Amateur theatre is alive and well in the east end as evident by the recent spat of holiday productions kicked off three weeks ago by the ENCORE! Theatre Company’s presentation of Maurice Panych’s wonderfully funny “7 Stories”.

A week later, Orleans Young Players’ Christmas class brought “Plenty of Christmas for Everyone” to the Orléans Theatre stage. The play, about two would-be lovers kept apart by a community’s intolerance of their interfaith relationship, was written by Cumberland playwright Susan Flemming.

This past weekend it was the East End Theatre’s turn. The irreverent theatre company presented the traditional English pantomime “Sleeping Beauty”.

Last but not least, the Vintage Stock Theatre company performed “A Cumberland Christmas” at the Cumberland Heritage Village Museum.

“A Cumberland Christmas” was originally written by Flemming more than a year ago. The founder of Vintage Stock Theatre later expanded on the script which ended up becoming “Plenty of Christmas for Everyone”.

Having sat through both plays, the similarities were numerous starting with the central theme of tolerance, acceptance and family.

Both plays revolved around a young couple from opposite families. In the case of “Plenty of Christmas for Everyone”, one was Protestant and the other was Catholic.

In “A Cumberland Christmas”, the respective families are not only separated by religion, but by language and culture.

The play is set in the 1920s and revolves around two families – one French Catholic and the other English Protestant – who are caught up in a disagreement between the respective mothers after the daughter from the French family marries the son from the English family and move to Carleton Place to start a new life.

The couple’s younger sisters have been forbidden to play with each other by their feuding mothers so they hatch a plan to bring the couple back to Cumberland to watch their Christmas concert during which they plan to talk them into moving back for good.

The play is unique in that it is performed in both official languages with the French characters conversing in French and the English characters conversing in English.

The cast, almost all of whom were first timers, did an outstanding job. I was especially impressed with young Marseille Lachance who played Josephine Lefebvre. Ginette Davis also did a wonderful job as Rose Lefebrve and as did Ashley Moores who played the school teacher.

The rest of the cast was rounded out by Bryce Fisher who played the postmaster; Francis LeBlanc played Jos Lefebrve; David M. Brown played James Mackenzie; Jacquie Embleton played Elizabeth Mackenzie; Heather Jamieson played Annie Mackenzie; Erika Fisher played Sarah Mackenzie; Pascale Lachance played Susan Lough and Zoe Doyle, Audrey Doyle, and Chloe Allard were choir members along with Pascale L.

Pulling the cast together and getting them focused on the task at hand was the job of Orleans Young Players alumnus Louisa Haché who directed the production.

Although the parts of the play spoken in French were difficult to follow at times for a anglophone with a passing knowledge of the language like myself, the actors did a good job in getting across the underlying tone so that you at least had an idea of where the plot was going.

All in all it was an enjoyable performance to watch and hopefully it will provide some of the cast members with the confidence to go on to do even bigger and better things to come.