Arts Club Granville Island Stage to February 15, 2026
Tickets from $29 at 604-687-1644 or www.artsclub.com
Posted January 30, 2026
Sandy Golden (Eileen Barrett) and husband Glen (Peter Anderson) have been coming to the same little lakeside cottage every wedding anniversary since they honeymooned there fifty years ago. Set designer Ryan Cormack sets the scene with a charming cottage façade and planked deck complete with a pair of red Adirondack chairs, a BBQ, twinkling mini lights, potted flowers and the occasional mosquito. With the magic of Alexandra Caprara’s lighting design, The Golden Anniversaries starts off in the present with Glen anxiously awaiting the arrival of Sandy for their 50th anniversary celebration; the story then shifts – signalled by lighting changes – back and forth over the many years.
Credit: Moonrider Productions
Why is Glen anxiously waiting for Sandy? Why haven’t they arrived together at the cottage? She has “kicked him out of the house” some time ago and he has been living in the rental cottage ever since. There’s no indication of spousal abuse, addiction or infidelity so what’s going on? He clearly wants to “work things out”; she’s not interested. So, “Are you dating someone?”, Glen asks. Sandy says she doesn’t have a boyfriend; “I have several.” But does she?
It takes until almost the end of the play to find out what’s going on and even then, I’m not completely sure. Early dementia? Certainly. But.
Unfortunately, there are cliches heaped upon cliches along the way: the old geezer (who, according to Sandy, has “lost his ass”), can’t figure out how to use his cellphone, has taken up yoga, takes 10,000 steps each day and intends to serve her “pork and beans”, or alternately, “beans and pork” for their Golden Anniversary dinner – that is to say, he can’t cook or has no imagination.
Sandy’s a writer (sounds like Harlequins, maybe?), a red-haired spitfire and clearly has been wearing the pants in the family for decades. Her memories of their shared past are detailed right down to having to pee when fifty years ago, on their wedding night, they arrived at the cottage and couldn’t get the door open.
In an effort to be entertaining – and most of the Arts Club opening night audience was entertained and gave the show a standing ovation – playwright Mark Crawford squanders some great dramatic potential: the true complexities of a long-term marriage. The push and pull, the ups and downs, the nuances. And sure, there’s often lots of humour. But director Arthi Chandra and the actors are limited by a script that stays superficial until the very last moments when Sandy and Glen acknowledge their present situation is not what they “signed up for” all those years ago.
It is possible to go deep and still retain the funny stuff; Playwright Aaron Bushkowsky finds that line much more successfully in The Replacement Wife now on at the Jericho Arts Centre. Anderson and Barrett, award-winning veterans of the Vancouver stage and further afield, are both tremendously accomplished; who can forget Anderson in Morris Panych and James Rolfe’s The Overcoat or Barrett in How I Learned to Drive, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998? But it’s only In the dying moments of The Golden Anniversaries, that the Golden’s story gains some emotional heft but it’s too little, too late.
I looked back at my review of Mark Crawford’s The Birds & the Bees, produced by the Arts Club back in 2019: I wrote then, “It [The Birds & the Bees] might be just the ticket to chase away the October blahs. But if you’re looking for something with more meat on the bones, you’ll want to look elsewhere.” Change “October blahs” to “January rain” and I’d have the same complaint. Move us, or provoke us or challenge us, don’t simply entertain us. It’s never enough.