Update: Since originally filing this story, I heard from a Mr. Dale Fawthrop telling me about the original musical about Frenchy’s he and Ruth Cormier Nichols staged circa 2010 in Amherst. (It was a love story between a shopper and stockiest that, tbh, feels like the sort of thing Kate Hudson would star in, had it been Hollywood optioned.) So, yes, someone had thought of it sooner—but my excitement for the show outlined below stands.
Among the skyline that would compose Nova Scotia’s identity, bumping up between the slender neck of the Peggy’s Cove lighthouse and the squat-in-size, tall-in-stature painted house of Maud Lewis, stands a grey colossus, the last outpost of retail: Guy’s Frenchy’s. As much a part of the Nova Scotian landscape as fields of lupins, the discount shopping chain was born on the province’s Acadian shore out of a workplace feud that draws easy parallels with the story of how McDonald’s came to be.
I know all this, of course, because I finished my metamorphosis into a real Nova Scotian (if you believe such a thing exists, which I only do half of the time) by throwing myself headlong into the lore of Frenchy’s. I travelled to every location in mainland Nova Scotia, met the man who invented the bin-diving second-hand shops, and called over 20 people to ask them about the best thing they ever found at a Frenchy’s. For years, I was insufferable at parties talking about the chain. (Now I’m insufferable at parties because I only wanna talk about Succession. Let me live.)
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Finding Frenchy’s, a journey to the heart of the second-hand phenomenon
I’m not the only one who is endlessly thinking about Frenchy’s and what deal I’ll find there next: Alongside the two books and documentary about the chain that have been released over the years, there’s now a new musical-comedy being created, titled Frenchy’s: The Thrift Musical. (As the update above shows, this is the second play on record inspired by Frenchy’s. Know of a third? Email me!) Showing at STAGES Theatre Festival on Sunday, June 11 at 3:30pm, the play sees three generations of one East Coast family scouring the bins for clothing and connection. (The thrift shop scene from Lady Bird immediately comes to mind.) D.S. Craig and J. Roby’s play-in-progress (some works shown at STAGES are closer to a staged reading than a full-fledged production) quotes Virginia Woolf in its blurb before offering up changing clothes as the perfect metaphor for change on a larger level.
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Everything you need to know about the 2023 Stages Festival
The only question left: What thrifted outfit will you wear to the performance?
This article appears in May 1-31, 2023.
Wow. The information about the playwrights (limited to their names, not their Dora award winning previous work or anything else) was in the very last sentence. Talk about burying the lede.