Anne with an e comes to town

I often heard the title Anne of Green Gables growing up. I think I remember Marlan was reading the book at some point but I had no idea about the story and frankly had no interest in it. I mean, let’s be realistic here. With a title like Anne of Green Gables how could any self respecting young man take any interest in it. It may as well have been called Road to Avonlea or Emily of New Moon or any other CBC sounding girly name.

While in Japan of all places, when people heard I was from Canada they would always ask me about Akage no Anne (Red Haired Anne) as she is known over there. In fact I would almost be willing to bet that she is more famous in Japan than in any other country including Canada. In 2008 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of AoGG the Japanese Post Office jointly with Canada Post issued two AoGG stamps. (The two at the top are the joint issue stamps which you can/could also buy in Canada. The others were only available in Japan and were based on an animated version of the story made there.)


They were always shocked and disappointed to find out that I had never even been to PEI and, yes it gets worse, had no idea that this world famous story was a Canadian one. Oops!

I think it was in 1987 on one of my trips there that I found myself with a few hours to kill in downtown Osaka and wandered past a movie theater that just happened to be showing Anne of Green Gables. I decided I’d better see it if for no other reason than to prevent myself any further embarrassment for being completely oblivious to it. I must say I ended up enjoying the story and therefore the movie very much and was so glad I had decided to see it.

Now more than twenty years later I recently got another chance to revisit the story of Anne at the local playhouse. Although I remembered liking the movie I had forgotten most of the story details so it was nearly like seeing it for the first time again.

Dad has a major roll in the musical play and was kind enough to get us tickets for opening night. It was fun to be back watching live theater again.

Anne is played by Sarah Leavitt and she is quite wonderful.


She really becomes Anne with loads of charm, charisma and a great voice too. Dad and the other players are great in their parts as well and it all made for a very entertaining evening.

I know it takes many hours of rehearsals and the talents of many other people along with the players to put on a production such as this. If any of you happens to read this please accept my thanks for all your time, talents and efforts. You all did a wonderful job and I hope I get to see your play at least once more before it ends.