'The Great Storm' concludes successful run at Kingsbridge Centre

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

Sunday marked the final performance of the Kingsbridge Centre’s latest production - an ambitious remounting of Warren Robinson’s The Great Storm, and it was, indubitably, an afternoon to remember. Well before taking their places one last time, the whole company had been struck by a series of unsubtle signals, all saying the same thing - that this rainy matinee in June was going to be a big show. 

 

First, there was the parking lot, which was already filling up as the cast arrived to get ready - a full hour before the show was set to start. Then, there was the scramble of front of house volunteers setting up all the extra chairs they could find - the pews were full. A half hour before showtime, the chairs were full, and the hum of Kingsbridge’s elevator kicked into high gear as it ferried even more audience members up to the balcony. As musical director Eleanor Robinson led the cast through its pre-show vocal warm-up, the people just kept coming. 

 

Minutes before the metaphorical curtain went up, the word was out - the space had reached its legal capacity, which meant the audience was 300 people strong - a record-breaking turnout for the rural performance centre. Those in the cast who had once been members of the St. Joseph’s congregation remarked that the only time they’d ever seen the church so full was for a funeral.  

Nerves got the better of no one. The crowd laughed and cried in all the right places, and all 33 members of the cast responded with an exhilarated elation that carried them all the way to curtain call and beyond. 

 

When it was all over, Warren declared that The Great Storm’s run at Kingsbridge was the single best show he and Eleanor have ever put on in the 60 years they’ve been making theatre together. Furthermore, with no shortage of finality, he announced that this Sunday matinee had been the best of the best. Nobody in the cast or crew took up an argument against his assertion. 

 

It’s no wonder that this nautical opus is the one that the Robinsons will be remembered for - in one form or another, The Great Storm has been a work in progress for over 50 of those aforementioned 60 years in the theatre. According to an issue of the Goderich Signal Star that came out on May 1, 1975, the first iteration of The Great Storm was a high school production put on by 60 members of the drama club at Goderich District Collegiate Institute (GDCI). Back then, it was called November Ninth, 1913. The show was very well-received - it placed third in the Ontario Collegiate Drama Festival’s Regional Showcase in Hamilton, toured a few local theatres, and was even immortalized on tape at CKNX to be shown on television. To the students of GDCI, the success of The Great Storm was tangible proof that you don’t need to move to a city to create art.

 

Just a few years earlier, in 1972, Warren had come before the Huron County Board of Education (HCBE) as part of an impassioned group of teachers to make the case for rural arts education. At that meeting, Warren acknowledged that facilities for teaching courses like drama were practically non-existent in Huron County - an issue compounded by a serious staff shortage. Despite these hurdles, Warren warned that the best way to fail was to not try. “There are two dangers,” he told the HCBE back then. “The most serious is saying that we can do nothing because of lack of equipment, facilities or teachers’ background. Something valuable will come out of the most primitive conditions with the most inexperienced teacher - as long as he or she is in earnest. The second danger is to allow the first condition to become the norm.” 

 

When Warren and Eleanor Robinson first began work on what would one day be The Great Storm, the Signal Star reported that they were convinced that a large cast could be an important part of the function of the school - that the large cast would promote a sort of team spirit similar to sports and give everyone interested in drama a chance to participate. Now, over half a century later, the close-knit yet sprawling company at Kingsbridge is living proof of the once radical notion.