Preview: Stage West puts farce on the menu with Too Many Cooks​on February 13, 2025 at 1:00 pm

Stage West’s new comedy, Too Many Cooks, takes its cue from Donald O’Connor’s Singin’ in the Rain songbook, when he urges actors to make ’em laugh, make ’em roar, make ’em scream.

Too Many Cooks, by Marcia Kash and Douglas E.  Hughes, is set in Niagara Falls in 1932 during the height of Prohibition. Irving Bubbalowe is opening a new restaurant which will feature a famous singing chef. What Bubbalowe doesn’t know is there’s a cache of illegal rum in the cellar, and the chef has no immigration papers. Soon, a pair of Chicago mobsters arrive looking for their rum, an immigration officer is snooping around, and a Mountie is looking for the rumrunner.

“Too Many Cooks is a love letter to farce,” says Greg Pember, who plays Bubbalowe’s employee who has to make sure no one goes into the cellar.

“Before too long, everyone has to pretend they are someone else, which means they’re changing dialects on the turn of a dime. There are tons of mistaken identities, and people are covering lies with more lies, and yes, there is plenty of slamming of doors.

“Farce is all about ridiculous characters caught in ridiculous situations, but the important thing for the actors is we have to play these situations and these characters as if we’re in an Ibsen drama. For it to be hilarious for the audience, it all has to be very real for us. Farce is heightened comedy. It is fun for the sake of fun. This one is very Canadian because it even features a Mountie.”

Pember is a triple-threat performer, having been trained as an actor, dancer and singer. He has more than three dozen musical theatre credits on his resume, and Calgary audiences will remember him from such Stage West musicals as Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Young Frankenstein, and Spamalot, and in Theatre Calgary’s Jimmy Buffetts’ Escape to Margaritaville.

Pember moved to Calgary in 2020 during the pandemic, where he began choreographing such musicals as Elf, Honk, Beauty and the Beast and Something Rotten! for StoryBook Theatre.

For Too Many Cooks, Pember is also the show’s assistant director, working with J. Sean Elliott, who has directed and starred in more than two dozen musicals and comedies for Stage West.

“J. Sean is one of Canada’s most respected directors, and he’s a master at directing comedies and farces. I come from a musical theatre background, but I want to stretch my skill set, so I asked if I could assist with Too Many Cooks so I could see how he crafts a farce. The show is set in the 1930s, and J. Sean has a great affinity for the style of the era. He suggested we watch movies like Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, and he told me, for my character, to watch Jimmy Cagney and Edward Brophy. It was really helpful because I could see what J. Sean envisioned for Mickey.”

While studying acting, dance and singing, Pember also studied yoga and has spun that skill into a business to carry him through any lean times he encounters. During the pandemic, he began to teach yoga online and continues to do so today.

“Yoga helps keep me limber and helps with breath control,” says Pember, who leads yoga retreats to such exotic locations as Costa Rica and Greece.

Pember’s Too Many Cooks co-stars include fellow Calgary actors Katherine Fadum, Gianna-Read Skelton and Joel Schaefer. The play runs until April 13.