So the Yanks and the Brits aren’t getting along, what else is new.
Abner Moody is not going to let a little thing like the threat of impending war stop him from opening his tavern to the patrons of Fort Erie.
It’s the yuletide season and Moody is determined to give people one last party to close out 1811.
With his daughter Mimi on the fiddle, the entire bar is alive with dancing, laughter, singing, and one huge explosion.
Despite a sign on the way into the theatre which warned of loud noises, a large chunk of the audience still jumped out of their seats when the crack of musket fire rang through the Old Fort during the opening night of the new play The Lion and the Eagle on Saturday night.
The explosion stood as a divider between two completely separate experiences contained within the same play.
The first act is a fourth-wall breaking, semi-interactive play/singalong/concert consisting mostly of light-hearted fare and amusing conversations with the audience, who are seated all around the the stage rather in front of it.
At one point, a “patron” of Moody’s Bar stumbled over to Mayor Doug Martin, seated near the back of the audience, and began to harass him about getting the proper permits for a new outhouse he wants to build.
It seems even 200 years ago, developers in Fort Erie had trouble getting approval for their projects.
The comedy comes to a speedy halt when the two Americans who fired the musket into Moody’s Tavern are caught and dragged into the middle of the stage. After that things take a sharp left turn down a much darker path.
Moody — played spectacularly by Dan Bennett — is now tasked with trying to control the rag-tag group of patrons at the bar, each with their own idea of what should be done with the Americans.