Carleton’s Sock ‘n’ Buskin theatre company performed its fifth and final play for this year, The Mouse that Roared, and according to stage manager Cassie Nagy, it was the silliest one by far.
Nagy said Sock ‘n’ Buskin usually only does a musical and a Shakespearian play.
“We got to do a modern day, modern language satire that was super duper ridiculous—it was super exciting for me,” she said.
The Mouse that Roared tells the story of a small country which, to avoid bankruptcy, plans to declare war on the U.S. and lose in order to receive aid and relief. The plot twists, however, when the country goes to war and actually wins.
The play was performed from March 25-29 and was sold out almost every night. Nagy mentioned one night where there were 75 people in the audience when the room capacity was 50.
Fourth-year student Ian Gillies played the role of a soldier, Jill Snippet, in the play.
“I wasn’t expecting a great turnout,” Gilles said. “I was incredibly surprised when night after night the audience was basically packed and each audience seemed to really enjoy the show, which is always really rewarding.”
According to Nagy, the play’s director Kevin Nimmock wanted to branch out and experiment. Part of that was allowing the actors have the creative space to improvise and add to the script.
“With Kevin, he allowed a lot of us that had smaller roles to build on that character and come up with our own backstories,” Gillies said. “With [Jill], we decided that she should be played as a woman and that she should be completely psychopathic, so it was a very fun character to play.”
Nagy said the actors had plenty of opportunity to improvise. She described how the cast was nervous the opening night because they had no idea how the audience would react, but when the response was positive, they were happy with themselves and their work.
According to Nagy, the funniest parts of the show were the parts the actors had come up with themselves.
Gilles said this play had more improvization than any of the other plays he has been in before.
He described how it added a new dynamic to the show each night and kept the actors on their toes.
He said it was “an awful lot of fun.”
