Courting mischief

The Bachelorette Party
St. Peter’s Courthouse Theatre
Augus t 19, 2025

With fine regional venues like the Kings Playhouse, the Victoria Playhouse and the Harbourfront Theatre largely phasing out conventional theatrical plays, there’s been less to see in recent summers apart from Charlottetown fare and the shows of North Rustico’s stalwart Watermark Theatre. So, when a Buzz listing for a new smalltown play caught my eye, I was eager to revisit St. Peter’s Bay. 

It’s been ages since I last visited the historic St. Peter’s Courthouse Theatre, but I’ve always liked it—I was even lucky enough to perform there myself with The Master’s Wife tour way back when. Built in 1874-1875 as a circuit courthouse overlooking both scenic St. Peter’s Bay and the local branch of the provincial railway (now the Confederation Trail), the building served multiple purposes over the years—doubling as a schoolhouse for a while, for instance—but fell out of use as a courthouse in the 1960s, enduring as a community hall and performance venue.

The theatre is owned by the village of St. Peter’s Bay and managed by a volunteer board, the St. Peter’s Area Development Corporation (SPADC), mandated to improve the economy and quality of life of the St. Peter’s Area. The venue’s seasonal theatre proceeds, supplemented by grants and local business sponsors, fund the upkeep of the theatre and other SPADC operations. 

It’s a lovely little hall with exposed wooden beams and classical detailing, all of it perched in a gorgeous scenic location—so the venue’s a feast for the eyes no matter what’s playing there, usually musical acts and comedians; but a big chunk of their 2025 summer season is devoted to The Bachelorette Party, an original comedy penned by PEI playwright Michael Pendergast and performed by community theatre actors Phillipa “Pippa” Blackburn, Lynn MacInnis, Cathy MacKinnon, and Frankie O’Hanley. 

Billed as “a comical tale of friendship, celebrations and mistaken identities,” it’s the story of Joanie (played by MacInnis), who falls in love on vacation and comes back home to PEI with a sparkly engagement ring. Her best friends Donna (Blackburn) and Barb (MacKinnon) plan the most hedonistic bachelorette festivities they can muster, complete with marijuana edibles from the cannabis store in Montague, their first-ever trip to the local spa, and a party complete with stripper—though the confused and inexperienced Barb and Donna unwittingly hire furniture stripper Lester (O’Hanley) instead of the duds-doffing type of stripper they had in mind. Hijinks aplenty inevitably ensue. 

Pendergast’s amiably ambling script works in plenty of local references and PEI lore, often to the crowd’s delight, taking perceptive jabs at Island culture on occasion. While the show’s comedy is seldom sophisticated (stuffy old me frowned impatiently through a seemingly endless fart joke sequence that had most of the audience guffawing), it suits its unpretentious characters and shows flashes of genuine cleverness, notably the salaciously deft wordplay of Lester’s unwitting double entendres during the phone call that lands him the party job. 

The cast, all community volunteers, seem unsure of their lines on occasion, and their blocking feels a bit stiff at times (one exception being crowd-pleasing bits where the characters depart the stage and mingle improvisationally with the audience); but all are clearly audible, all have likably natural comedic energy, and the three ladies have an easy, believably appealing rapport with each other, perhaps thanks in part to the fact that they and O’Hanley (who plays all of the show’s several male roles) conducted themselves as a collaborative collective—no director, no stage manager, just their venue admin/events worker (musician Jesse MacCormac) handling sound and such. 

Scene-changing intervals feel a bit slow at times, and the sets are about as minimal and makeshift as one might expect from low-budget community theatre (literal signs identifying new locations help establish some scenes), but the sizable, happy crowd seemed unbothered by such picayune particulars. Folks were there for a good laugh and a good time, and the St. Peter’s Courthouse Theatre gang delivered.