The Ensemble Theatre’s current play ‘Wrong Turn at Lungfish’ is my personal favourite of this years’ Ensemble productions.

The play by two of America’s leading scriptwriters, Garry Marshall and Lowell Ganz, tells a familiar enough story. John McTernan plays Peter Ravenswaal a cranky, blind former college professor, laid up in hospital. Raveenswaal is bored and arranges an attractive, bubbly young woman, Anita, played by Hollie Andrew, to come a couple of times a week and read to him. Anita reads him an eclectic choice of works including Keats, Schopenhauer and ‘A Hooker by Choice’! Over the course of the play, a relationship of a kind develops between them.

‘Wrong Turn at Lungfish’ is about many things. It is about growing old and dying…it is about love coming from left field…it is about some of life’s difficult decisions…The title is a reference to the process of evolution, and how some people argue that humankind took a wrong turn at the stage of lungfish.

With their play, Marshall and Ganz found a good mix, combining the poignant drama with lots of good humour, quirky characters, and some great one-liners.

Andrew Doyle directes the play with a fine touch. The cast support him wonderfully. John McTernan gave a touching performance in the male lead, and totally believed him as the crusty old Professor. Hollie Andrew was strong as the sexy, sensitive Anita, whose motives to begin with aren’t all that kosher. Natalie Fulton as Ravenswaal’s exasperated nurse, and Jonathon Freeman as Anita’s hood boyfriend, gave colourful performances in the minor roles.

On the night that I saw the play, McTernan and Andrew, looked teary as they took their curtain bows.’Wrong Turn at Lungfish’ was that kind of a play. And the way in which the playwrights put in quotes from T.S.Elliott’s great poem ‘The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock’ af the play’s end, that was simply a knockout.