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Love in the limelight

Night of theatrics, laughter and fun topped off with surprise proposal
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Angie Nolan and Fish Boulton

It looks like the Chairlift Revue really was the perfect way to cap off this year’s Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival.

The night was filled with hilarious skits, but it was Fish Boulton and Angie Nolan who really stole the show with an on-stage marriage proposal that brought the house down.

Nolan, who is part of the Short Skirt Theatre, met Boulton a few years ago through their pantomime production of Peter Pan. One of their actors couldn’t perform, and a friend suggested that Boulton would be perfect for the role of Tinkerbell. A star was born.

Months later, Nolan and Boulton ran into one another at a goodbye party for a cast member and started dating.

Both participated in the Chairlift Revue last year, so when they were approached to come back this year, Boulton saw it as his chance to pop the question.

“I’d kind of been bouncing it around in my head for a little while, but I’d never really seriously thought about it,” said Boulton. “And then the Chairlift Revue came up and it suddenly dawned on me, that that would be the perfect opportunity.”

He sat down and wrote the script for the skit in a matter of hours.

G.D. Maxwell organized the Chairlift Revue with Michele Bush, and both were in on Boulton’s big plan, working the proposal skit into the show at the last minute.

“We didn’t want to do it during the thing, and then put on another play, because it would have been such an emotional high note,” Maxwell said, adding that it would have been a tough act to follow.

“The finale of the Chairlift Revue was going to be a pissed off Feet Banks charging up on stage and yelling at me about how I’d ruined his play, and pulling out a pistol and shooting me,” he explained.

Instead, Bush came up on stage, kicked Maxwell’s lifeless body out of the way, and carried on emceeing the show, introducing the final skit of the night: Nolan and Boulton on the chairlift, talking about intimacy issues.

At the end of the skit, Boulton carries on with an unscripted monologue — his proposal.

“When I get up off the chairlift and walk away, the lights were supposed to go off, so when Fish called me back and said, “wait, wait,”… I was ready for another writer to come out of the audience and do something to me,” said Nolan. “I wasn’t sure until I saw the ring.”

When Nolan finally realized what was going on, she burst into tears.

“I love surprises, and this was like the best surprise ever,” she said.

The couple also appeared in two skits earlier in the night, which were especially difficult for Boulton to get through, because he was so focused on getting everything right for the proposal skit.

“I was so scared and nervous and I could hardly even talk,” said Boulton, “I had such a dry throat, and I didn’t even know if I could stand up, and somehow I managed to squeeze the words out and once it came out and she said yes, it was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders, it was amazing. And then of course you had everyone cheering on top of it — all that was extra awesome.”

Nolan said that during the proposal skit, Boulton seemed so calm and collected that she didn’t suspect a thing until he pulled out the ring.

“Thank God I remembered to say yes!” Nolan said with a laugh. “But it just seemed like it was the two of us for a moment, you know, we were in that crazy, weird zone and then all of a sudden I realized, ‘Oh my God, I’m not in character anymore. Now everyone’s looking at me, and I’m crying.”

This creative, happy couple haven’t set a date for the wedding yet, though that was one of the first questions Nolan’s mother asked when Boulton told her he was going to propose.

“We want to be engaged for a bit, and we want to plan something really cool and fun that’s us,” Nolan explained. “We want to do it right!”