FILTHY RICH
by George F. Walker
(November 7-29, 2025)
Director: Michael Hiller
Producers: Anne Harper, David Nicholson
Tickets are now available for FILTHY RICH. To find out how to reserve them or buy them online, please click on image below. . . . .
Annotated show schedule for FILTHY RICH:
♦ Note: there will be a public adjudication following the show on Friday, November 14
We’re delighted to introduce our talented cast:
Upper row:
Chris Irving as Tyrone Power
Rebecca De La Cour as Anne Scott
Paul Bilodeau as Detective Stackhouse
Lower Row:
Sumer Seth as Jamie McLean
Alyssa Schermel as Susan Scott
Jason McDowall as Henry “The Pig” Duvall
Production photos by Sangeeta Boondoo.
About the play:
An award-winning comic thriller by a highly regarded Canadian playwright, Filthy Rich is a fast-paced play written in a dramatic film noir style. The hero, Tyrone M. Power a tough-guy stereotype (”my mother was a romantic”), is drunkenly writing a novel when the world rushes in and sweeps him into the middle of the kidnapping of a prominent politician and the murder of an investigative reporter.
He is set upon by two very rich sisters who insist he is the only person capable of finding the kidnapped politician, a detective who suspects he is involved in the crime and a Mafioso who fears he may know too much. Will Tyrone find his man before it is too late? Who really are the good guys? The witty dialogue and non-stop action will keep audiences on the edge of their seats. Be prepared for some comic twists and dramatic surprises.
As the New York Times review said:
“George F. Walker, the playwright, is a Canadian who has an eye for the ridiculous, a good ear for old film dialogue, and an imagination that packs his play with action – and mystery. . . Nonetheless, laughter is all too rare and there is a lot of it in Filthy Rich.”
About George F. Walker, the playwright:
Playwright, screenwriter and director, born in 1947 in a Toronto East End working class district, Walker was a taxi driver when he heard that Factory Theatre was looking for new authors. He submitted a play, it was performed in 1972, and he hasn’t stopped since.
His 30+ plays have been presented in more than 700 productions across Canada, the United States, and around the world; they have been translated into French, German, Hebrew, Turkish, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, and Japanese.
He has won the Governor General’s Award two times, the Dora Mavor Moore Awards five times, the Chalmers Awards nine times and the Order of Canada. In 2007, he was awarded the Herbert Whittaker Award for Distinguished Contribution to Canadian Theatre by the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. He has also received a Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Walker’s distinctive, gritty, fast-paced tragicomedies illuminate and satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture.
He is an admirer of the plays of Samuel Beckett and Anton Chekhov, and like theirs, his plays are often characterized by a sense of the absurdity of life, combining despair and humour. Most of Walker’s characters are pathetic, dysfunctional failures, yet they continue to struggle against the odds.
About Michael Hiller, the director
Michael has been involved in community theatre across the GTA for over 30 years; his acting roles include Montfleury in Cyrano de Bergerac, Henry in Lion in Winter, and Ferraillon in A Flea in Her Ear.
This will be the seventh play he has directed for Village Players, following Nuts (2011), Beyond Therapy (2012), Mauritius (2016), Moonlight and Magnolias (2019), and The 39 Steps and The Prisoner of Second Avenue (both in 2022). (and that’s not counting his participation in zoom readings during the panemic.) Plays directed elsewhere include The Night Joe Dolan’s Car Broke Down, Is He Dead?, The Odd Couple, The Odd Couple (Female), 5 Women Wearing the Same Dress, Sweet Charity, A Chorus of Disapproval, Godspell, Harvey, Arsenic and Old Lace and many more.
Michael told us this:
“As a director I believe my loyalty is to the play, the author’s intent, and delivering the best possible version of it to the audience. I hope I’ve made myself clear on how much I respect George F. Walker, his work and the impact he has had on Theatre in Canada and all over the world. He is truly an original.”
Village Players 