, 8 p.m.
Sundays, 2 p.m.
Tickets: $20 ($30 for Gala night, Nov. 8)
Reserved seating, confirmed in the order of calls to the box office
Box office: 905-309-6358
All tickets paid for at the door on the night of attendance (cash and cheques only)