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When it comes to doing sketch comedy with music in front of a live audience, timing is everything, says Cape Breton comedian Bette MacDonald.
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“We’ve been touring now for almost 20 years and it doesn’t show any sign of slowing down, so we are extremely fortunate. I’m knocking wood as I say that. We’re very lucky that people still want to see that kind of thing,” MacDonald said in a telephone interview from her home in Cape Breton this week.
She and long-time partner Maynard Morrison will be joined by musicians Wendy MacIsaac, Mac Morin and Jordan Musycsyn in their latest travelling variety show called “Made in Cape Breton.” The show is a spinoff from their east coast Christmas show, with live music and sketch comedy.
The show will be presented April 19 at the Miles MacDonald Performance Centre in Guysborough, N.S., April 20 and 21 at the Marigold Cultural Centre in Truro, April 22 at the Riverview Arts Centre in Riverview, and April 23 at the DeCoste Centre, Pictou.
“Made in Cape Breton” is described as a “no-holds-barred” look at what makes Cape Breton Island and its people so unique, so hilarious and so adept at throwing the best kitchen parties. MacDonald says it is designed as a combination of music and comedy for pure laughter and some political commentary.
Last year, MacDonald brought a show called “Island Girls,” featuring herself, Heather Rankin, Lucy MacNeil and Jean Sheppard, to the Capitol Theatre.
MacDonald, who played Trudy on the CBC-TV show Mr. D for eight seasons, has been called “the funniest woman on earth” by Rick Mercer. Anne Murray, a die-hard fan, one-upped that by calling her “the funniest person on earth” after catching her Halifax show last year.
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MacDonald said her inspiration for comedy came from such classics as the Carol Burnett Show in the 1970s, where cast members were so funny they made each other break character and start laughing in front of a live audience. That style of short sketches continued with such Canadian TV shows as CODCO and Kids in the Hall.
“When we first started, it was Maynard and I with one musician and we did all the sketches,” she recalled.
One of the biggest challenges of doing live shows is making time for costume and makeup changes on the fly.
“I would have to write them so one of us would be off stage of the top of the sketch so that they could change costume and then get back on stage for the rest of the sketch,” she said. “The sketches had to be written and designed with the costume changes in mind. The first part would be a monologue and the other person joins in when they can. So when writing it you have to know how much time it takes to get in and out of costume. It’s a little bit scary but it’s also a lot of fun.”
MacDonald is known for quirky characters including Mary Morrison, a Cape Breton woman who likes to gossip and has her own Christmas book with advice and holiday recipes.
“I love to play her because she can say things that I might not get away with, but she does,” MacDonald said, noting that her character is angered by the provincial government in Nova Scotia making funding cuts to arts and heritage.
Another of her favourite characters is Wayne Tomko, who appears in the sketch “Five Guys in a Bar,” which could be set in any bar on Canada’s east coast.
Tomko, she says, is absolutely confident with himself with lots of swagger, but without any reason to be.
“He’s a doofus, who thinks a lot of himself as a poet and a musician. There’s a little bit in all of these guys but he’s the most over the top.”
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