A comedy about a long-married couple coming to grips with their lacklustre sex life kicks off the Arts Club on Tour series in Surrey on Wednesday, Oct. 16.
Sexy Laundry's week-plus run at Surrey Arts Centre's Main Stage promises laughs and also poignant dramatic moments in a winning script by Michele Riml, whose play has been staged in 15 languages around the world since its debut in Vancouver 20 years ago.
On a fall tour of B.C., Cavan Cunningham and Lossen Chambers return to the roles of Henry and Alice, who book a naughty hotel retreat with a copy of Sex for Dummies in hand. The passion isn't quite there, however, and things get heated in other ways for the couple of 25 years.
Director Diana Donnelly said she likes to think of the play "as this tiny hotel room that a giant has taken one wall off of, and so we get to see inside the lives of Henry and Alice in this midlife conundrum that they are in."
The "life-affirming rom-com" played the Arts Club's Granville Island stage last spring. In rehearsals, "we've been laughing a lot and blushing a lot," Donnelly said in a video interview posted to Youtube, "because this play deals with so many subjects that are normally avoided in polite society, that these characters bravely leap into."
Staged 12 times at Surrey Arts Centre from Oct. 16-26, Sexy Laundry is the first of three Arts Club plays at the Bear Creek Park venue in 2024-25. Second is Christine Quintana’s Someone Like You (a millennial take on Cyrano de Bergerac, January 2025), followed by Ring of Fire (the music of Johnny Cash, February/March 2025). The plays are also part of Surrey Civic Theatres' 25-show Presentation Series at Surrey Arts Centre, city hall's Centre Stage and Clayton Community Centre.
Tickets for Sexy Laundry in Surrey are sold for $29 and up on tickets.surrey.ca, or call 604-501-5566. The run includes a Paint at the Play show 4 p.m. Oct. 19 ("drop off your child, 6 to 11 years of age, for a free art camp while you enjoy the show") and VocalEye audio description for patrons who are blind or partially sighted (4 p.m. Oct. 26). Also planned is a post-show talkback Oct. 24.
Another play coming to the arts centre, Royal Canadian Theatre Company's The Woman in Black, is a dramatic thriller staged pre-Halloween, Oct. 24-27, in the Studio Theatre. The story: "A lawyer engages a skeptical young actor to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. As the two men reach further into the lawyer’s darkest memories, the borders between make believe and reality begin to blur and the flesh begins to creep."
