By Darrell Greer - The Cape Breton Post

CHARLOTTETOWN - Bette MacDonaId gave a hilarious two-hour performance before a nearly packed house at the Charlottetown a Confederation Centre of the Arts last week.

The talented Cape Breton performer hooked her audience from the very start when she took to the stage April 4 as her beloved Mary Morrison character.

MacDonald was backed by an impressive musical lineup for her performance that included Fred Lavery on guitar and bass, multitalented Richard Burke on keyboards, flute, and saxophone, and Mathew Foulds from Cape Breton's own Real World on percussion.

The musicians kept the crowd in an upbeat mood through MacDonaId's costume and set changes and were especially appealing through the show's final set when they were the backing band for MacDonald's lounge-singer character, Beluah Claxton.

MacDonald kept the audience laughing all evening as she introduced them to her zany string of characters. The characters of Claxton and Morrison were well received as always, but MacDonald scored her biggest hit of the evening with her depiction of the somewhat dysfunctional Wayne.

As a first impression, this character has some of the most outlandish outlooks on life and female behavior that you're likely ever to hear. But does he really? Once a person gets over the hilarity of the delivery and has time to reflect upon this character's commentary, he/she starts to realize they've seen Wayne before - in real life.

Yes indeed, there are more than a few real-life Waynes out there in the world who have the ability to agitate just by walking into the room. To make matters even more unbearable, guys like this actually prove that they are indeed as dumb as they look, the minute they open their mouths - and MacDonald captures this character to perfection.

Her moves and mannerisms portraying Wayne add tremendously to her ability to strike the collective funny-bones of her audience. MacDonald strikes pose after pose of pseudo machismo in portraying Wayne's doomed search for the manhood. She nicely captures the essence of a couch potato that spends too much time with his hands wrapped around a beer bottle, who really believes there are only two places a woman was meant to be.

(Darrell Greer is a freelance writer who regularly contributes to the Just Saturday edition of the Cape Breton Post)

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