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Top Hats and Tales revels in classic comedy

Dik and Mitzi play for laughs at Presentation House
PHT
The husband and wife team of Wayne Doba and Andrea Conway Doba bring their love of classic comedy to Presentation House Theatre through March 12.

Top Hats and Tales, Presentation House Theatre, created and performed by Wayne Doba and Andrea Conway Doba, until March 12. For more information visit phtheatre.org.

“Sometimes we fight and sometimes we dance,” says actor, dancer, and comedian Wayne Doba.

He’s talking about Top Hats and Tales, a two-person show he’s putting on at North Vancouver’s Presentation House Theatre over the next few weeks alongside his wife and fellow co-star Andrea Conway Doba.

It’s true the play is chock-full of dancing, singing, and the lighthearted bickering and bantering between sweethearts Dik and Mitzi, Wayne and Andrea’s onstage personas. More than anything though, it’s full of heart.

The production taps into classic comedies of the past, the duo says. It’s often over-the-top, silly, energetic – but, like the classic black and white films of the good old days, it can be earnest and heartwarming as well.

“It’s very nostalgic. It’s going back to a classic style of comedy,” Andrea says. “It’s definitely a type of show where there’s something that everybody will like.”

She’s not wrong about that.

Andrea’s referring to the play’s vaudevillian charms. Vaudeville was a popular theatrical genre in the early 20th century, one that Top Hats and Tales lovingly embraces and shares with its audience.

“It’s very accessible,” Andrea says when asked to define vaudeville for a general audience. “It’s sketch comedy, it’s situation comedy. It’s having very defined characters put in a situation.”

Wayne adds that vaudeville thrives on routine and shtick, on putting out a collection of different, entertaining numbers for an audience that’s looking to be mesmerized. Popular acts from the past have often included singing, dancing, magic, burlesque, and comedy.

While the definition of vaudeville theatre isn’t fixed, the audience can rest assured they’ll be entertained either way.

Top Hats and Tales follows Dik and Mitzi as the comic duo and husband and wife team go through life together.

“It starts with our first anniversary and then it goes through seven years and 50 years and all the bits in-between are describing times in our relationship,” Andrea says.

There’s plenty of tap dancing, too.

In fact, the tagline of the play is “Fred and Ginger meets ‘I Love Lucy!’” Fred and Ginger, of course, refers to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, two iconic dancers who made their fame together in the ‘30s and ‘40s.

“They made 10 films,” Wayne says of the famed duo. “They kept making almost the same film: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.”

He goes on: “Fred Astaire changed dancing. Baryshnikov used to say he was his favourite dancer… people like that used to love Fred Astaire just because of his lines… he played piano, drums, sang, danced, acted, and he had a sense of real lines in his dancing and style that I don’t think anybody else has had.”

Paying homage to his hero, many of the numbers in Top Hats and Tales, while featuring the requisite physical comedy and burlesque of vaudeville, emphasize tap dancing.

“It’s been a quest of mine ever since I started doing comedy: tap dancing. Are the steps funny or is it just the character?” says Wayne. “I was sort of combining my comedy with tap dancing.”

Both Wayne and Andrea have been perfecting and mastering that quest over the last several decades working in entertainment. Wayne is originally from Indiana and moved to San Francisco for 25 years in order to work in stage, film and dance. Andrea’s from Montreal, and her background in gymnastics led her to perform with Cirque du Soleil for almost 10 years.

The couple met during a mutual gig in San Francisco and has teamed up together ever since.

In 2001 they created the comic duo Dik and Mitzi. Wayne and Andrea then proceeded to use these characters in a variety of sketches and numbers all over the world. In 2007, they brought a bunch of their sketches together to create a more unified show, described as a two-person comedy tap dance, featuring Dik and Mitzi. In its current form, that unified production is now known as Top Hats and Tales and has been performed since 2013. It’s a generous reworking and reimagining of more than a decade spent perfecting and refining these characters.

Wayne and Andrea want to inspire their audience and, perhaps most importantly, make them laugh. Their commitment to their craft is real, as evidenced by the 500 pounds of costumes, props, and set pieces they say they had shipped to North Vancouver from their current home in Sutton, Que., for their string of dates here.

“If they want to laugh a lot, I think people really laugh at this show. If they’re into comedy and feeling good – it’s the type of show where people come out just feeling great. There’s nothing heavy in it, it’s just pure entertainment. We put our heart and soul in it and I think the people, the audience feels that,” Andrea says.

Those looking to join Wayne and Andrea as they showcase Dik and Mitzi in Top Hats and Tales can catch them at Presentation House Theatre from March 2-12. Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at 604-990-3474.