EXCESS: A Cuban American Canadian Comedy about Sex! Shopping! and War! By E Kent Stetson, C.M. INTRODUCING… A new play in two acts for 5 actors (2m, 3f)
Share
“What art form has more power to comfort and ignite the heart of a threatened nation than theatre? What ordnance, aimed directly at the narcissistic hegemon to the south who has vowed to break us so he can take us, packs more clout than satiric revenge comedy?” EKS
WHO WON THE US/CANADA WAR OF 1812/14?
Canadian screenwriter and actor Grace MacDonald knows. Visiting three-time Daytime Emmy winner American film and television producer Arthur Briknale has no clue. That doesn't stop him from trying to bully Grace into rewriting a revered piece of Canadian history for his FOX series Ready, Aye Ready! Repatriating America's lost Heroes: Episode One. Laura Secord Redux.
Good luck with that!
EXCESS is set in Grace’s upscale Montreal flat on March 14, 2003, the day Canada says no to the illegal US invasion of Iraq. Grace and her friend, Cuban oncologist Dr Làzzara Ortega LA Santos, fundraising across Canada for her children's sanitarium in Cuba, have had it with America rewriting Canadian and Cuban history. Abandoned and betrayed by the Canadian film and tv industries, Grace is in a blind fury. Làzzara has her own personal reasons for seeking revenge, revenge not only on America but on Briknale himself. The brash charming American (Marlboro Man 1971-75, thirty years on) has no idea whom or what he’s up against. It soon becomes clear.
Grace and Làzzara concoct a plan. They tag-team Art’s comeuppance and stop this American juggernaut dead (almost) in his tracks. But not before a tricky situation goes off the rails entirely. Grace’s Manhattan-based pharmaceutical executive son Grant and his American 911 claims attorney wife Nell arrive, fleeing America after a failed attempt on their lives.
Grace and Làzzara headline this fast-paced, fact-based satiric revenge comedy that carves a Canadian foothold in the social and political realignment of 21st C North America. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll and, most importantly shopping propel EXCESS: A Cuban American Canadian Comedy about Sex! Shopping! and War! toward its climax which must be seen and heard to be believed!
BACKGROUND: I started writing EXCESS the day the Twin Towers fell. I overheard two visiting American guys here in Montreal say it was all Canada's fault. We were all commies, terrorist sympathizers up here. They believed we had trained the pilots who flew the planes. There was no telling them otherwise. American anger grew, and fueled by 'fake news and false facts', was directed northward. I knew we were in trouble.
The best non-lethal revenge against belligerent ignorance? Comedy. I wanted it to give EXCESS the initial feel of a 20thC comedy in the Noel Coward / French Boulevard style. There was less and less to laugh about. History kept getting in the way. The script became too angry, too ‘preachy’, too pugnacious. Then the text and I benefitted from intense, grounding conversations with four of Canada's most formidable women and one very fine Prime Minister.
The great Canadian actor and activist Shirley Douglas contributed to the early drafts. Her dad, aka The Greatest Canadian, Tommy Douglas' central presence in the text was informed by long conversations with his daughter. My pal Lally Cadeau read an early draft here at Playwrights Workshop Montreal and contributed generously. Their Excellencies, former GGs Adrienne Clarkson and the luminous Michaëlle Jean, along with former Prime Minister The Right Honourable Jean Chrétien (one of the funniest, most compelling men I've ever met – a great statesman at home and overseas) all contributed significantly." For example, The Half Life of Love speech at the top of Act Two arose from a conversation I had with Madame Jean at Rideau Hall, who in a subsequent meeting advised on matters Caribbean. The Pangnirtung scene, Act Two, scene two, grew directly from a great conversation with her predecessor Adrienne Clarkson, in the same noble oak-paneled room, in response to my question regarding Canada's greatest challenge: Maintaining The Sovereignty of The Canadian North. Jean Chrétien subsequently filled in many of the blanks in a fortuitous conversation regarding his extraordinary 2003 'No to Iraq' speech. "First Iraq," he had said, "Then who is next?" Who indeed? It was then that I decided to set the play on that date, March 14th, 2003. Distance has been the play's greatest friend. Hindsight is indeed 20/20. What can be said now would seem preposterous then.
Over the next decade, the still angry confused play slipped into the bottom drawer. On January 25, 2025, at approximately 3:30 pm Eastern time, during Trump’s second inauguration, EXCESS began screaming for attention. I opened the bottom drawer.
"I will break you so I can take you!" Trump had said. His inaugural address that day, and subsequent comments regarding Canada added an imperialistic chill to the ignorant, vengeful ‘it’s all Canada’s fault’ guys’ poisonous idiocy some twenty five years earlier.
So… On January 25, 2025, I experienced what I needed to make the comedy live: Blind fury! The four forces that sustain us as a nation – French, English and First Nations along with new Canadians, have refreshed and fortified the modern Canadian cultural mosaic. We glanced north, turned south as one, and replied with a resounding screw you!
READERS GUIDE: Noel Coward's great 20thC three-act comedies and French Boulevard's typical three-act structure gave me the play’s shape and tone. Coward’s unsettling knock ‘em down knock ‘em out comedy of bad manners Private Lives came to mind. What seemed odd at the moment seems perfectly natural now. Coward got the ball rolling. Especially useful for no-holds-barred Grace’s flat-out assault on unrelenting Yankee antagonist, Arthur Briknale.
The tone of the first act shifts. EXCESS finds its 21stC voice at around page 16, with Art's arrival. The stakes rise, the play turns odd, dangerous and yet, somehow, funnier! At the top of act two prescription drug-addled Nell goes nuts, attempts box-cutter murder. Lazzara, survives the attack, reveals the play's good heart. The tone shifts again. Off we go full tilt to lah lah land!
EXCESS runs two hours, with intermission. Standard comedy length. And this, in terms of genesis and realization is where the stage ready comedy sits. The rest is history.
I look forward to exploring the work before a live audience with you at The Haskell mid-November 2026. We all favor clear, direct unambiguous storytelling. In this regard, time will be our friend. Tone, pace, and above all rhythm turn this play's crank. And mine!
UPDATE: My big discovery these last few days? Each of EXCESS' characters is a charming thoroughbred narcissist in full flight. Mia culpa. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree I say with zero modesty or less shame! EKS. July 5, 2026
For further information contact producer Paul Hopkins, at paulhopkins@gmail.com. Check out our 4 minute promo ‘Sizzler’ (reading) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGooq-mVMoQ
For a copy of the Play contact Mike Petrasek: kensingtonlit@rogers.com
