The Explorers Club

Evelyn C. McDonald
Arts & Culture Reporter
June 20, 2017 1:30 p.m.

For a relaxing evening at the theatre, try “The Explorers Club” at the Amelia Community Theatre. This play, set in 1879, is definitely of another time and another sensibility. Let me suggest that it is the flip side of “Downton Abbey.” Removed, yes but the Downton players would recognize the explorers and probably not find their behavior eccentric.

The cast is well-matched, key to pulling this type of farce off. They are suitably pompous, sure of their position and their avocation – which is exploring. They are true sons of the Empire, enjoying finding and perhaps exploiting unknown cultures. They are, however, faced with a quandary at their club. Rather, two quandaries.

A female explorer who has found a lost city has petitioned the club to join (gasp!). To prove her claim, she has brought back one of the natives, who is blue. No, not sad – his skin is blue and he has a topknot. I couldn’t tell if it was hair or some kind of headdress but it was blue as well. (Kudos to the actor who must have taken hours to get ready.) She calls him Luigi because that’s what she names all her pets.

Quandary number two is that they don’t have a decent bartender and it’s affecting their status as a club. This bartender is no longer with them. Ever since James Bond, we have learned the importance of a well-mixed drink to the English. Happily, as we know from farce, it will all work out in the end.

I have to mention one bit of stage business that is both amazing and hilarious. Don’t worry about missing it; you won’t mistake it when it comes up. The new bartender is quite the hand with passing the glasses – aerially. That scene is worth the price of admission and you get it twice. After the play, we were all wondering how long it took to rehearse that scene and how many glasses were dropped in the process.

Frank O’Donnell has put his own slightly manic stamp on the production. He keeps the plot (such as it is) moving along briskly. There is a clash of cultures when the blue native greets the Queen in the style prevalent in his country. There is the Irish rebellion staged when one of the club members tries to convince the Irish that they are one of the lost tribes of Israel. There’s a nod to Gilbert & Sullivan.

In the end, all is well. The lady explorer is in the club, love is in the air, and there is a new bartender who’s a dab hand with a glass. The remaining performances are June 22, 23 and 24. See the ACT website for tickets.

Evelyn McDonald moved to Fernandina Beach from the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C. in 2006. Evelyn is vice-chair on the Amelia Center for Lifelong Learning and is on the Dean’s Council for the Carpenter Library at the UNF. Ms. McDonald has MS in Technology Management from the University of Maryland’s University College and a BA in Spanish from the University of Michigan.