brpoadwaynorth
This page intentionally left blank
broadwaynorth The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre
Mel Atkey
NATURAL HERITAGE BOOKS TORONTO
Copyright © 2006 Mel Atkey All rights reserved. No portion of this book, with the exception of brief extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher. Published by Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc. P.O. Box 95, Station O,Toronto, Ontario M4A 2M8 www. naturalheritagebooks. com Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Atkey, Mel, 1958Broadway north : the dream of a Canadian musical theatre / Mel Atkey ; [foreword by Elaine Campbell]. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-897045-08-5 1. Musicals—Canada—History and criticism. I. Campbell, Elaine II. Title. ML1713.5.A873 2006
782.1'40971
C2006-905429-0
Cover and text design by Neil Thorne Edited by Jane Gibson Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Book Printing of Winnipeg
Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc. acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Association for the Export of Canadian Books.
Norman Campbell and Elaine Campbell at home. Photo by Robert Swerdlow. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell
This book is dedicated to my friend and mentor Norman Campbell, 1924-2004.
CREDITS FOR COVER Visits Front Cover Playbills of Canadian Musicals: Anne of Green Gables, Napoleon and Billy Bishop Goes to War. All courtesy of the author.
Back Cover Tom Kneebone and Dinah Christie. Photo by Beverley Rockett. Courtesy of Dinah Christie. David Warrack and Michael Danso. Photo by Jim Marshall. Courtesy of the Scottish Studies Foundation. From left to right: Lindsey Frazier, Matt Carroll, Janet MacEwen, Kristen Peace, Joey Kitson, Terry Hatty, Julain Molnar, Sophie Hunter (in back) and Sweeney MacArthur in the 2006 Charlottetown Festivals production of CANADA ROCKS!: The Hits Musical Revue. Photo by Louise Vessey. Courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
IBBIE OF CHUMS Credits for Cover Visuals Acknowledgements Foreword by Elaine Campbell Overture: "... Of Canada, Limited"
vi ix xiii 1
ACT ONE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
In the Beginning Dumbells and Uptown Girls Filling the Cultural Vacuum "Will You Dance With Me?" Putting the Audience on Stage "Rain or No Rain": Theatre Under The Stars and Rainbow Stage On the "Crest" of a New Canadian Theatre "The Glory of the Modern Age" "Merry Madness" "Lovely, Juicy, Silly Fun" The Fur Flies A Chilly Northern Breeze: Cabaret and Revue in Toronto the Good Humbug Industrial Strength "The Epitome of Show-Dance Professionalism" "Something Truly Wonderful" "The Toast of Their Home Town" Vancouver: "The Things That You Yet Will Do" "Learn the Rules, Then Break Them" "A Lot of Heart": Charlottetown After Anne A "Radiophonic" Musical "Try, Try, Aim for the Sky" "I Could Change the World" The Killer Hero: Billy Bishop Goes to War
29 39 44 48 53 59 64 68 71 74 78 83 93 97 100 104 116 120 129 142 150 155 162 167
ACT TWO 25 26 27
Entr'acte: "Are We Having Fun Yet?" Broadway Bound—and Gagged "The Virtuosity of Opera with the Vitality of Broadway"
175 178 188
28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
A Canadian in New York Nice Tries and Missed Opportunities "Sunday in the Park with Emily" "Minding the Store": Theatre as a Business Defying Gravity: The Unmaking of The Grand Finale The "Canadian Imperative" Breaking Into Song: The Primal Scream of the Civilized Set "With Glowing Hearts, We See Thee Rise": The Canadian Musical Identity Achieving Immortality: The Original Cast Recording
192 196 198 202 210 219 233 240 247
Finale: "Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly" Postscript Appendix A: Canadian Musicals on Record Appendix B: Principal Interviews
250 256 259 270
Notes Bibliography Index About the Author
271 283 285 311
flCKNOWlEDGEMENTS " "he research for this book originally was begun in 1984, but insufficient funding led to work being suspended a few months. I returned to it in 2003. This does not claim to be an exhaustive history, for the "history" of the Canadian musical has yet to happen. Rather, it is the history of a dream, written with the same mindset with which I approach the musical theatre itself, with interludes where ideas are allowed to take flight and the characters to burst into song. I would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Sid Adilman, Rob Asseltine and The Association of Canadian Librettists, Composers and Lyricists, Bruce Bell, Eugene Benson, Ian Bradley, The British Library, Roy Cameron, The Charlottetown Festival, Barbara Charters, Bruce Dow (Mussoc), Suzanne Dubeau (York University Archives), Cleone Duncan, James Doohan, Michael Doucet, Philip Eckman, Gino Emprey, Robert Farnon, Alan Forrest, Christine Foster, Robert Goulet, Paul Illidge, John Lahr, Phoebe Larmore (agent for Margaret Atwood), David Y. H. Lui, Michele Melady (CBC Reference Library), Mirvish Productions, Peter Mann, Joe Marchi, Tedde Moore, Ruth Morawetz, Kate Macneil, National Archives of Canada, Wendy Newman (Vancouver East Cultural Centre), Jack Raymond, Dean Regan, Kelly Rgbinson, Warren Seaman, Cecilia Smith (Theatre Under the Stars), Sam Sniderman, Jerry Stovin, Ross Stuart, The Theatre Museum (London), Vincent de Tourdonnet, Martin Truax (Rogers Cable 10, Vancouver), and Jonathan Ward. For interviews and/or correspondence^! would like to thank Bob Allen, Leslie Arden, Sue Asttey, MkRael Biwtre^Jim Betts* l%£iMh and Elaine Campbell, Ian Campbell* Breiit Carr^ Dolores Gillian, Sesan Cluff, Phyllis Cohen, Chiles Cohens, DtVilt Curie? D»ce Collection Danse, Victor and Lori Davie^ D« Michad Dto^^in gracie Rnley, Rick Fox, Bill Freedman, John Gray,MM|pmi Gi^dbfii Aim Q&fettel, Michael Gutwillig, Don Harron, Keviii Slicks, Jeff Hysldp^Rayiiabnd Je^el^ Cliff Jones, Voigt Kempson, Tairf j^neeboiiet BtMAe Lra4/Galt MicDermot, Grace Macdotiald, Sir Camer0£ M^cldMosh, Step]ht$£ MaeNefll Richard Maltby Jf*, Mteeen Milgram Forrest^ Joey Mfflf*v BUI Milercl, John Mills-Cockell> Mavor Moore, Richard Mortis^ B$6y Morse, Ann Mortifee, Jane Mortifeet Marek Norman, Richard Otizounian, Greg Peterson (Sheridan College), Hugh Picket, Shel Piercy, Timothy Porteous, Meryl Robertson, Patrick Rose, John Russell, Andrew Sabiston,
t
bacmebys
ix
Stephen Schwartz, Reid Shelton, Marlene Smith, Vinetta Strombergs, Nelles Van Loon, Moira Walley, David Warrack, Simon Webb and Betty Jane Wylie. For assistance with visuals, much appreciation goes to: Randy Alldread (Mirvish Productions), John Arpin, Kate Harris, Ted Harris, Jim Betts, Elaine Campbell, Tom Carson (Smile Theatre Company), Ellen Charendoff (Stratford Festival of Canada Archives), Dinah Christie, Dane Clark (Noble Caplon Abrams), Suzanne Dubeau (York University Archives), Bernadette Hardaker (Theatre Orangeville), David Hunter (Scottish Studies Foundation), Ray Jessel, Cliff Jones, Scott Klein, Russell Lazar (Honest Ed s), Blanche Lund, Anna MacDonald (Confederation Centre of the Arts), Doreen Malone and Debbie Roza-Mercier (Neptune Theatre), Joan Marcus, Jane Parkinson (Paul D. Fleck Library in The Banff Centre), Louise Pitre, Gordon Pirn (Ontario Heritage Trust), Robert Ragsdale, Keith Sherman, Marlene Smith, Wayne Townsend (Dufferin County Museum 6c Archives), David Warrack Productions, Robert Warren, Larry Westlake (St. Lawrence Centre For the Arts) and Mairi Welman (Playhouse Theatre Company). I am much indebted to my parents, Ken and Marion Atkey, and to my sisters, Bev and Marilyn, and my brother-in-law, Bill Beese, for their ongoing encouragement of my work. And finally, I would like to thank Jane Gibson and Barry Penhale of Natural Heritage Books for their continuing support. Except where otherwise noted, personal quotations are taken from interviews and correspondence with the author as listed in the appendix. When quoting theatrical reviews, the full citation has been given where available, but often, when quoting indirectly from publicity materials, dates are not given (and sadly, many archival clippings are undated). Every effort has been made to obtain permission from all the copyright holders of material included in this book, but in some cases this has not been possible. The author, therefore, wishes to thank those copyright holders who are included without acknowledgement and apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in the next edition. Unless indicated otherwise in the text, opinions expressed are those of the author. Mel Atkey, 2006
SROiiY NORTH
X
The trouble with Canadians is they spend half their time convincing the Americans they're not British; the other half convincing the British they're not American, which leaves them no time to be themselves. —From My Fur Lady (1957); book by Timothy Porteous, Erik Wang and Donald MacSween, lyrics by Timothy Porteous, music by James Domville, Harry Garber and Gait MacDermot, additional songs by Roy Wolvin. / always did think I could sing Till Trillium came homefrom the College She told me, "You cant do a thing That needs any musical knowledge"... I studied the tonic-sol-fa Joined a choir and the new Philharmonic "Sing in tune!" cried my love, "or Papa Must speedily give me a tonic —From Ptarmigan; or, A Canadian Carnival (1895); words by J.N. Mcllwraith, music by J.E.P Aldous.
flCKIKMEEMENTS
xiXI
This page intentionally left blank
FOREWORD couldn't have been more thrilled when Mel Atkey suggested to publisher Barry Penhale that I write a foreword to his Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre since the book is dedicated to my late husband, Norman Campbell. I found Mel's "opus" to be most engrossing and I couldnt stop reading. There is such a wealth of facts, told in a very engaging manner. The style is easy to read and the comments often hilarious. I appreciated seeing the work in progress and recognize that a prodigious amount of work was needed to unearth all these details. As Norman said in a letter to author Mel Atkey in 1997, "Nobody knows more than you do about musical theatre!" Fifty years ago, Norman as composer, Don Harron as book writer and lyricist and I as lyricist turned the novel Anne of Green Gables into a musical for CBC Television. In those hectic days of early television in Toronto, writing a musical was only a part of what Norman did as a TV director and producer. An hour and a half to fill? Norman decided that a musical based on Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous book (it was Don Harron's suggestion) would fill the time slot. In 1965, the now-expanded for stage, directed and choreographed by Alan Lund, the Artistic Director of the Charlottetown Festival, Anne of Green Gables, the Musical hit the stage of the one-thousand-seat Confederation Centre of the Arts, where it remained on stage playing to sold-out houses and standing ovations from millions of theatre goers for 41 continuous years. A Japanese-language translation 1ms been extremely successful in Tokyo and the major cities of Japanfi>rover twenty years* A year in London's West End in 1969 and uncountable numbers of stock apd amateur productions across Canada, the USA and the Commonwealth have proved its staying power. You might say that the Canadian Musical is not just a dreafri—it is a reality
i
Elaine Campbell, 2006
FOREWORD
Kil
This page intentionally left blank
IVERIURE: If ClU. ilMIIED" couple of decades ago, I stood on the stage of Toronto's 1913 Winter Garden Theatre, before its restoration had begun. The musty smell of the ancient vaudeville scenery that had stood disused for more than sixty years easily set my senses tap dancing. This was a place made for a smile and a song. But, truth be told, not for our songs. It was built for a far off, imported world. In those days, "Toronto the Good" was but one stop on the North American vaudeville circuit. The Winter Garden's stage was designed for receiving shows, not for creating them. "There is no Canadian Drama," declared playwright Jessie Edgar Middleton in Canada and Its Provinces, a multi-volume work published in 1913. "It is merely a branch of the American Theatre, and, let it be said, a most profitable one."1 Around the same time, an article in Canadian Magazine said, "Canada is the only nation in the world whose stage is entirely controlled by aliens. She is the only nation whose sons and daughters are compelled to go to a foreign capital for permission to act in their own language on the boards of their own theatres. The only road to applause of a Toronto theatre audience is byway of Broadway."2 Even now, people will say—Canadian musical theatre—isn't that an oxymoron? Aren't musicals American? Hewers of wood, drawers of water aren't supposed to sing and dance, or have ideas above their station. Yet, when I began my career as a musical theatre writer, I was startled to realize how many of my heroes—that is, those who had influenced me—were Canadian. For me, these included Patrick Rose, Marek Norman* Richard Ouzounian, Ann Mortifee and, above afl^ Norman Campbefl?iatoposer of the perennial hit^lnne of^mn^Ga^M^ti^the world di<Wt:iSi^^s see things my way for when the JVew JW-'!ft«^rewedsaid Ann Mortifee's play-widi-ilMe ^-&$^^$faj^ '&$%& it was''said:
a
"Canadian Playwright.nT^jfs(j^[^^^m a Ettleitfe^^nious t$~ gether, like "Panamanian hockey f^lf^^nfe^ Of ?fy>&n|prFtir Trapper." adins The very noti^^l^ving ncuutrlwasw clearly preposterous* :Wliat tfMfeence does it fitke |$i*roer or''ttot' we
can speak (or sing) With our own voice? In the early 1980s, I was havi&g lujMch m ^aitcower with an expatriate New Yorker. We were discussing a proposal for an original musical
\mm
i
BROmiH
2
of mine about a high school reunion. He was excited about the idea, but when I presented him with a first draft, he was disappointed. "C'mon! Where's the guy who went off to war and got killed?" I replied, "Nobody in my high school went to war." He didn't understand. How could a baby boomer write a show about high school and not mention Vietnam? We know what we're not—but do we know what we are? Canadians have always been attracted to the glossy, slick and exotic shows of Broadway. It is said that we should not try to compete with that vibrant culture to the south. Cole Porter did it all so much better. The danger of living next to that exuberant giant is that, far from inspiring us to succeed, we are lulled into a lazy acceptance of something that is not our own. This is the Canadian disease; it's not that we lack a vibrant culture, but that we have lobotomized it. Now, we don't want to be so self-absorbed that we never look at the outside world. But surely a diet consisting entirely of foreign culture is not healthy. Would our southern neighbours take it lying down if their only role models were British, and if the "good guys" always spoke with a stiff upper lip and fought for "Queen and Country"? Of course not. It's an "off-the-shelf" culture, not one that's tailor made; an approximate fit, but not an exact one. The art form in which I work is often referred to generically as the American Musical Theatre, although it's a bit of a misnomer: the mature musical began in France, Austria and Britain, and spread throughout the world. While there are many musicals that are uniquely American in character (Hello Dolly, Annie, et al), there are also distinctly British musicals (Oliver!, Salad Days) and German musicals (The Threepenny Opera). There are even American musicals that think they're British (My Fair Lady) and German (Cabaret). More recently there have also been Australian musicals, and even Russian musicals. The form itself is not the exclusive property of any nationality. Yet in many people's minds, the musical still has the Stars and Stripes pasted firmly on it (in spite of the fact that it's the European musicals that currently rule the world) and the Americans defend their national art form with the same alacrity with which Canadians defend hockey (although to give them their due, the U.S. is the one place where musicals are taken seriously). In the late 1980s, a time when Broadway was dominated by Cats and Les Miserables, the late Peter Stone, librettist of .7776, flatly declared that musical theatre did not exist outside of New York City.3 At the time, one could c question whether one actually existed in New York—Cameron Mackintosh having famously called it just another stop on the American *
tour—but in Stone's mind, one could not expect to produce great work while sitting in a room in Cincinnati. You had to be where the action was, studying the great writers. On the face of it, this would appear to be good advice. And Stone certainly knew his business. But this would also mean that the musical—an art form that spans the globe—can only reflect the values and perceptions of one rather insular city. Would he accept that there is no opera away from La Scala, no ballet but the Bolshoi? This notion also presumes that what works in New York works in the rest of the world. To quote Ira Gershwin, "t'aint necessarily so." Even Broadway writers have to ask themselves, "How will it play in Peoria?"The truth is, musical theatre does exist outside of New York and London, and while there are a number of excellent books on American and British musicals, they don't tell the entire story. American commentators equate the decline of Broadway with the decline of the musical, but when the American musical began its slide in the 1970s, the gap was soon filled by the British mega-musical. The latter has also faded, but the audience for musical theatre is still there, leaving the door ajar once more. To many in the world theatre scene, Canada would, at first glance, appear to be an unlikely place for anything exciting to happen. So, what's a poor kid to do if he's Canadian as maple syrup, yet every fibre of his being screams, "Gotta sing! Gotta dance!"? I have these two great p§ssions. One is a romantic current that dictates that strong emotions be externalized in melody and harmony. The other is a deep love for my country. To me, it is only logical that the former should be informed by the latter. I was born in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I am in the "beauty-expressing*business. How is it possible for a vast patchwork quilt of cultures surving In a hostile environment to be boring? It isrft* It's a tempest Bea,'tl||i<Ms had oil poured on it. Canadians hwe the same primal urge to i^|%e; rousic out of dramatic situations as other cultures. We are allboni^ipfc*lfie same natural metronome—the human he^tlfeeaf*We hitireaknds^i^ diat cries put to sing and to be sung. There if;;-a pdfflt at which mei^^rds jjffeat us. Somehow, like a flower gro^iaig through a craefe in thgiaaaeat* %t?Canadians keep pemstiiig in adding and datice to :wimt is supposed $0 bf our ennui, Mmic>€£%m^^^ Littler writes* The increasing willings of Canadians to sing and laxigh about themselves has finally made%riting musicals and revues a foE-time career option/"4 Some ire forking toward an indigenous Canadian musical theatre, while others want to succeed on a wider stage. I find myself in both camps*
IVERIURE
3
liwiy\ln:i«
4
Of course, it is more important to be good than to be distinctly Canadian, although I would argue that being distinctly Canadian may, for us, be a part of being truly good. If we are to work with the broadest palate, we'll need a few colours of our own. Americans didn't become great at writing musicals in spite 0/~their national characteristics, but because of them. We cant copy them, no matter how hard we try. The American choreographer Agnes de Mille once said, "There are no known recipes for success, and when those that have proved most useful are copied, the resulting form seems stale."5 It's worth noting that, while de Mille's ballets are distinctly American, they are still within the tradition of ballet. Alas, the principle that every nation can and should express itself in art is not universally embraced. There are those with the Darwinian view that the "lesser"cultures should give way to the "greater."! am not going to predict that Canadian musicals will necessarily conquer the world. What I am hoping is that musical theatre will become truly international and that we will see not only Canadian musicals but Australian, Irish and others as well. In Canada there is a suspicion that musicals are an American form that doesn't belong here. By the end of this book, I hope that you will see that musical theatre has its own roots in Canada and is an international form adaptable to many different cultures. We've had revues. We've had pageants. We've had operettas and full-scale book musicals. Some of them were even, in their time, popular successes, but until now, few people have connected the dots. Perhaps the reason why Canadian musicals have seldom reached popular audiences is that we simply haven't had enough practice at touching our own nerves. We have lapped up a steady diet of imported culture full of references that have limited relevance to us, accepting it as our own. (I even went through my teen years worrying that I might be drafted, until somebody finally made me understand that, in spite of media bombardment to the contrary, we were not at war.) The musical theatre is as old as the theatre itself. Greek plays had Greek choruses. Shakespeare's plays invariably included songs. It is only since the nineteenth century that plays without music have been the norm. But, for the purposes of this book, my definition of musical theatre is of a presentation in which the musical and dramatic elements bear equal weight. (I prefer to avoid the rather ungrammatical "music theatre.") In this I include operetta, musical comedy, burlesque, revue and cabaret, usually with some basis in the popular music of the day. But one thing that a musical is not is a play. It operates on different principles. It is related to straight theatre in the same sense as it is to opera.
The musical is, however, without question, the most popular form of live theatre. Yet, strangely, it is also the most neglected. There are some practical reasons for this—even a small musical is more expensive to produce than a play. It requires at least one musician, plus the extra rehearsal time required for learning songs and dances. (It is also far more complicated to get right, and this fact quite understandably intimidates many producers.) However, the added production expense does not fully explain the resistance to the musical that some people have. After all, opera is, from a financial and logistical point of view, an absurdly impractical proposition, and yet opera companies persist. No, the musical suffers from snobbery. Non-musical theatre is deemed to be "legitimate theatre."Does that make the musical a "bastard"? It is even held in outright contempt by those who deem misery to be more profound than joy. "I have a physical aversion to them," says Pavel Zatloukal, head of the art museum in the northern Moravian city of Olomotic in the Czech Republic. "It s not real culture," he sneers, "it s pop culture,"6 making no distinction between Mama Mia and A Little Night Music. Even pop musicians can be snooty about musical theatre—one rock critic complained that Pete Townsend had been "reduced" to mounting Tommy on Broadway, instead of pursuing his more artistically rewarding avocation of smashing guitars on stage. There are those who believe musicals should do nothing more than entertain. Others believe they should challenge. I believe they must do the former in order to effectively do the latter. If musicals are "pop culture," then why are they so "uncool"? Why is there such a gulf between musical theatre and pop music? Although Broadway used to give us pop Mis, the two forms diverged in the 1960s. To some, musical theatre failed to fceep pace. To others, pop hact Climbed down" too much, and the w^rld of musical theatre—along witft'Cabaret and jazz—was a last refuge for crafem^ttshi^&id sophfelicAttoii, In addition, a musical usually takes sferattl years t&Mevelop,'p^diiding the following of pop trends. Because of the need to involvedmunneto have long "legs," and cant affbrd to be *heye t€K%> and^oe tomorrow." The result is that, since the 197B&the*mw®&theatre has toievelop^lalong very different lines ff*>m ^fjmmc.^ AldioUgh it borrow from p6p and rock, it is rare^^lap^tf C^^^lBi'97i 0imd^ musicdly as if it had been;"%ritten l^^'A^^'-^m^^ yet it ran fer mtay yeaf^ aiicf & often revived. There is also snobfcery within musical Aeattt—especially in the rivalry between the "Andrew Lloyd Webber* and ^Stephen Sondheim" camps. Musicals have developed a very fussy following who demand well-crafted
INJURE
5
\\mw\m
6
lyrics and complex harmonies, usually absent in pop music. Thus, the musical is caught in a limbo between what is considered to be "commercial" and "art." Of course, it's understandable that some theatre professionals who are not "triple threats"—i.e., singing, dancing actors—would show disdain for that which they cannot themselves do. Then again, there is "reverse" snobbery. In Canada, some people deem a show that packs a 100-seat fringe venue to be "populist," but one that sells out a 3,200-seat opera house might be labelled "elitist." In fact, I believe that we need both "lowbrow" and "highbrow" theatre, a balance between the commercial and the subsidized, mainstream and "alternate," musical and non-musical. One cant prosper without the other. With this snobbery comes a lack of interest in the development of new works. This is a universal problem. In London, where I currently live, a writer for the Sunday Times, in a profile of director Trevor Nunn, declared that "the only thing worse than a musical is a new musical."7 Granted, there's nothing worse than a badly written musical, but despite the efforts of London's Mercury Musical Developments (of which I am a member), the now defunct Bridewell Theatre, Greenwich Theatre's Musical Futures and others—there are no major well-funded producing organizations dedicated to developing new musical theatre in Britain. So one can imagine how desperate the situation is in Canada where, except for an emasculated Charlottetown Festival and some recent developments at CanStage and ScriptLab, there is even less. Only in the United States are they taken seriously. Yet, if the musical—the poster child of the modern theatre—were to die, surely the "straight" theatre would follow closely behind (and vice versa). Does it not make sense for Canadian theatre to try to harness this most popular and powerful form? When I was beginning my career, musicals, as far as the official theatrical establishment was concerned, were "bourgeois," and the only useful purpose they served was as a means of wiping out deficits. Director Michael Bawtree maintains that a musical's "generating force, is and always has been, commercial."8 Often, when regional theatres deigned to do a musical as their end of season blowout, they would apologize for their indiscretion by casting non-singers and non-dancers and using tinny sounding orchestras that lacked several vital instruments. The snobbery is further underscored (to use a musical term) by the fact that the 1989 Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre has no entries for Marlene Smith (then Canada's most successful commercial producer), Norman Campbell, Patrick Rose or composer, producer and musical director David Warrack. I found it to be particularly telling when that same volume mentioned Alan Lund's choreography of "Brecht's" Rise and Fall of the
City ofMahagonny at the Stratford Festival. Surely there would have been nothing to choreograph had it not been for Kurt WeilTs music—or is that, even in an opera, incidental? (If an opera company does Sweeney Todd, it is "by Stephen Sondheim." If a "legit" theatre does it, it's "by Hugh Wheeler." Only when a musical theatre company does it do both get equal billing.) So, it would appear that we have to contend with both snobbery and nationalism. It would be absurd to dismiss the cinema as an art form just because for every one Seventh Veil there are a hundred Porky s. And while cinema may "belong" to Hollywood, there are also Kurosawa, Truffaut, Fellini, etc. Surely the same principle applies to musicals. How relevant is the musical to Canada's culture? Author John Lahr says that the American musical "celebrates two things: abundance and vindictive triumph."9 Is this true in the same way in Canada? The triumphal aspect, perhaps. Anne of Green Gables celebrates a young girl's victory over the conservatism of her elders. Paper Wheat and Ten Lost Years are about people holding onto their dignity, if not exactly triumphing, through poverty. On the surface, Billy Bishop Goes to War celebrates the triumph of a military hero keeping himself alive, but it proved to be far too ironic for the conventional Broadway mentality. (Lahr goes on to say that "social comment is as unwelcome to most Broadway producers as syphilis is to a whore.") And it goes without saying that Ten Lost Years does not celebrate abundance. Canadians have never been comfortable with the kind of flag-waving triumphalism that all this implies. Our national anthem sings of "glowing hearts" but not at the thought of "bombs bursting in air." We view our southern neighbour witib a mixture of admiration and fear. But what American musicals do exude—and this is something to be emitted—is a terrific sense of confidence* Just as a person with a low self^ffiigi'tends to be unattractive, so it goes with nations and cultures* It's one of life's vicious circles. What are the conditions that nurture the musical theatre's development? What is a "great" culture? American lyricist Alan, Jay Lerner says that "a civilization should beyjudeged die intelligence ithas d^eloped evedp and the way it is used> the Compassion it is capable of and the priority it receives, a nfever-encftog effdtt t& close the rift between rich and poort the responsibility of IBM for his neighbour and the magnitude of the art it produces/110 How does Canada measure up? WeVe had a reputation as a peacekeeper and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister. A much admired accommodation of multiple cultures—we coined the term "multiculturalism.^ A tradition of welfare. We discovered insulin.
§MK
I
IRDMYIOIITH
g
The books of Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje and the songs of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell are celebrated throughout the world. Yet the world doesn't notice us. Why? Note that Lerner said "should," not "is." Of course, the word "great" can mean "powerful" rather than "good." Perhaps the truth is that "great" civilizations—such as Rome—violently imposed their will on others and produced extravagant works of art on the backs of the poor. Just as a laser beam only becomes visible by adding impurities to it, so goes civilization. Cities like New York and London, noted for their urban decay, are celebrated. Toronto and Zurich, noted for their cleanliness, efficiency and low crime, are not. Professor Peter Hall of the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning of University College, London, writes, "Look at creative cities at their zenith: Plato's Athens, Michelangelo's Florence, Shakespeare's London, Mozart's Vienna. All were economic leaders, places in frenzied transition, magnets for talented people seeking fame and fortune."11 When a British TV series selected the "twenty best cities in the world," some of their choices suggested that a surfeit of filth, grinding poverty and stratospheric crime, along with ready availability of all manner of illicit vices were requisite. The Devil gets the best tunes, or so the saying goes. A writer in London's Daily Telegraph put it this way, "Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again."12 Perhaps we need to become more annoying. Small wonder that my father used to keep a sampler on his office wall that said, "Rudeness is our only hope." So, when I said I was going to write a book about Canadian musical theatre, my colleagues in the U.K. wondered if it would be a companion piece to that modest volume called Two Thousand Years of German Humour (or, I retorted, the even slimmer Best of British Haute Cuisine). A London newspaper sneered about that rarity, a famous Canadian. They hadn't heard of Bryanadams-celinedion-michaeljfox-jimcarreydanayckroyd-mikemyers-williamshatner-christopherplummershaniatwain-alanismorissette. Fifty years ago, the British took more interest in us, but have since fixed their gaze on the Australians. To them, we are indistinguishable from the Americans. So what is our response? To import culture in a misguided quest to become "world class"? Author Richard Gwynn writes, "Here [North America]... two nations have evolved that are utterly alike in almost all of their externals,
and yet are utterly unalike in their political cultures so that they are as distinct from each other as are the Germans from the French."13 John Gray, author of Billy Bishop Goes to Wary explains, "We live in a northern climate versus a temperate climate, which means that survival here is a value. It entails all sorts of attitudes toward nature. Americans look on nature as something to be beaten, because it can be in a temperate climate. Canadians living in an intemperate climate know that nature cannot be beaten. You get a whole philosophical difference out of that. Americans think confrontationally ideologically because they fought a revolution on the basis of an idea. Canadians think consensually in terms of finding ways of living together because that's what our history was. We have kept the British tradition. Americans think of things in terms of black and white, good and evil, whereas Canadians don't. So the whole thesis/antithesis notion of drama, which comprises conflict in American drama, doesn't have a great basis for existing in Canada." And, without the struggle between black and white, good and evil, what do we have to hang our mythology on? Would the "rules" learned from studying Broadway musicals apply in Canada? We Canadians, on the other hand, believe a few myths about ourselves. We are fond of saying that we won our independence "without a shot fired," ignoring the MacKenzie and Kiel rebellions. We see ourselves as pacifist peacekeepers, even though some Somalis may beg to differ. And we didn t shoot our Indians—anyone who has read my bqpk When We Both Got to Heaven knows we found a more cost-effective way to relieve them of their land. We equate Broadway theatre with the urbane and sophisticated, but most Americans actually live in the rural "heartland," while most Canadians live in towns and cities. The cultural implications of this are enormous* What does a political hkt$ry lesson have to do with a fclx^'libout Canadian musicals? Everything* Ourcultui$'reflect? -wJio^e are and how we think, and politicals it 6% part df that Becap^ Ae Americans fought a revolution (in effect^ continuation of the J||if^h Civil War between Oliver Cromwell anJ'
OVERTIME
9
llllHHIIWllllilH
10
that keeps them from seeing that. Ironically, I did it by moving to Britain. Now I can spot a Canadian at 100 metres. Much is said about the supposed Canadian inferiority complex, but Canadians are also capable of a smug superiority, especially when regarding their southern neighbours. If the U.S. is Rome to Britain's Greece, then Canadians imagine themselves to be in the Athenian camp. Some complain that Canadians define themselves by not being American, although one could argue that it is the Americans who— quite successfully—delineated themselves from us. In effect, the revolution partitioned British North America, and we are, to a great extent, the result of that huge migration of political refugees—the United Empire Loyalists—that flooded north in the aftermath. We are not, however, an island. Foreign influences are a part of our cultural mix, and we deny them at our peril. Former Governor General Vincent Massey, whose Royal Commission led to the formation of the Canada Council, wrote, "The exclusion of cultural influences from abroad is both impossible and undesirable. The answer to the problem we held was not negative, but positive—the strengthening of our own resources in the field of the arts and letters, and a deepening of confidence in what we can do for ourselves."15 We shouldn't switch off the foreign influences, but we need to listen to—and develop—our own voices. So, what does a Canadian musical look and sound like? Up to this point, what Canadian writers have been known for—if they were known at all—were small-scale, intimate shows. Playwright and humorist Eric Nicol joked that a Canadian musical was "built around one girl who can play the harmonica while tap-dancing."16 But in London and New York, such small shows rarely succeed. The belief is that you cant make an entire evening's entertainment out of—well, one girl playing the harmonica while tap dancing. The truth is that Canadian musicals cannot be pigeonholed. They range from the two-man Billy Bishop Goes to War to the epic House of Martin Guerre. Great nations have great mythologies. They are an integral part of the culture. Myths are dreams that have been elevated to legends. That's why I call this the history of a dream—it is, in fact, part history, part manifesto, battling the twin windmills of an all-pervasive Broadway and of a parochial Canada. It's a search for signs of life; Canadian musicals have yet to conquer the world (although Cirque du So/ei/is making great strides and The Drowsy Chafieronewon some impressive awards), but I'm interested in what more could happen, not just what has happened. As a musical theatre writer, I've had to do my homework, to study what went before me. I delved into, not only Oklahoma! and Fiddler on the Roof,
but also Anne of Green Gables, Sunshine Town, Mr. Scrooge and others. Gait MacDermot, Stan Daniels, Raymond Jessel and Marian Grudeffwent on to great success by leaving Canada. Imagine what might have happened had their work been nurtured at home! We know all about George Gershwin, but how many Canadians have heard of Robert Farnon? Why haven't we built on that heritage? And that's just the writers. Directors like Des McAnuff and performers like Victor Garber, Len Cariou and Brent Carver all learned their craft in Canada. (In fact, Carver remains Canadian-based.) Before me came the generation that produced Anne of Green Gables and Spring Thaw. Then, from another angle came Ten Lost Years and Billy Bishop Goes to War. The next generation (and to some extent my own) will see these—and other—approaches fuse together. (The mature American musical theatre came into being when the Tin Pan Alley world of musical comedy—i.e. Richard Rodgers—met the pseudo-European world of operetta—i.e. Oscar Hammerstein.) I believe that Jim Betts, who studied under legendary Broadway conductor and teacher Lehman Engel and was a member of the Banff Centre's Music Theatre Studio Ensemble, tried to do this to some extent with Colours in the Storm, about the painter Tom Thomson. For me, even the non-Canadian shows were filtered through a Canadian perspective. I didn't see my first musical on Broadway until I was in my late thirties. My exposure to them was through touring productions, local theatre—some of which I was involved with—and, of course^ the movies. One of my strongest impressions was of Canadian director Norman Jewison's 1971 film of Fiddler on the Roof, whose "Chava Ballet Sequence" recalled the National Kim Board shorts of Norman McLaren. Jewison used an international cast—including several Can^aris—to yank the sensibilities out o£MewT&rk and back to Tsarist RiMfit%iere they belong. And Norman CampbeE^ in his ^4% j°b" ts a telwfeion producer, worked with many of the Brqadlwa^ West End tftd Hollywood greats—directing Groucho Maoc m Tke Mtkad^ waitpMiig as Sammy Cahn wrote a lyric on a table napa during lunch, ani;working on an aborted Sherlock Holmes musicl witft composer Chiles Sttgpue and lyricist Don Black. T A personal. It M ''idrfffetetision to objectivity. Nor is it a ^it*moft0m
in the way that Ken Mandelbatim's excellent book Not Si$ee C&frie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops is* Neither, by necessity does it include French-Canadian theatre, except where it has influenced English language musicals (e.g., Les Fridolmades). By this, I do not imply that French-
OVERTURE
11
BROHY NORTH
12
Canadian musicals are either less important or less Canadian; merely that they are a specialized field that I am not qualified to comment on. I'm a bit of a Pollyanna on this subject, looking to see the half-full glass. Although in the past I have been a critic, this is not a detailed critical analysis of individual works—the reader can look at the contemporary reviews for that. I'm more interested in how, against the odds, the shows ever got on stage in the first place (or, in some cases, why they never did). For my sense of history, I have Norman and Elaine Campbell and Mavor Moore to thank. They told me about H.M.S. Parliament, Ptarmigan and Calixa Lavallee s The Widow. In fact, the first professional theatre production I ever saw was Campbell's Anne of Green Gables, during its 1967 national tour. The year was very significant, for it was the centennial of Canada's founding as a nation, and a great resurgence of national identity swept the land. Only two years earlier, Canada had adopted the maple leaf as its national flag. At that time, every large Canadian company's name ended in the suffix, "...(Canada) Limited."That seemed to say it all. Our country was hidden behind parentheses, as if to remind us of its inconsequence, and that our prospects were "limited."There has always been a conservative element that wants to take the path of least resistance and to hitch their (our) wagon to somebody else's horse. To be a "branch plant." (And they often have the temerity to call themselves "entrepreneurs.") But we were not "limited." To prove it, my parents decided to take my two sisters and me across Canada, visiting nine of the ten provinces. It was an inspired move. We spent three days at Expo '67 in Montreal, then proceeded on to Prince Edward Island, where we visited the birthplace of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. We stopped in the major cities of Toronto, Ottawa, Quebec City, Winnipeg and Edmonton as well as touring Gaspe, Cape Breton and the Canadian Shield. At the age of nine, this four-week excursion gave me a national perspective, and was the beginning of my own sense of national identity. It even had a theme song—Bobby Gimby's "Ca-na-da." Still, it was an uphill struggle. I made a point of watching as much "Canadian content" as I could on TV, sometimes, to the despair of my family, who suffered through The Whiteoaks ofjalna and the often-perplexing Programme X. My sister would taunt, "you can always tell when something is Canadian," as if it were somehow infected with a virus. Ratings were low. Of course, many of our most talented artists, including Norman Jewison and Robert Goulet had been lured away to where the grass, if not actually greener, was at least watered occasionally. Michael Dobbin,
who in the late 1970s was general manager of the Vancouver Playhouse, remembers, "When we would produce new work... we would deliberately avoid saying it was a new Canadian play because we knew that would kill the box office." My high school newspaper ran a cartoon of somebody praying, "Please, God, no more Canadian content." If an American had shown such a lack of patriotism, his countrymen surely would have lynched him. (You will never hear an American say, "We couldn't make a proper cup of tea if our lives depended on it," will you?) The situation was not helped by the so-called "quota-quickies"—films and TV shows that were Canadian only in the tax sense, with all the authenticity of a Japanese Elvis impersonator. Remember, it was only when Broadway began to sound American that it became significant. In the early 1970s, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission imposed 30% Canadian content quotas on commercial radio, (because that was the only way to get the broadcasters to stop using the American Billboard charts for their playlists). But the harder the government tried to encourage Canadian artists, the more the public resisted. Even shows that are considered landmarks like Ten Lost Years are somewhat stigmatized—as if the "Culturality Squad"— rather than the public—picked them. In reference to Timber!!, an early Canadian musical, Vancouver impresario Hugh Pickett once remarked, "I don t know whether you cringe when you hear things like Hudson's Bay, Birk's Clock or anything like that in a play, but I do."Then agaiij, I met an Australian woman who hated Breaker Morant and Gallipoli because she couldn't stand to hear her own accent on screen. It seemed as though Canadians were just trying too hard, rather than letting it flow naturally. Now, $$ every dancer knows, the eJEFoflipIsness of a Fred Astaire is the result of ffactkjp and disciplined Ii^^psame way the unforced naturalising%rli^l$ the result OF tion. By the 1990s, things, H §to6ws A like Due South drew C R Atom Egoyan, David Croiw|^^ DE emerged with international tep^te^^^,, Being recognized as an ARRFORSATWO-EFDSWORD.ITCANSU from a hardening o£tjj|C^A who ARTERIES"LIKETHEARMYOFBALLETPU demand battafr)^INTRUSTTHERARETHOSEWHOAPPROCHNEW with "a CHECKLISTDOTHEGSadyaEee the plot? ESTABLISHCHAR Or set the mood? D^^w'luif^Are EYHAVEABEGINNING,AMIDDLE
the rhymes clever and accumte? Does it have Jt rdttliiiiKc subplot? Do the numbers end witH t bang? Are tjie characters sympathetic? Does it have that hard, brassy New York edge? Were the writers steeped in
OVERTURE
13
lini miwMli i in
]4
the Broadway musical theatre tradition? And in Klezmer music? If the points tally to less than ninety percent, then the work does not pass muster. Interlopers are treated with the same generosity of spirit as an English aristocrat of old showed when someone did not have the correct accent and breeding. It is against this "standard" that we struggle. John Gray argues that if you're going to write Canadian musicals, they should be in a form that comes out of the country. "In Anne of Green Gables" he says, "it's highly ironic to be watching it in Charlottetown and realize that it's a story that comes from about thirty miles away in a form that comes from a thousand miles away." (He might have added that the same would have been true of an early American operetta a century ago.) While I find nothing American-sounding in Anne, the influence of Rodgers and Hammerstein is undeniable. Mavor Moore, whom York University professor Ross Stuart called the "father of the modern Canadian musical theatre,"17 argues, "Of course it's got to be an imposed form, because if you stick to the place and time, you'd have to have done a period pastiche... Folk music did not belong with the kind of life that she led." (Moore and his collaborator John Fenwick did, in fact, use folk music idioms in Johnny Belinda.} And of course, by his own admission, Gray's major influences were American rock and roll, Celtic folk music and Berlin cabaret (and the influence of the Broadway form on his work is probably greater than he admits to). But still, Gray may have a point. How can we tell our own stories without a musical vocabulary that evokes a sense of place? Musical theatre is at its best when it is being very specific, very particular. "A lot of people start thinking of other musicals when they write," he says, "and not that space, that theatre, that stage, those actors. The more you have that in mind, the more you are in touch with the form." A show that's set in Toronto will never be convincing if it sounds like it's set in New York or Chicago. Vancouver dance teacher and choreographer Grace Macdonald said, "The only time that London comes out with something that's really exciting is when they do something that is entirely British. And we love it. And we certainly don't like it when they copy what [the Americans are doing] and they do it badly because they don't understand it." Moore adds, "What Canadians have not been smart enough to realize is that in a society that values novelty, you are sunk if you are always making carbon copies of the style of the moment. What I tried to do was to outflank them in the hope that we might start a fashion." But how can we be trendsetters if nobody follows us until New York has given its stamp of approval? How do we put our own imprint on
musicals? When Ronald Reagan came to Quebec City for his "Shamrock Summit" with Brian Mulroney, he was entertained by a tap-dancing George M. Cohan extravaganza. Yet, when British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited Washington, I'm pretty sure they didn't affect posh English accents and serve warm beer and mushy peas. Surely visitors to Canada want to see something they wouldn't see at home. A few years ago, the Washington Post said, "Many of Toronto's small theatres offer something refreshingly different for American visitors: Canadian plays about Canadian people."181 know that if I were going to see an Australian play, I'd rather see one about Ned Kelly than one about the Klondike. And an American show about Canada? Rose Marie? Let's not go there. How do we establish a sense of time and place? In the Disney IMAX® film Fantasia 2000, George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" was set to animation in a pastiche of the theatrical cartoons of the late Al Hirschfeld. The two icons converged into an audio-visual shorthand with a brashness that instantly telegraphed "New York." We know that partly because Gershwin's music somehow captures the sounds and rhythms of that city. Or does it? Are the sounds of New York traffic, of subway trains, jackhammers, ship's whistles so different from those in Philadelphia, Boston, or, for that matter, in Montreal? Maybe it's the jazz—but isn't that New Orleans? Or perhaps it's the man himself. American popular music was born in the common ground that lay between Klezmer and jazz. Gershwin's music so dominated the stages, clubs and the song-pluggers of Tin Pan Alley that the sound still rings from its bricks and mortar. Jazz and Klezmer collided with European light opera to form his unique style. Across an ocean, Kurt Weill combined many of the same elements, but with a markedly Teutonic result They in turn have re-entered the mix to influence others. After seeing Fantasia 2000,1 tried to think of how Canada c^tfld be represented in this kind of shorthand* The muMe of Robert Parnon ivith the cartoons of Ben Wickst* Everybody knows Farnorfs "Jumping Bean/1 yet few associate it with Toronto—not because it doefott ftsfieet the city, but because the PR machine wa$tft in place to make tHe world see the link. What icons do we have? The Monnties? The Maple Leaf? JJockey? For me personally, my hometown of Vancouver might be sumtoedt up in an Emily Cart painting, a Pauline Johnson poem or am Ann Mottifep song. Toronto could be the Red Rocket streetcar^ Glean Gould ttid Moe Koffman. But, due partly to our lack of flair for ^elf-promotion, these images mean little to outsiders. While the Brooklyn Bridge is famous throughout the world, Vancouver's Lions Gate Bridge—once the highest in the British Empire—is not,
OVERTURE
15
BHIY NORTH
IB
Toronto is the commercial heart of Canada and the leading centre for English-speaking theatre, yet in his study A City... Waiting for the Sunrise: Toronto in Song and Sound, Michael Doucet concludes that "Toronto is still not in the same musical league as the world's most powerful cities. To my knowledge, not one of the Toronto songs discussed in this study [he lists songs by Neil Young, Murray MacLachlan, Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn and Rita MacNeil, among others] has been recorded more than once."19 Whenever we think of Memphis, we think of the blues. New Orleans is synonymous with jazz (although the word itself actually comes from San Francisco). Can Canadian music be evocative of Canada? Although it never mentions place names, Gordon Lightfoot s "Pussy Willows, Cat Tails" describes his hometown of Orillia, Ontario. Given that Lightfoot, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Gene McLellan and many others came through the Yorkville folk scene, you would think that their sound would be clearly identified with Toronto. Even if the audience is unfamiliar with a show's milieu, they can tell whether the author is. About twenty years ago, I saw a gentle coming-ofage film called My American Cousin. It was a revelation. Set in the town of Penticton, British Columbia, on the shores of Okanagan Lake, its sense of time and place went beyond mere nostalgia for me. My family had camped there during the era when this film was set, so I knew it well, and the shock of recognition was profound. (I'm sure many Californians felt the same way about American Graffiti^) It had paid me the compliment of speaking directly to me in my own language. For its writer-director Sandy Wilson, it was a labour of love, actually filmed on the family homestead. But, in its specificity lay its universality. Among this film's many admirers was one Steven Spielberg (who, to the best of my knowledge, did not hail from Penticton). On the other hand, I watched a recent TV series called Edgemont, made and set in Vancouver, yet it failed to take advantage of its spectacular locale, and so it didn't^/like Vancouver. What happens when these things ring false? I remember walking around Taiwan in a tee shirt in a sweltering sun on Christmas day, while loudspeakers blasted out a song about sleighbells ringing and Jack Frost nipping at my nose—maybe they should consider writing their own Christmas songs. But we can't depend on outsiders to help us nurture our vision. Living next to the United States is like having a neighbour who always talks about himself and never asks how you're doing. If you look to him for validation, you're setting yourself up for disappointment. John Gray asserts that Americans just are not interested in Canada. He maintains that they have
no unresolved issues with us like they do with Britain. (Except, of course, that we don't fly their flag.) Unlike "old Europe," about which they nurse century-old perceptions brought to Ellis Island by refugees of political and religious persecution, they rather inconveniently have, on their doorstep, a democracy with a comparable standard of living that lacks many of their social ills and wanted no part in their revolution (and, even more inconveniently, has taken in many of their refugees). In his foreword to the published script of Billy Bishop, John Gray says, "A Canadian play? Forget it! Americans don't want to see two unknown Canadians perform a play about an unknown Canadian war hero who fought a war that America did not win."20 They don t feel the guilt of Empire—or not yet, anyway. Since they neither occupied nor were occupied by us, we are irrelevant to them. Or perhaps we're just ijot assertive enough. All art exists within a cultural context. In Tokyo, audiences found it hard to understand how the rest of the world could identify with something as "uniquely Japanese* mMddler on the Roof. And they had a point: few Westerners have experiencedJamnged marriages. Its H^^&ality, ironically, lay in its very spid|ic.«ttute Q^jphce and timc|t{^^fcSved differently in each country WHERITPLAYSWH Zealand, was ostensibly ABOUTAMAORIGIRALATTERPTEMPTIDTOASSERTTHERSELF Kilt'herself IT DTOTHEADDEND as a leader of her people. Itj^y^^bfy,^^ Leultiue, yet speaks to everyone who has EVERAUGGLEDTOEHEARD. On the other hand, BLOODFUTERISAVERYBRITHSTHISCALTHATHASS been playing in LONDONSIRS1988,BUTITLEFTNEWYARK"SMIDTOWN
Over the years, Don Harron (left) and Norman Campbell developed a close working relationship and personal friendship. Both received an honorary doctorate from the University of Prince Edward Island in 2001. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.
SOPHISTISCOLDANDWHYWANDETIT?TOTHEMWHOLE"NS. NARTURE"ARGUNETWASSETEDE1776.(WHETERORNOTTHEYARECORRECT
in that belief isa MOOTpOINT)AND,OTpUTITALLINCONETRSNOBR show has ever succeeded in Paris Norman Campbell $pld met *It is vipy'iffip&tiiij that we are able to write musicals that are about we Canadians, and about our own scene.
OVERTURE
II
iROilY NORTH
18
To be inhibited by making it universal just by taking away place names and issues is a mistake." Norman Campbell knew of which he spoke. When a group of American bigwig producers proposed a tour of Anne of Green Gables, they asked for some dialogue to be changed. "We'll have to get rid of that Canadian reference to the Watkins man, whoever he is." The Watkins man, in fact, originated in the U.S. mid-west, and since the 1870s the J.R. Watkin company of Plainview, Minnesota, have sold their products door-todoor. "These experts don t know their own history," Campbell fumed. "We said 'no thanks' and showed them the door." According to Don Harron, Normans reaction was a little less muted, "The only thing I can compare it to is Jesus Christ driving the money lenders from the temple."21 When a show is "universalized" in this way, it usually results in both baby and bathwater being hurled from a twenty-third floor window. Of course, some producers seem to be pitching their product at the sort of people who think that Wagner's Ring cycle has something to do with hobbits. Does everything have to be dumbed down and homogenized in order to appeal to the people for whom "zed" is too big a word? Some American Harry Potter fans were insulted when Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was retitled The Sorcerer's Stone for their "benefit." Was it really necessary for My Big Fat Greek Wedding to change its setting from Winnipeg to Chicago? Would it have been less funny? Or less universal? Of course not. Robert Altaian's film The Company was set among the Joifrey Ballet in Chicago. Yet its author and star Neve Campbell actually based it on her experience training at the National Ballet School in Toronto, and the principal work depicted, Robert Desrosier's The Snake, was originally commissioned by the National Ballet in 1985. When Margaret Laurence's novel A Jest of God was turned into the film Rachel, Rachel, its setting was also Americanized. The more our stories are transplanted, the more difficult it is for us to define ourselves. If My Big Fat Greek Wedding had kept its Canadian identity (it was actually filmed in Toronto) it might have paved the way for others to follow. Norman Jewison—my hero—reset the film Agnes of God in Montreal. Some would say there's no more romantic city in North America, yet Hollywood largely ignores it. To put it in crass commercial terms, it comes down to branding. There is a reason why companies spend vast fortunes establishing their trademarks on the public consciousness. When we produce work that pretends to be American, we are failing to establish our own brand. It's significant to note that the two most internationally celebrated Canadian musicals—Billy Bishop Goes to War and Anne of Green
Gables—had one thing in common. Their stories were Canadian. They were about us. The Irish playwright John Coulter, who moved to Toronto with his Canadian wife in 1936, once said, "What virtue is there in becoming specifically Canadian? Why not aim at the idea of internationalism in the theatre at least? I should reply that in my belief the way to internationalism in the theatre as in all else lies through the prior achievement of the greatest degree of nationalism. It is an organic growth outward from a core which is the individual himself, in this case, the individual playwright."22 Music critic William Littler says, "The truer Canada's musical theatre is to its immediate circumstances, the greater will be its chance to speak not only to a local audience but to the international community."23 I would add that nationalism should never be a barrier to divide people, but a rallying call to unite them. Ideally, globalization could be a forum for sharing ideas, rather than for plundering resources. In Don Harron and Norman Campbell's The Wonder Of It All, British Columbia painter Emily Carr is frustrated by a colonial art world fixated on polite English countrysides, all very neatly manicured, while ignoring the more "savage" splendour that is on their doorstep, because that is what their culture had informed them to be acceptable. (Even today, you will find no Emily Carr or Group of Seven paintings on display in London's Tate Gallery.) This could be seen as a metaphor for the struggle that Canadian musical theatre writers face now. To me, it's not about flag waving. It's about understanding our own milieu, about writing and playing what we know, so that we might actually have something useful to say to the world. "Most writers of Canadian musicals are trying to write Broadway musicals," observ^dj> John Gray "Unless you're steeped if* it,*ipless ^ott're from theit^y^^^^bt as well try to write for Africam4r»«rt^ Whi&the point?* \ But what if some of us are ste^pei » it? WHATIFTHESTARISOFCAofcCanadian folk art are so FARREMOVEDFORAMTHECOTEMOPORTS they are like African drums? J$ey B$ifierflgj^jjtes,^©m^^pMJi^B shows mirrored what was being doii^^ YHESTAES."TRYINTOFILTETO American influences would BELIKETARYINGTORETORRESAXONEN
comes down to one oRUCIALGUESTION:dOSEiTRUINGtRUEOFfALES?IFAMUSICK cal uses an ORCHESTEDRA,ANDIFTHESONGSAREINTERGARTEDINTOTHESTORY,DOGES that make IT"AMERICAN"?CANADADOSENTS'THAVEITSOWNTADITIONSTODARW
on. Or does iT?CANANADIANSTAKE"AMERICAN"FOTRA their own? The perception is tEat there is no i^c^nmbty Canadian music form, because it has all merged into the North American melting pot. (Again,
IVERTH
19
lNlDfflY||NTH
20
we are not an island.) If you ask an American musicologist about the song "Red River Valley," he'll probably tell you that it originated in Texas in the 1880s—although, according to the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, Canadians have traced it to 1870 and the Red River Rebellion in Manitoba. (It is, in fact, sung by a First Nations woman about the soldier who has left her behind.) Maybe we re invisible because so much of North American culture is Canadian and because our southern neighbours tend to claim anything that isn't absolutely documented. That Saturday Night Live was a transplanted Canadian show is no secret, but few realize that so was Rowan and Martins Laugh-in (based on a CBC show called The Nightcaps) and Quincy (based on Wojecfc). In the early part of the twentieth century, Shelton Brooks from Amherstburg, Ontario, gave us "At the Darktown Strutters Ball." Broadway composer Stephen Schwartz counts Joni Mitchell among his influences. And Britain's famous Goon Show—forerunner of Monty Python, and "ground zero" of post-war British comedy—drew inspiration from Stephen Leacock. Not to mention the impact of "medium is the message" guru Marshall McLuhan (although, unlike Woody Allen's character in Annie Hall, I cannot summon him out of a cinema queue to support my arguments). Even Superman was Canadian. We know that apple pie is not really American, but that chop suey is. We can also be sure that if the wheel had been a Canadian invention, nobody would know it. (That Trivial Pursuit is a Canadian invention is appropriate, since to much of the world, the country that lies above the 49th parallel is itself a "trivial pursuit" question.) American culture has "dominated" the world because it is, in fact, a distillation of all the other world cultures to begin with. Still, it is maintained that the musical, along with jazz, is America's contribution to the performing arts, and that only Americans can do them. (Just as only the English can play Shakespeare and only Russians can dance ballet—remember that Alice Marks had to become Alicia Markova to get any respect.) But the modern American musical is a cocktail of European operetta, Klezmer, vaudeville, minstrel show and African rhythms with an infusion of opera and ballet. What the Americans brought to it was the vernacular of slang. For the first time, people sang the same way they spoke. When Lionel Bart wrote Oliver!, he was able to substitute English cockney, giving it a strong local identity, while still following the same principles. Certainly, Oklahoma! is the prototypical American musical, but what about My Fair Lady with its Anglo-Irish source, its Viennese composer and its anglophile lyricist? Does the musical theatre belong to any one nationality?
When Bart set out to adapt Dickens' Oliver Twist, he drew on the traditions of English music hall and his own East End Jewish roots to create a hit that has travelled the world as much as any "Broadway" show. (And Richard Rodgers was sufficiently impressed with Bart to invite him to be his next lyricist—an offer that was declined.) More recently, Howard Goodall blended Yorkshire folk idioms with a dash of Elgar to create The Hired Man, and Steve Brown and Justin Green gave Spend, Spend, Spend an echo of the 1960s sound of Petula Clark. And, of course, Kurt Weill blended opera, jazz and lieder to create Threepenny Opera. All of these shows, to some extent, borrowed the form, if not the style or sound, of the "American" musical. But each had its own sense of time and place. Even in Paris, the city where Broadway musicals go to die, Irma La Douce, with music by Marguerite Monot (who wrote many of Edith Piaf 's hits) was a smash before taking London and Broadway. (For some reason, the French are actually better at writing musicals than they are at going to see them. Besides Les Miserable*, there is also the wonderful film Umbrellas of Cherbourg.} This principle can also be applied to regional American musicals. When Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt adapted N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker into 110 in the Shade, their rural Texas backgrounds gave the show an authenticity not found in Oklahoma! (Even the latter show has its roots in a play by Oklahoma writer Lynn Riggs, the first Native American dramatist to achieve critical recognition.) Do we even know what is authentically Canadian? Singer k.d. lang says, "The landscape, sparse population, long winters and proximity to nature all contribute to a very introspective, melancholic (and I use that word not in a negative sense) tond of spiritualism—they contribute to an openness and humility/34 Whet* you walk through the Mpr Heavily gentrified Yorkville district-^Toronto, t&e site of the 1960s FOLKCLUBS that gave rise to Gordon Ogfatfeot> Ian and Sylvia Tpoii^J0ai Mitdiell and Neil Young, it's not
r
J
»,, ».<\ ," ;
-
\-
> , •"
~,v *? < v , ^ •
%
s
;
-
**y
' ^
'
"*.,.,
>;?•„ ',
^_Jf
^
"
'
• We%e OTALONEINOURDESIREDESINETODEVELOPANINDIGENOUSINUSIALTTHE-----atre. There are lessoiw to be toprned from others. In^ AAstraJiaf wMch, unlike Canada, actually is an island, writers hMt made iseveral reasonable attempts, includii^ The Venetian Tbm^and The Soy from Oz (based on the life of songwriter Peter Allen), both with books by the late Nick
OVERTURE
21
BHIY NORTH
99 uu
Enwright. The Pratt Foundation has initiated a biannual prize to encourage Australian musical writers. A few years ago, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation made a compilation CD of songs from Aussie shows to accompany a television special called Once in a Blue Moon, backed by the Melbourne Symphony I tried to persuade the CBC to make a similar effort, but to this day, their only musical theatre offering is an album of the Winnipeg Symphony playing Rogers and Hammerstein hits. More recently, Jim Betts has put together Field of Stars, a collection of songs from Canadian musicals over the past fifty years. It may not have a symphony orchestra, but the material is outstanding and, along with Charlotte Moore's recent CD, Friends of Mine, proves my point that there is a Canadian musical theatre heritage. Variety still classes Toronto as "the road," which is a little like the English referring to America as "the colonies." But many in Canada would bristle at the notion of Toronto being its centre, instead extolling the virtues of the regions. (This is Canada's well-meaning way of shooting itself in the foot.) And so hit shows, when they happen, are obliged to take to the road, trekking across the second largest geographical expanse in the world, watching what profits there might have been evaporate like the dew on a Vancouver lawn, thus allowing foreign culture to divide and conquer. Shows should originate in the regions (just as New York ignores Toronto, so Toronto ignores Vancouver), but there must be a central marketplace, or else we will inevitably lack focus and disintegrate. So can there ever be a Canadian equivalent to Broadway? A place where visitors can see hit shows they wouldn't see anywhere else? There is, at present, no name for the Toronto neighbourhood bounded by Bloor Street, Bathurst, Parliament and Lake Ontario, that contains the theatre district. Unlike New York and London, it is in the downtown commercial core. So, in this book, I will refer to Toronto's downtown theatre district as "The Core," and those theatres outside this district as "Off-Core." Why do we need The Core? For all the merits of publicly funded theatre, it is very difficult to let people know when you have a hit. For all the hundreds of thousands of people who have seen Two Pianos, Four Hands, we have not been able to point to a sexy statistic to compare to the 6,137 shows that A Chorus Line notched up on Broadway (although Anne of Green Gables has played more performances at Charlottetown than the original production of South Pacific did in New York). In London, where box office figures are not published, producers often keep shows running at a loss to create the perception of a hit in the public's mind, thus
enhancing a show's touring prospects. In Canada, some people think they've got a hit if they can pack a 200-seat fringe venue for a night. Others use Phantom of the Operas ten-year Toronto run as their benchmark. It is often argued that we simply cant afford to hype our shows the way Broadway does. If that's true, then we cant afford to produce them at all. Unless we learn how to brand and market our work, any money spent on them goes straight down the plughole. Whether or not it is "politically correct" to say this, Toronto is the centre of English-Canadian theatre. In fact, it claims to be the third in the world (after London and New York), selling over seven million theatre tickets per year. It even has a couple of advantages over the "Big Apple"—two of the world's great repertory companies within its market area, and a film and television talent pool. (New York suffers from the fact that the centre for U.S. film and TV production is on the opposite coast, which has made it difficult for film actors to work in the theatre.) The most common complaint is that Toronto lacks a centrally located, medium-sized transfer house. And so, while the audiences may be there to support an extended run, alas, the theatres are not, according to some. This claim will be discussed further in a later section. But Nick, an elderly New York attorney with whom I correspond (and a man never to let information get in the way of a strong opinion), laughs hysterically at my "idiosyncratic" claim that Toronto is a theatre capital. "Third in a field of two," he grumbles, remarking that our two most successful musicals both flopped commercially when they hit the "big time." Canadians are fond of saying, "If you're so good, why are you still here?" My short answer is, I'm not Since 1991,1 have been based in London, England, although I long to return. Living outside Canada gives me a unique perspective—an "insider on the outside." (I even briefly worked in the theatre where, seventy-Ike years previously the Dumbefls MADEE their London breakthrough.) Ken Mitchell, who wrote CrmlTmn^ t ^country opera," found that "the only my to redly understand your own world and culture is to get away from it*.. The things that people take for granted all the time suddenly become very dbfiou$> like our incredible wealth, good fortune and political stability/^! llvmg abroad gphres Hie a sensg of how outsiders perceive us—(andfihietruth is, they usually dorft). To New Yorkers^ the world M dlwfed into two parts—New Yo$k and "out of town^It cm be so—dare I say it?—parochial that when Ray Jes~ sel was brought in to work on Richard Rodgers* J;fem#M#£r M&m&> one Gotham wag said that his only previous credit had been Baker Street, in spite of a decade with Spring Thaw. Books on musical theatre will cite a show's Broadway or London opening as its date of birth—even if it had
OVERTURE
n Lid
B»m NORTH
24
been first performed somewhere else twenty years earlier. Thus, Arthur Jackson's The Best Musicals dates Anne of Green Gables from 1969 instead of 1965, and the Internet Theatre Database proclaims the touring cast of Anne that visited New York City Center in 1972 to be the "original Broadway cast."Jack Raymond's Show Music on Record dates Billy Bishop Goes to War from 1980, rather than 1978. Theatrical contracts are structured in such a way as to preserve New York's hegemony: Broadway producers usually reserve Canadian rights as an appendage to the American market. When Alberta Theatre Projects obtained the Canadian rights to Tomfoolery ahead of the Americans, they were still prevented by the show's eventual New York producers from playing our largest city on the grounds that Toronto was part of the American territory, national sovereignty notwithstanding. (One of the actors told me—off the record—that they could have challenged it legally, but it would have opened "a whole can of worms.") In fact, since the days of vaudeville, American producers, theatre owners, cartels and even trade unions have used strong-arm tactics to ensure that Canada does not threaten their economic and cultural monopolies. If we don't start waving our own flag, somebody else will plant theirs—I remember when the Eaton's Santa Claus Parade was shown on American TV, under the banner of the "All American Thanksgiving Day Parade." The only accurate word in that title was the last one. In Canada, where regional theatres are the "establishment" and commercial theatre is the maverick intruder, Billy Bishop Goes to War is known as a musical that triumphed across the country. But in New York, the commercial theatre is Darwinism in action. A musical doesn't officially exist until it has opened on or off-Broadway. Billy Bishop, although highly regarded in some circles, is known only for its all-too-brief run at the Morosco. Rockabye Hamlet is a show that went "ker-thud-ker-thudsplat." And as far as they're concerned, Duddy didn't even get out of the starting gate. It goes without saying that Ten Lost Years, a folk musical about the Great Depression, doesn't appear on their radar at all. The belief is that if a show is any good, it will go to Broadway—regardless of whether or not it is suited to the jaded New York audience. To the New Yorker, Billy Bishop's Broadway failure was Canada's failure, but when The Producers and Hairspray closed early in Toronto, it was blamed on the town, rather than on the show. But New York's position as arbiter of world taste took a serious bashing when their "megahit" musical Rent arrived in London. The Telegraph said, "How much cloy can you buy?" Even Salman Rushdie issued his ownfatwah—"I thought it was a bit dodgy." It limped along for a few months, closing at an enormous loss.
One could argue it was an "out-of-town" show that failed on transfer, but Old Nick, my advocate friend, will never see it that way. It would be a mistake to assume that the shows that went to New York were the best shows, or conversely, that the best shows went to New York. Rockabye Hamlet went, House of Martin Guerre didn't. Is it because of international arrogance toward Canada that our works are so readily dismissed? Or is it a sign of our vaunted inferiority complex that we cling to mediocrity just because it has our name on it? Or do we skirt the edges of success, lacking the gung-ho mentality to fix the problem and try again? Are we so negative that we automatically answer everything with "no"? Is it a conspiracy—or the lack of one? Of course, Canadians shouldn't care whether New Yorkers have ever heard of a show called Ten Lost Years, any more than the British care what Americans thought of Pickwick or Salad Days. It wasn't written for them and doesn't beg their approval. But, as Eric Nicol says, "It is the ambition of every Canadian playwright to have his play run on Broadway for more than one night."26 (And he knew what he was talking about: his 1965 Vancouver hit Like Father, Like Fun actually managed three performances at the Brooks Atkinson in 1967 under the nondescript—and legally imposed—new title A Minor Adjustment.} New York is seen as the place where serious money can be made, and so it remains the Mecca. Theatres like Edmontons Citadel have set themselves up as pre-Broadway tryouts, and their former chief benefactor, |he late Joseph "Broadway Joe" Shoctor lined up Jule Styne's Pieces of Eighty Mordecai Richler's Duddy (based on his novel The Apprenticeship ofDuddy Kravitz) with music by Americans Jerry Lieber and Mike Stotter, and Charles Strouse's Flowers for Algernon in search of that elusive kit Many in Canada resented public funds being expended on new show$ by foreign writers, a view exacerbated by the feet that they all tanke4*:?Hd% do you think the Duddy people are going to raise money in Cattada to do another musical again?" stili J&fafi Gfay; *It*s just not Fair to put all those resources to work on one show And it*s not necessary/ But what are Canadian writefe t0 do? Not rimchf iefcorfing to Peter Stone's advice, except get a gt^fn card, or sit back arid wait £b|jdb,e bus and truck companies to can%j^ town. If they chose the ktfer, wMt they would see on i^e^^r;seetf ;l^dW and remote—whether cheerm||r< for the ^patri^^^^'fe^uticw in which they were the eHem^ c^lebmt^ ing the right to pacfc a pistol and thanking the almighty that they don't have universal Medicare* The efforts to create a distinctly Canadian musical theatre are littered with many carcasses. For every Anne of Green Gables there is a Duddy,
§MM
25
and for every Billy Bishop Goes to War there is a Rockabye Hamlet. Sometimes, producers seemed to be looking for their "Springtime for Hitler"—with the wrong director, the wrong script and the wrong star, what could possibly go right? Those who don t learn from Rockabye Hamlet are doomed to keep reprising it. Lehman Engel, the late Broadway conductor who for many years held workshops for writers and composers in Toronto (as well as New York, Los Angeles and Nashville), urged his students to study and dissect what had gone before them. He cited West Side Story and Gypsy, but the same principles hold true for those who want to look closer to home. "Writers and composers in other countries have made serious attempts to rival the creative spirits of the American musical theatre," Lehman wrote. "There seems to be no reason why they should not succeed."27 Though it may have been built for imported Vaudeville, the Winter Garden has now been restored with a mandate to encourage original Canadian musical theatre. (Such shows get a break in the rent.) That mandate has been difficult to fulfill. How may we rise to the challenge? In fact, Canadians do need to study the great American (and British) musicals, but with a discerning eye. We are not the same. But what indigenous examples are there for Canadians to follow? Does Canada have a strong musical theatre tradition? Not yet. Does it have a firm foundation upon which a unique tradition could be built? I believe it does. Why is it important? As the late George Ryga, author of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe said, "As a dramatist, I wish... that some continuity might have been maintained to enrich and deepen the field in which we work."28 If I had grown up in New York, it would at least have been possible for me to see all of the major Broadway productions of the past four decades—they would all have been within a few blocks of each other. In Canada, without some kind of unlimited travel pass, this is not possible. However, I did manage to see my fair share of them—from Anne of Green Gables in Charlottetown to The Wonder of it All in Victoria, from Heyy Marilyn! in Edmonton to Durante in Toronto and Napoleon in London's West End. Instead of Rodgers and Hammerstein, I looked at Campbell and Harron. In addition to Kander and Ebb, I examined the work of Jessel and Grudeff. Rather than spin Lerner and Loewe on the turntable on more time, I learned about Claman and Morris. The writers, composers, producers, directors, choreographers, performers, even the bricks and mortar that have helped Canadians to sing and dance for the past four hundred years. Four hundred? Read on.
IHMYIORTH
oc i\)
in u HUE yin
This page intentionally left blank
1.INTREBEGINNING id you know that North America's first European-style theatrical performance1 took place in Canada? That the Rockettes kick-line was conceived in Toronto? No, of course not. That would be very unJ Canadian. Much of the world still thinks of Canada as a wilderness. And, right up until the middle of the 19th century, they would largely have been right. When a survey by William M. Mercer in 2001 declared Vancouver to be the best city (along with Zurich) in which to live, the London papers were apoplectic with scorn. (Other surveys between 2002 and 2005 have also rated Vancouver top.) "There is really no comparison," wrote the Evening Standard. "On the one hand there is London—a city rich in history and the birthplace of Charles Dickens, the home of parliamentary democracy, setting for some of the greatest theatres, restaurants and art galleries. .. On the other hand, there is Vancouver—a city just over 100 years old, which, apart from having mountains and water, is chiefly famous for giving the world Bryan Adams, Pamela Anderson, Michael J. Fox and the Vancouver Island marmot."2 (The writer evidently didn't have enough "A Levels" to know that Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island.) New York and London are the cultural centres of gravity and as si|ch they draw attribution away from other places. Our defining moment as a nation was the construction of a transcontinental railway. In many ways, building a transcontinental culture would be an even greater challenge. In Canada, go back more than sixty years and virtually all homegrown theatre was amateur. Which—Just like ttk$ building of a railwa^^rough the wilderness—makes the tA^BeUge a$tthat piuch more ^^^^*Just as the Canadian Pacific Railway had Sir Wil^m Copi^^%& Hbine, we had Dora Mavor Mocri^, t&e pavis Bwtfeeri widxpu^n like them.
D
p
When Samuel de Champlaiff$^ h h ( n o w a m n a p o l i s n o v a s ontia turned to the habitation at Po^jRo^ ter exploring the coast of ^N^Jkmce-oii !%¥embet 14* I606;;'tl^ were f , d e r e s s i n b greeted by "Neptti&e*b^^i a;fl<3wa^N x ; b^rA^d^g^^fyd l^to,g a^tri
A reconstruction of the French habitation at Port Royal (now Annapolis Royal), Nova Scotia, where Marc Lescarbot's Theatre de Neptune, the first European-style theatrical presentation in North America, took place. Photo by the author.
MM
30
we may all meet again some day in France."3 The pageant, similar to those performed in the courts of France, was written and directed by one Marc Lescarbot, a lawyer and traveller from Vervius, France. Lescarbot, who had some musical training, was the first to record the songs of the Mi'kmaq. The Theatre du Neptune could be considered the first Canadian "musical" and has been restaged on several occasions by the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, with original music by Healey Willan. Although composer R. Murray Shafer wrote an opera, Princess of the Stars (1981) to be performed entirely in the middle of a lake by masked figures in canoes, there is little evidence that anything else has followed in Neptune's footsteps. Development of indigenous musical theatre was sporadic to put it mildly. In 1790, Joseph Quesnel's "comedy with arietta," Colas et Colinette, was presented by the Theatre de Societe in Montreal. Given that Canada was then a seven-week gut-wrenching maritime marathon away from the courts of Europe, even if Quesnel had been a groundbreaking genius, his impact would have been minimal. Sadly, few of his contemporaries chose to take up quill or spinet in imitation of him. Theatrical and operatic performances in Toronto took place as early as 1809 when a group of New York actors presented School for Scandal. Henry Scadding described performances in the assembly rooms at Frank's Hotel in 1825, which "to unsophisticated yet active imaginations, seemed charming."4 Eventually, legitimate theatres would open, and Toronto critics quickly sharpened their critical incisors on shows like The Maid of Cashmere (an "opera ballet" by French composer Daniel Fran9ois-Esprit Auber based on a poem by Goethe) and performed by a troupe from "Yankee Land": "Both the farce and the actors of it are altogether too contemptible for criticism."5 Nor did they care for the next item on the bill, a performance of a song by Scottish border poet James "Ettrick Shepherd" Hogg: "There is no reason why such miserable catchpenny as that at present in operation should be tolerated. The municipal authorities should interfere and abate the nuisance."6 Later in the century, another critic wrote, "I have often thought that Toronto
audiences were extremely generous or profoundly stupid, though perhaps it is a moderate combination of both."7 Even in the mid-nineteenth century, Canada attracted some immigrants with distinguished theatrical backgrounds. In 1843, the English dancer Anne Fairbrother Hill arrived in Montreal with her actor-manager husband, Charles Hill, and their three children. Anne's father, Bob Fairbrother, had been a pantomime artist and acrobat, a business associate of playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and a teacher of the legendary Sadler's Wells comedian, Joe Grimaldi. Although Anne had enjoyed a flourishing career as an actress, dancer and teacher at the Old Vic and other theatres, her husband's business failure forced the family to emigrate first to the United States in 1840, then to Canada in 1843, where their friend John Nickinson invited them to join his company at Montreal's Theatre Royal. The Gazette proclaimed her "the most graceful dancer we have seen for many a long year."8 Political instability prompted the family to move to Toronto in 1849. A cholera epidemic the previous year had driven audiences away, but had also left a number of performers stranded. Promoter Charles Kemble Mason took advantage of this captive talent pool by putting together a company at the newly built Royal Lyceum, presenting the farces Honeymoon and The Young Widow featuring Anne, Charles, their son Barton and daughter Rosalie. In Toronto, Anne formed a school where she taught ballroom dancing to the city's upwardly mobile, while continuing her stage performances. They left Toronto in 1851, and for the next decade toured the eastern United States until the American Civil War forced them back to Canada. Anne's final performance was in 1890 with the Holman Opera Troupe. She died later that year at the age of 86. The Patriot wtote^Both in public and private life, she has won the esteem of all, not Rifely by her grace and elegance and consequent success in this department! but also by her extreme good temper, good sense and kindness of disposition."9 Meanwhile, in the outside wotld—it's one of life's d^cious ironies that the modern musical was ten in Paris, a city that his alwa^cesisted Broadway's charms. In the nim^enth century musical theatre was ^transnational phenomenon, Moveuwsts toward musical comedy, burle$que or op6ra~bouffedeveloped in Prance, Germany, Austria Mid Brifaii% gild cross-pollinated, one with the other. Thus, Herv€ beget .Offenbach who beget Gilbert and Sullivan, And then Herve returned and built on what Offenbach had been doing, and Offenbach and Gilbert even attempted a collaboration.10
(ME
31
BiHDiY NORTH
Q9 06
Some point to Offenbach's Orphee aux Enfers as the first modern musical, although it had many antecedents, including Mozart's The Magic Flute. Jacques Offenbach (who was born Jacob Offenbach in Cologne, Germany, in 1819) had been working in the lucrative opera-bouffe mode established in the 1840s by Florimond Herve, but was limited by law to only four actors and one act—an attempt to protect the hegemony of Paris ^"legitimate" opera houses. Once this restriction was lifted, he was able to spread his wings, moving on from the burlesques and vaudevilles that were popular at the time. His somewhat subversive take on the Orpheus myth—in which the hero is forced to rescue his wife Euridyce from Hades—opened at the modest fifty-seat Theatre des Bouffes-Parisiennes (Offenbach s own theatre) on October 21,1858. At first, the reception was modest. Reviews were not flattering. In fact, one in Journal des Debats was so hostile that an open feud erupted in the media, ironically resulting in an improved box office. (Clearly, Paris possessed no "Butcher of Bouffe.") Against all odds, Orphee aux Enfers ran for 228 performances. A good thing, too, for Offenbach had taken to hiding in hotel rooms to avoid creditors. At first, Orphees fame beyond France grew slowly. German language productions played in Vienna, Berlin and even New York. But the licentious nature of Offenbach's work, which included infidelity and suggestions of sado-masochism, not to mention the then risque can-can, were judged too racy for Victorian London. Playwright John Robinson Planche, who admired Offenbach's music but showed distaste for the libretto by Hector Cremieux and Ludovic Halevy, gave himself permission to "adapt" their work into a pastiche called Orpheus in the Haymarket, which opened in 1865. One reviewer complained of the "washed-out and colourless result."11 On April 14, 1871, Toronto audiences would finally see it under the title Orpheus in Hades at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. Not until 1885 did it finally reach Broadway in English under the now famous title Orpheus in the Underworld. At the more dramatic end of the spectrum, Carmen, composed by Offenbach's friend Georges Bizet, is regarded as an opera-comique (which is not to be confused with a "comic opera"). There is a reason why Oscar Hammerstein was able to refashion it for Broadway as Carmen Jones\ with its accessible melodies and large tracts of spoken dialogue; Carmen is structurally similar to a modern musical. In 1874, Johann Strauss Jr., the waltz king, found space on his dance card to write Die Fledermaus (The Bat), based on a play by Offenbach's librettist Halevy. Opera-bouffe finally took root on English soil with the fourth collaboration between playwright William Schwenk Gilbert and composer Arthur Seymour Sullivan, the first theatrical songwriting team to receive
equal credit for music and lyrics. Gilbert aimed his barbed wit at virtually anybody of higher social status than himself when H.M.S. Pinafore—or The Lass that Loved a Sailor opened at GRAND OPERA HOU8E1 London's Opera Comique on May 25,1878. AUGUSTUS MTOU.. M*Mtw It took less than a year for Pinafore to reach TO-NIGHT. TO-NIGHT, Toronto, where it opened on February 13,1879, E. A. Mcltowell'* Company 1M following its initial run in Montreal in a proH.M.8. PARLIAMENT, duction by George Holmans Opera Company. IUo*irt4 aigbli/ witfe New York-born Holman and his family had Shooti of LatagfeMr and Applauw! been performing together since 1854, doing a XXW OOSTUMSS-MAONIKICKKT 8CEX 1C BY. mixed season of opera bouffe, Grand Opera, PARLIAMENT BUILDINGS comedy, tragedy and Shakespeare. In 1867, (By Moooligfct). Interior |»f iht P*rli*a*Al LIiiUAHT. Holman took over the lease of the Royal LyGrand Mfttiaftft SmUrday. ceum Theatre until it burned down in 1873. After that year, he and his company were based An advertisement for H.M.S. Parliament, in London, Ontario, running the Holman Opera House and touring. taken from The Globe, Holmans production of H.M.S. Pinafore enjoyed a healthy Toronto run May 11,1880. HMS at the four-year-old Royal Opera House on the south side of King Street, Parliament was an early Canadian musical between Bay and York, then toured the United States. It inspired one of "pastiche" based on the first Canadian pastiches, H.M. S. Parliament—or The Lass Who Loved a H.M.S. Pinafore. Government Clerk12 by William Henry Fuller, an English emigre who had Courtesy of the author. come to Canada in 1870 to work for the Ontario Bank, but who, upon retirement, wrote satirical sketches for various magazines. H.M.S. Parliament received its premiere production by American producer Eugene A. McDowell's touring company in Montreal at the Academy of Music on February 16*1880, and arrived at Toronto1^ Grand Opera House on March 11, before& tour of two dozen DdwUf^in the east coast to Winnipeg. Its^peaijflg; ehoftis sang:
Amusements.
We sail the ship of statfr Tho' our craft is rather leaky '•- /^'3rV\ Our grindstone's swift reSOTw Tho' at times they re rathe*^^^ We grind away thelivelngday And talk in the house all night But if we'reinlockandwedont'trgetstucuk Our axes witt sopii'jic feri^ttt In an exceedingly polite foreword, Fuller "begs:t® Disclaim any political proclivities," insisting that the show existed merely "for the fun of things,"
flClQNE
qq Uu
although the Canadian Illustrated News reported that "the making up of those heads for which the taps are intended is so cleverly done that the expression leaves no doubt as to who is meant, and the striking resemblance of the Canadian household which are busy with grinding axes in the opening scene indicates that the hits are really good."13 Dick Deadeye became Alexander MacDeadeye, a "misanthropic member" and former Captain (i.e., Alexander MacKenzie)—of H.M.S. Parliament. "Don't take any notice of him," one of the characters says, "He used to be Commander of this ship, but now he's degraded... and it preys upon him." The incumbent Captain Mac A (Sir John A. Macdonald) avers: The position which I fill Abuse I never will Whatever the emergencee Corruption is a thing I detest like anything— and it never has been charged to me. "What! Never?" No, never. "What! NEVER?" "Well, very seldom."
BRDRDNHY NORTH
34
Clearly, Fuller was no match for Gilbert. Fuller's later efforts, including Off to Egypt—or an Arab Abduction, A Barber's Scrape and A Fair Smuggler did not repeat the success of H.M.S. Parliament. Unlike its near-namesake, H.M.S. Parliament did not exactly herald a flurry of creative activity. More typical was the case of Calixa Lavallee, who had to go south of the border to see his 1881 operetta The Widow produced. Perhaps it was just as well—although he was the composer of Canada's national anthem, he was also an advocate of Canada's absorption into the United States. On the other side of the annexation issue, Ptarmigan—or, a Canadian Carnival explored the Canadian identity. With a libretto by Jean Newton Mcllwraith and a score by English-born church organist J.E.P. Aldous, Ptarmigan received one amateur production in Hamilton, Ontario, in 1895. Its libretto and parts of its score were published later. The most popular of these early Canadian musicals was Leo, the Royal Cadet, with music by German-born violin maker Oscar Telgmann and a libretto by George and Charles Cameron. It told a love story about a cadet who becomes a hero fighting the Zulus. After its premiere at
Martins Opera House in Kingston, Ontario, in 1889, it went on a North American tour and by 1925 had played more than 1,700 performances. It was revived by Toronto Operetta Theatre in 2001, with its score and libretto adapted by John Greer and its book revised by Virginia Reh.The Star said, "With a limited range of keys, a persistence of four bar structures and a habit of emulation rather than original thought, his music is as easy to forget as it is to assimilate."14 Many historians attribute the birth of the American musical to a freak collision between a nineteenth century melodrama and a Parisian ballet. When the theatre their dance troupe was booked into burned down, legend has it that the impresarios, Henry Jarrett and Henry Palmer, suggested to promoter William Wheatley that they shoehorn the ballet into Charles M. Barras' melodrama The Black Crook, creating an unwieldy marathon that ran for five-and-a-half hours without an interval. That this mutation contributed in any way to A Little Night Musics pedigree is hard to swallow, but somehow the show became a Broadway sensation in 1866. Eight years later, we even let it into Canada where it played at Toronto's Music Hall, heralding the flow of Broadway musicals across the 49th parallel; traffic which, with a few notable exceptions, has been mostly one way The term "vaudeville" comes from the French voix de ville—"voices of the town," although the puritans of Toronto the Good thought the term to be vulgar. There were, in the early twentieth century two kiijds of vaudeville—"big-time" and "two-bit." While the theatre chain of the Ontario-born but Buffalo-based Shea brothers and the New York-based Empire Circuit ruled the major cities, the small towns were the domain of the Main Line Circuit, a sort df cartel that claimed to guarantee only the finest acts to those theatres who joined tip—and virtually rt&product at all to those who didn't. both There were a number of successfbl; CanadJ^h acts of bo types* The 15 Marks Brothers of ChrMfe t4kft (near P«$^< CM^w^i toured small towns in Quebec, across Ontario to British;C^famt>ia^tt|ttto the United States from the 1870s untilfej^l^Os^$ti&t md^|^% comedy and music. They were among the ;§ijtrtt iii$^^cethekinetoscope_playing early silent films such as S^$re#/ Trftin j^jgjrjp;S|::betW€en tct$iThese "two-bit" comptMe$~$o caJlfei'l^iiiiie, tfeey charged A t^e0ty-fiye cen admission—ad tej the Victorian morality^a£f^tttal life* R,W* Marks said, "We do not cater to ttie class; wMdi requites eoaift jest, questionable allusion, anything but what is pure aad electing.*16 Of course, their audiences were not always so refined* After a tour stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota, Marks said, "The gunman kinda spoiled the quiet
|C}|K[
35
The Marks Brothers of Lanark County. Robert William "R.W." (centre), the eldest of the seven farm boys, developed the Marks Brothers from a humble beginning of one company in 1876 to four thriving independent troupes by the beginning of the 20th century. Courtesy of the Matheson House, Home of the Perth Museum.
[lllllHII^Nlllllll
36
scenes."17The Marks Brothers incorporated some Canadian stories into their repertoire, including the melodrama Louis Kiel. George Holmans opera company also toured the rural areas from its London base, and not always to great acclaim. They opened the new Opera House in St. Mary's, Ontario, in 1880, and were reportedly booed off the stage. (The Marks Brothers would also play that house a few years later, as would Beatrice Lillie.) Their final appearance in Toronto was with an original musical work by comedian Joe Banks, Bubbles, which ran for a week—twice daily—in June 1884 in the former Zion Chapel on Adelaide Street. The most famous of the "big time" Canadian vaudeville acts was the O'Connor Sisters from north of Toronto, who went straight to the top of the bill at New York's Strand Theatre without having to "pay their dues" with small-time appearances.18 Toronto's Beatrice Lillie toured rural Ontario as a teenager before becoming a star of variety theatres in London, England. She was sometimes billed as "the funniest woman in the world" and even "the Canadian catastrophe." Born in Toronto's Parkdale in 1894, she and her sister Muriel attended Gladstone Avenue Public School where the principal
was Alexander Muir, composer and lyricist of "The Maple Leaf Forever."er" "He was my love, my hero/' Lillie wrote in her memoirs.19 (Mary Pickford had also attended Gladstone a few years previously.) Through her friendship with impresario Ambrose J. Small's daughter, Madeline, she was able to see live theatre and movies for free. Then her mother sent her for acting and singing lessons with Harry W. Rich, a one-time comedian and songwriter who also acted as a vaudeville agent. "What he taught me at such gruelling cost to both of us has stuck with me," she wrote. "I ask myselfsometim.es today, 'Why this particular hand movement you're making? Where did you learn the trick of turning your head in just this way?' I know the answer. It's a Rich Gesture [sic] drilled into me by Harry W., the unforgotten man. I was brought up to do things his way, and now I confess I am grateful."20 Her sister Muriel and mother Lucie toured Ontario as the Lillie Trio. After studying at St. Agnes College in Belleville, she headed for England in 1914, where she appeared at London's Alhambra Theatre in a revue called Not Likely. In another 1917 London revue called Cheep, she sang a song written by her sister Muriel—by now an accomplished concert pianist—that paid tribute to her homeland: Oh take me back to the land of promise Back to the land of the ice and snow There you and I once more together will wander Down lovers lane where the maple trees grow.21 Muriel Lillie would also contribute to her sister's later revues, including Tabs at the Vaudeville Theatre iot 1916, and The Charlotte Revue at New York's Selwyn Theatre in 1925. After several more LondoQ,>8ifc^^ beatirice toured her -naftftfe"land again in 1925. She worked frequently with Ni&ll CoWard^l^th * London and New York, butm^^^&m iudieifees wlft i^iijember her as Mrs. Meers in Thoroughly Modign f^Kffu^ Qfierof h^^^p^fomi^icts, in Marie Dressier was born l^lfc}^ic Koerber ikaerber urg Ofltar22 io, on November 9, 1863. J%^ overweght child, she developed her comic instincts as a defeo&-4p(c^^ism, although as the daughterterof
a music teach^'sjbe originally traied for an operatie career, and her Russell-typepearatic operatierodies. parodie earlf '^rforiBW^S" ixicfiidbi AnAnnaRussell -A :; star on Broadway (mm 1B92,> $& was subject of iipdtl publM^ The Toronto ^r/^remarfced that*while she is primary Cpufveyor of mirth, she has also serious ambitions, and though itfe-not generally known, a most thoroughly trained musician familiar with every detail of her art."23
|[j |u[
37
Dressier toured her^// Star Gambol, playing London's Grand Theatre in 1913, a "combination of drama, comedy, music, dancing and burlesque, all held together by a slightly connected libretto, in which the four muses, represented by pretty girls, describe what each of her favourite players will offer."24 As Toronto's show business potential became more evident, its theatres became more sophisticated. The Royal Alexandra Theatre, designed and built by architect John Lyle for owner Cawther Mullock in 1907, was the first theatre in North America to be built with a cantilevered balcony, meaning that there were no pillars to obstruct sightlines. However, it was not a part of any of the major circuits that dominated the business. It was primarily a "legit" house, playing drama and musicals, and while it was used occasionally for prestige film showings, it never succumbed to the movies. The Princess Theatre, built in 1889 on the south side of King Street West between York and Simcoe (near the site of today's Roy Thomson Hall), was the Royal Alex's main legit rival. It boasted a larger stage, and was for a while the more successful theatre. It was the scene of Mary Pickford's first stage performance in The Silver King. But the Princess, like the nearby Regent and Grand Opera House, didn't survive the onset of sound movies. All were gone by 1930, leaving only the Royal Alex. Even in those early days, there were people who were concerned about Canada's cultural domination by the United States. The British Canadian Theatrical Organisation Society was formed in 1912 to encourage tours by British companies, although serious interest in indigenous Canadian work was still a long way off. Playwright Herman Voeden wrote, "American syndicates exercising a controlling interest in our commercial theatres... American play-broking firms control and supply nine-tenths of the plays read by the Canadian public and acted by our professional and little theatre groups... It is the most powerful factor in the Americanization of the Canadian mind."25
The Royal Alexandra Theatre on King Street in Toronto, photo taken m\9\\. Courtesy of Mirvish Productions.
\\mm\\\\\\\\ Th
38
2.DUMBELLS AND UPTOWN GIRLS ver the next century, Canada was exposed to musicals and vaudeville acts from both the United States and Britain, as well as operetta from continental Europe. (English director Albert de Courville J brought his revue Hullo, Canada to the Grand in London in 1921.) It is important to note here that American musicals, until the 1920s, were mostly imitations of the British and Austrian forms. (The same loud voices that now insist that we must follow New York's lead, then led the charge for London and Vienna.) All of these converged, and although the American product dominated Canadian stages, British musicals were a greater influence on Canadians than they were on Americans. Most of Canada's surviving pre-war theatres were originally designed for vaudeville, which did not require deep stages or wing space. Canadian film director Norman Jewison, in his memoirs, recalls going to what was then Canada's largest theatre and one of North America's "Big Four" vaudeville houses, Shea's Hippodrome (located on the site of the present city hall) in Toronto in 1936. "From the second the lights went down and the giant Werlitzer rose from the orchestra pit," he writes, "I was spellbound. While Quentin McLean at the organ played 'Deep Purple,' the curtains flickered with purple lights. It was magical. You could .idmost hear the audience sigh with delight. Then the curtains parted and the dog act came on. There was always one dog who wouldn't do what he was told, and he was the one who stole my heart. Then a booming voice announced the headliner: 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Red Skelton.' One of the highlights of Red*s act was his impersonation of a woman struggling to get out of her girdle. It was done behind a lit screen and when he was through, everyone was convulsed with Ipightei Willy Wes and McGinty rounded out die bill that day* As my father and I left the theatre, I knew I wanted to be in show business whem I grew up***1 The first Canadian musicd-cdftoedy act to make a serious impression abroad came out of the trencfiifof the Rrst World War, The Canadian Army Third Division Conceit Party hardly sounds like somethiiig that would set Broadway ia4 the wfest End alight—at least without the aid of incendiary dwices—but it did. The Dumbells (thtj took their name from the division's insignia) were the creation of Captain Mert Plunkett, a YMCA social director turned morale officer at Vimy Ridge* He put together a troupe of ten, including a pianist and a female impersonator. While playing on the
O
flCTQNE
QQ UJ
front lines, they sometimes had to double as stretcher-bearers. Often the men they entertained in the afternoon would be dead that evening. Their act combined sketches, popular songs like "These Wild, Wild Women are Making a Wild Man out of Me" and some original tunes composed by Plunkett and pianist Jack Ayre. Here is one of their exchanges: Throughout the 1920s audiences didn't tire of The Dumbells' impudent, sentimental and irreverent humour. They always went crazy when the two female impersonators came on stage. Ross Hamilton, as Marjorie, is third from the left, seated in the centre row, while Al Murray, as Marie, is seated second from the left. Seated between the men in drag is Captain M.W. Plunkett. His brother, ballad singer Al Plunkett, stands on the far left in the back row. Seated, front centre, is Sergeant Charter, while E. Redpath is on the far right, centre row. Photo taken in 1918, National Archives PA-5734. Courtesy of Natural Heritage Books, Let's Go To The Grand (p.60) £y Sheila M.F.Johnston.
BMIY NORTH
40
"I remember my last leave—the Captain comes up to me and he says, 'Boys, I have good news, at five o'clock in the morning we go over the top/1 say, 'Captain, can I speak to you a minute?' He says, 'What do you want?' I says, 'I want a furlong.' He says, 'You mean a furlough.'I says, 'No! I want a furlong. I want to go fiir and stay long.'"2 In the autumn of 1918, while on leave in London, Plunkett booked the troupe into the Victoria Palace theatre. They were such a hit that the London Coliseum booked them for a four-week engagement, sharing the bill with Diaghlev's Ballet Russe. Back in Canada after the war, Plunkett regrouped3 and made a deal with Ambrose J. Small (who would soon vanish mysteriously in what is assumed to be a murder4) to tour his Canadian circuit, opening at London's Grand Theatre. Plunkett expanded the show, adding musical numbers, and raised an additional $12,000 from family sources. He then shared the takings, 50-50, at one point playing forty-four consecutive one-night stands. Within two years, they were on Broadway with Biff! Eing! Bang! The New York Telegraph wrote, "No American soldier show seen in New York has Biff. Bing! Bangfs shape and vigor, nor its talent... if this be treason, make the most of it." Their material was intensely patriotic, including such numbers as "Canada for Canadians" and "Goodbye Broadway, Hello Montreal." The Dumbells lasted as long as vaudeville did, succumbing to sound movies in 1932, but their legend lives on. Some of them regrouped at the beginning of the Second World War to perform Chin Up, which then inspired the Army, Navy and Air Force shows. Jack Ayre got work as a
PP IANIST IN A DANCE STUDIO IN tOROTO IN THE 1940S,WHERE HE MET YOUNG CHOREOGRAPHER aLAN lUND,FUTURE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR OF THE cHARLOTTETOWN fESTIVAL.iN 1977, lUND,S lEFEND OF THE dUMBELLS RECRATED THEIR MOST MEMOERABLE ROUTINES,FOR WHICH HE DESERVES great credit. While many artists have been touted as "Canadian" if they were born during an airport stopover in Goose Bay while en route from Honolulu to Paris, there are many others who actually established their early careers on home soil. Actor, playwright and lyricist Gene Lockhart was a native of London, Ontario, and as a young man grew up watching Marks Brothers shows at the Grand. He began to tour Ontario's circuits—often on the same bill as Beatrice Lillie, with whom he shared the same comedy teacher, Harry W. Rich. In 1916, he wanted to strike out on his own by putting together Pierrot Players to tour Ontario's vaudeville and Chautauqua circuits.5 He turned to his boyhood friend Ernest Seitz to write music for the handful of original songs, including one erfled "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise." Seitz was the son of THE PRESIDERT OF the^Underwrodis^^^fiter Company A promising^U^^^I^^^^B A CONCERT PIANIST HAD O Wer. been
beeninterrupted interrupted by by the theFirst Fist World World Wer.Initially Intiially working under Conthe the pseudonym of Raymond Roberts-lest his colleagues at the Royal l himofcolleagues pseudonym of Raymond Roberts-lest his colleagues at the Royal=-lest Con-pseudonym Raymond Rot^^ at the Royal Con Conservatory of Music should disappnove -Seitz wrote the soongs then foras Booadgot about them. Meanwhile, Lockhat was pursuging a career asj|||l'0adway actor actorand andas a playwright and would would return to grand in1919asasaa way headlines A decade later he was back again in his Intimatal Revue including a number intriguingly titled "Criminal Tendencies of Concert Artists" in which suggested ways of disposing of prima donnas. He would later achieve mccess toHottjnro^i i^J^Me^^^Street (as the judge) and Carousel (as the Star Keeper), Hi£ daughter was the actress June Lockhart of Lassie and Lost in Space.
Sheet music, "I Know Where the Flies Go"(1921),"Flippity, Floppety Flappers" (1923) and "K-K-K Kiss Me Again" (1923), made popular by The Dumbells, a Canadian First World War entertainment troupe that went on to great success in New York and London. Courtesy of John Arpin.
fldlNE
41
Shown is the sheet music for the Canadian National Exhibition grandstand show of 1953. A popular annual attraction for many years, the shows owed much of their success to the creative genius of Jack Arthur and Howard Cable Courtesy of John Arpin.
BRDRDWHY NORTH
42
Pierrot Players was a modest success, and the music was published by Chappel Harms. Although not written as a foxtrot, "The World is Waiting for the Sunrise" became popular in that form with various dance bands. Over the years it has been recorded by artists as diverse as Benny Goodman, Les Paul and Mary Ford, and most recently Canadian opera singer Ben Heppner. It could be argued that it is the most popular Canadian show tune of all time. (Even Laurel and Hardy had a go at it.) While some might assume that Broadway pizzazz was imported from New York, it was not always the case. You may be surprised to learn that the extravaganzas of Radio City Music Hall had their origin in Toronto. In 1923, a Russian emigre named Leon Leonidoff set up his Russian Ballet School of Dancing in the old Massey6 mansion at Jarvis and Wellesley. He was soon joined by his American dance partner, Florence Rogge. In between giving classes, they toured the Famous Players Theatres circuit as dancers. In 1924, they travelled to Winnipeg and Regina, recruiting local dancers for their revues. Jack Arthur, a Scottish-born violinist who had, at the age of seven, been part of Sir Harry Lauder's music hall act, came to Canada when he was thirteen years old, studying at the Royal Conservatory of Music on a scholarship. Then he toured the American vaudeville and minstrel circuits before becoming the musical director of Loewe's Winter Garden Theatre. In 1926, after moving on to the bigger stage of Loewe's Uptown (a theatre which stood on Yonge south of Bloor until it collapsed during demolition on December 8, 2003), Arthur hired Leonidoff to stage two shows a day, six days a week with nine "Uptown Girls." A new show was mounted every week to accompany the silent movie fare. At the Uptown, Leonidoff and Arthur pioneered the idea of a chorus line made up of girls of the same height, finishing with a precision kick line. Leonidoff was in demand in other Canadian cities. "It was not like anything we'd ever seen before," said choreographer and dance teacher Grace Macdonald, who danced in Leonidoff's annual Christmas pantomimes at Winnipeg's Capitol Theatre. Leonidoff had become an agent for New York producer Samuel Rothafel. While scouting for acts, he discovered a troupe of sixteen
dancers in St. Louis called the American Rockets, to whom he taught the routines he had originated at the Uptown. In 1930, Leonidoff and Arthur were invited to take over the shows at New York's 6,200-seat Roxy Theatre. Arthur decided to stay in Toronto, but Leonidoff—with Florence Rogge in tow—accepted, bringing the Rockets with him, renaming them the Roxyettes. Three years later, he and Rogge moved the Roxyettes to the new Radio City Music Hall, where they were again renamed this time the Rockettes.7 He remained there until his retirement in 1974, only returning to Toronto to stage the summer spectaculars at the CNE Grandstand from 1948 to 1951. But back in 1927, Al Jolsons voice crackled out the words, "You aint seen nothin yet!," and for many years after, people could say, "we aint seen nothin since." It was the beginning of the end of vaudeville and the birth of live professional theatre in Canada.
fiCIlNE
43
VACUM
3. flLLINK THE CULTURAL VACNM he silence was, as the cliche says, deafening. It is difficult now to imagine, but there was a time in the early 1930s when professional theatre in Canada was virtually extinct, or at least, as the English theatrical producer Maurice Colbourne said, following a 1939 tour, "Moribund. Frankly, I do not see how the patient is going to survive."1 Even foreign touring companies were thin on the ground. Some theatres, like London's Grand, played a mixed season of cinema, vaudeville and live road shows (including Ethel Barrymore in a stage adaptation of The Whiteoaks ofjalna—an American company doing a Canadian play). High calibre amateur theatre was the only native theatre that survived. In 1919, the Massey Foundation gave Hart House to the University of Toronto. In the basement was a small playhouse that was not under the university's control, but was run by the Player's Club.2 This was to become one of Canada's most important training grounds. (Among its alumni was a descendant of its benefactors, Raymond Massey.) Johnnie Wayne and Frank Shuster performed there with the University College Follies. In 1932, Governor General Lord Bessborough established the Dominion Drama Festival as an annual competition for amateur theatre groups, thus nurturing the careers of many actors, including Frances Hyland and Paul Soles. Many of Canada's regional theatres, including the Vancouver Playhouse and London's Grand, evolved out of amateur companies. The only paying work for actors and playwrights came courtesy of the new medium of radio. CFRB had established itself in Toronto in 1927 and the Canadian National Railway set up the first network in the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa; its primary purpose was to provide entertainment for the passengers aboard their trains. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) was formally established in 1936 (the government having acquired the former CNR network four years earlier) in response to an attempt by the U.S. regulators to pre-empt every frequency in North America for the exclusive use of American broadcasters. With radio came the variety show—a sort of vaudeville substitute. From 1937, for twenty-two years, up to two million Canadians tuned in to CBC Radio every weekday at one o'clock or thereabouts. They would hear a rapping at the door. "Who's there?" "It's The Happy Gang!" "Well, come
T
BRIDIY NORTH
44
on in!" Led by that "slap-happy chappy, the Happy Gang s THIS TOBCftSTO STAR "WEEKLY, 8ATUKDAY, MABOB 35, 3930 own pappy" Bert Pearl, the show was so folksy, it even began ~ &W$A* <»ABOUT «v» *aJ JfomwMlfw PECWLE rti&te tyg ^T^ H 43fp f AB\GE with accordionist Eddie Allan saying, "Hello, Mom." "They led the pack of variety shows that mixed music and comedy," says Mavor Moore. "Their contribution to musical theatre as such was to set a high standard in pop musical radio—they used some original songs and showed that Canadian performers and arrangers were top level... Their true descendants today (excellent musicians who have fun ad-libbing) are probably the Canadian Brass." Among the Happy Gang's signature tunes was "I'm a Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch."The best known alumni of the Happy Gang are composer and trumpeter Robert Farnon, (who has arranged music for Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, George Shearing and Sarah Vaughan) and Farnons successor Bobby Gimby, composer of "Ca-na-da," the official theme song for the centennial of Canada's ConA portrait of Merrill federation. Gimby travelled across the country in 1967 in his guise as Denison by Grant Macdonald. A plaque the "pied piper of Canada" (a nickname that was actually earned a few honouring Merrill years earlier for his work with children in Malaysia), wearing a cape and Denison, playwright, playing a "jewelled" trumpet (actually pasted-on dried macaroni spraywas unveiled in the painted gold). foyer of the Hart House Theatre on Of course, radio didn't just carry music, but drama as well. Back in 3 May 5,1971. The 1930, the CNR hired playwright Merrill Denison to write a series of master of ceremonies radio plays—the first Canadian drama series—called The Romance of at the celebration Canada. To direct them, they imported a giant (in every sense) of the dinner was Merrill's longtime friend, Mavor British theatre, Tyrone Guthrie* Moore. The highlight Denison also wrote a serial for CFRB called Jack and Jillthat starred of the evening was a a young American-born actor pamed John Hplden. "I had always tiad a performance of Brothersdream that I would like to stay in Caa&da aj$$ help ;de¥dbp Canadian In-Arm (written by Denison 50 years theatre," Holden told Grate' Lydiatt Shaw* ^^tiboi^lit Ctoadian actors earlier) produced by should be employed in Canada, but there was no plaoe for us to act exRobert Christie, the cept with American producers ia the early tferties^4 :well-known actor, and At the same time, Ontario^road spteoniwm imp^bg> opting up father of Dinah Christie. Courtesy of Natural "cottage country" around Likg Simcoe, Musk^Ska £fidC^r^m Bay to Heritage Books, Bon tourists and Ml^Jiiom^. So, Holden gathered togeAet a small cam**; Echo: The Denison pany of radio actors and took them to &e community of Bak ia the Years by Mary Savigny. Muskoka Lakes, where his family spent the summer* They pooled their resources—about 12,50—and booked the town hall with nothing but a promissory note. Their scenery was made of paper and their footlights tin cans. 45 fiCliNE
RADIO ACTORS
Hi-intuit NII I i H
46
Their inaugural season included a satirical revue, So This is Canada by W.S. Atkinson. They also played Gravenhurst's Opera House. In later seasons, they would also play a brief Spring run at Margaret Eaton Hall in Toronto where Jane Mallett joined the company. Holden's Actor's Colony eventually found a winter home in Winnipeg's Dominion Theatre (incidentally, a site is now occupied by the Manitoba Theatre Centre) where they would do twenty-seven plays in thirty weeks. There they remained until 1941, when the war depleted both manpower and audiences. John Holden later became a production manager for the Shubert Organization in New York. Nathan Cohen says that "before the 1950s, the summer theatre was widely regarded as a bastion of anti-commercialism. You not only worked there for the love of it—usually for next to nothing or nothing at all, but you did the Continental and new plays and tried the experiments which Broadway spurned."5 Summer theatre in Muskoka resumed in 1948 when Donald and Murray Davis—who later would also establish the Crest Theatre—set up the Straw Hat Players in the Port Carling Memorial Hall. Their first production was The Drunkard. They continued each summer until 1955, when they handed it over to others as they wanted to concentrate on running the Crest. Michael Ayoub (the future artistic director) first worked there in 1969, and took over in 1972 and began the practice of emphasizing new Canadian musicals under the name Muskoka Festival. In the Spring of 1949, a twenty-three year-old actor named Alfred Mulock established a theatre in a barn at Jackson s Point on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto. Harry Belafonte is said to have christened the theatre by breaking a bottle of beer against its walls while singing a cappella.6 Some of the seats came from an old cinema in Guelph, while some were donated by actor Lloyd Bochner's7 father. That initial season was all straight drama, including Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and Lillian Hellmans The Little Foxes. But it wasn't a financial success, and the following season, the Red Barn was under the management of Brian Doherty.8 He had helped the Davises in Muskoka and had persuaded John Gielgud to begin his 1947 North American tour at the Grand, and would later establish the Shaw Festival. Doherty presented a season of musical revues patterned on Spring Thaw in what Nathan Cohen called one of its few years of "true prosperity. "The Red Barn Theatre is still in operation today. After the war, a concerted effort was made to revive professional theatre in Toronto itself. "I became involved with the people who were promoting the 'Great Canadian Theatre/ " writes singer and comedienne
Anna Russell in her autobiography. "Their efforts would start with great enthusiasm, struggle along for a few months, and then collapse, usually from a lack of funds, but also from an unwillingness to pay local talent, although fortunes were paid to artists from the States. One of these projects was the Civic Theatre, started by a columnist, Roly Young. Another group was started by Lome Greene, who was then the chief Canadian newscaster long before he became Pa Cartwright in Bonanza. None of these groups got anywhere, except for one, which in spite of all the ups and downs, managed to keep going. That was the New Play Society, run by Dora Mavor Moore."9 From such inauspicious beginnings, a new and distinctly Canadian theatre would arise—eventually.
flClONE
47
( IlLWiCEWlIHME?" ust as families have a genealogy, so does an art form. When former Dumbell member Jack Ayre played piano for dancer Alan Lund in I Toronto in the 1940s, he forged a link in a continuity chain that U spanned most of the history of musical theatre in Canada, thus linking Ambrose J. Small and the Marks Brothers to Joey Miller, Leslie Arden and the current generation. Alan Lund was born in Toronto in 1927, and began to study dance at the age of eight. During the Depression, he regularly won the $5 prize in tap dancing competitions in burlesque theatres. At the age of thirteen, he met Blanche Harris in an amateur show in a burlesque theatre. "He had a partner who was studying to be a school teacher," Blanche explains, "and she wasn't too interested in rehearsing... We tried a few steps together and kind of got along, so the next day he said, 'Will you dance with me?' I was very happy to do so." Six years later, they were performing together at Montreal's Samovar Club when, as Blanche tells it, a man asked them to come to his table. "He said, 'Would you like a drink?'We said, 'Yes, we'll have a Coke.' He said, 'How old are you?' We said, 'We're nineteen.' He banged the table with his fist so hard all the dishes just about jumped off the table. 'Good! Just the right age,' he said. 'Would you like to be in the navy?'" Perhaps it's hard for a modern reader to picture that as a way into show business, but comedians Wayne and Shuster made their names headlining The Army Show, produced by Jack Arthur, with musical direction by Robert Farnon conducting a forty-piece orchestra. (Farnon would also work—uncredited—on The Navy Show.} Inspired by the First World War's Dumbells, all three services—the Air Force had their Blackouts—donned greasepaint and took to the boards to build morale.
j
All branches of the Canadian services overseas provided entertainment to build morale during the war years. Courtesy of John Arpin.
SiiiY NORTH
48
Rehearsals for Meet the Navy began in June 1943 at Toronto's Hart House. The director was Louis Silver, and it was choreographed by Larry Ceballos, who had staged the dances for Cole Porter's Fifty Million Frenchmen on Broadway. (The two had previously worked together in Hollywood on the first all-talking picture, Lights of New York.) Meet the Navy opened on September 2 at the Victoria Theatre, then had its official opening at the Capitol Theatre in Ottawa on September 15. For the next year, it travelled across the country by train, logging 10,000 miles, with a company of 135 playing to half-a-million people. In 1944, the year they married, they went to Britain, touring the provinces before opening a three-month run, including a Royal Command Performance at London's Hippodrome. In the audience on opening night were Deborah Kerr and Noel Coward, among others. The Evening Standard wrote, "Why is this piece so exhilarating, so completely satisfying, and, since the first class always touches the emotions, why was it so stimpg? Perhaps the answer is that quite outside the professional slicktiess arid the terrific pace ofti&ewhole thing, we were seeing the story of Canada tinc^nsciously iwfltlfolding ifeelf to our eyes."1 But C^n^M^ S^^r^ay Mg^f dtddtd thtatit lacked the "warm colour and breathtaking pace ®fih%Afmy Sh®$8?® Then they went to Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels before finishing up in occupied Germany. The?^xlfa&>Ml^^Slm Board ofCaiiadjk made a documentary ofM^lf^N^^on on Tmr^ and a British film was niade of the showl witMfi a'-vjtey JNwic deamatized flamewotJ^ by director Alfred Trwewfor !^^sh Natinal Films, switdbtog to coloiir^:For;tl^^GoMmand Performance fitt&b»Hie sh0w induded several pj^nal songs, including its hit "YouH Get Used to It" with lyrics by Fictor Gordon and music by Freddie Grant and sung by John Pratt (and later covered by Grade Reids):
A photograph of Blanche Harris and Alan Lund for Meet the Navy, 1943, the year they joined the navy. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
ME
49
It's wonderful It's marvellous You'll get to like it more in every way You've got to get used to it And you'll get used to it Provided that you live to see the day3
A photo of Blanche and Alan Lund during a production in London's West End in 1947. This was their first show after they were out of the navy, and Blanche s first show after recovering from polio. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
BUDIY Nora
50
John Pratt, a veteran of Montreal Repertory Theatre and its Tin Hat Revue, went on to appear in a couple of revues—There Goes Yesterday and One for the Road. He produced entertainment for Expo 67, before turning to politics and serving as mayor of Dorval, Quebec. Alan Lund recreated the show, Meet the Navy, at the Charlottetown Festival in 1980. Blanche Lund had suffered from an attack of polio in the mid-1940s, which sidelined her for a year, nearly ending her dancing career. When she recovered, she and Alan found themselves sharing a bill with English comedian Sid Field at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. They then played another Royal Command Performance at the Victoria Palace, and appeared with "ukulele king" George Formby at the London Palladium in October 1953. (Until recently, their picture was still hanging in that theatre's foyer.) The Daily Telegraph said that "Alan and Blanche Lund were smooth," while the Daily Express described their dancing as "the freshest thing." Also on the bill was future Cats choreographer Gillian Lynne. For five years Alan and Blanche toured throughout Europe and North America, becoming known as Canada's answer to Marge and Gower Champion (an association that would become ironic, as will later become evident). When CBC Television went on the air in 1952, TV Variety was born. "A walk past the halls was like a stroll down Tin Pan Alley or down the streets of a film studio like MGM," as Norman Campbell, who directed the very first broadcast, told Knowlton Nash. "You'd hear opera in one hall, jazz in another and a poorly tuned piano plunking out pop music for the dancers of variety shows in yet another hall."4 Alan and Blanche Lund were the first artists to sign a contract with the fledgling CBC Television service. Even then, they had already appeared in the United States on Ed Sullivan's Toast of the Town. "We only got that contract because we'd proven ourselves in the United States and Great Britain and on the continent. Therefore, if they said we must be good, then Canada says 'you must be good.' If we had stayed here, we
would have been just as good, but we would never have been invited to perform on television every second week and choreograph the show." One of their very first shows was The Big Revue, directed by Norman Jewison, written by Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth and featuring Dave Broadfoot, Jane Mallett and Don Harron. "Live TV is an amazing adrenaline rush/'Jewison wrote in his autobiography. "We were all under the tutelage of a screaming intense producer-director, Don Hudson. Sets collapsed. Cameramen fainted. Actors threw up. But when it worked, the high was incredible."5 Another was Floor Show in 1953, hosted by a very young Monte Hall and set in a nightclub, featuring the country's top dance bands. "When we were on television," says Blanche, "[Alan] would stand in front of the cast, get the music and he would just stand there for maybe five minutes... I knew that he didn't have anything in his mind when he went in. He'd listen to the music, then say 'play it again/Then all of a sudden he'd start to work, and before you knew it, he would have everybody in place—pattern and dance steps—and everything just came to him as he worked, ifeiild, 'I became good at it because on television ever^^reek there wi$ about five dance routines for the chdf&$ and then every other wtefck w®d have our number to do,' and then he staged the singers, and h% said 'everything had to come to you as you were goingbecause there wa^ljo time/If you worked at home, you would n&ipr get %&y sleep. Barbel Hamjjlon said 'He was the best people mo?eir I ever inet/^ / They were also askedbyJack *AHhstf| to work on die h%e CNE Gri&d~ stand Show m If 52. TJie-Cantdettes were, with 74 dancfts* Ae fepgfcst precision kick line in the world* According to Blanche, Arthur ^decided that he'd have Florence Rogge, Celia Franca [founder of the National Ballet of Canada] and Alan and me and Midge Arthur [Jacks wife, under whom Blanche had studied when she was younger] all do choreography,
Blanche and Alan Lund during their debut in New York at the Hotel Pierre in 1949. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
flCTlNE
51
and then if one of us goofed and didn't do a good job, he felt the others would probably bring the show through and it wouldn't be too noticeable." Franca staged A Midsummer Nights' Dream, while Midge Arthur staged the finale, Toronto, I960. Blanche and Alan's act included dancers Anna Wilmot, Loraine Thomson, Babs Christie, Lloyd Malenfont, Bob van Norman and Bill Yule. Jack Arthur also wrote original music for the show (his first of many), which was published by BMI Canada. It was an enormous production on the world's largest moveable stage. "We had four hundred young dancers from dance schools audition for us... The Grandstand Show was the most beautiful show with the biggest productions, like something you never see today."The stage was 210 metres long and 15 metres high, and the bleachers seated 23,500. "We had five layers on the stage, and steps on either side, and steps down the middle. Conductor Howard Cable was set in the middle of the stage and the steps led down from him, and in front of the stage we had a swimming pool, which was for Marilyn Bell [the first woman to swim across Lake Ontario]." As many as 1,500 people would be on stage at once. All of this work prepared Alan and Blanche for their next phase— choreographing and staging musicals for the Stratford Festival, Spring Thaw and eventually the Charlottetown Festival.
BHiYlORTH
52
5. P« THE NUKE on STAGE
]
rofessional theatre in Canada all but disappeared during the Great p Depression, and it might have stayed that way, had it not been for the persistence of people like Dora Mavor Moore. I think of Dora as Canada's answer to Lillian Baylis, the dour English teetotaller who ran the Old Vic and Sadler's Wells. (In fact, today s Royal National Theatre, English National Opera and Royal Ballet all owe their existence to her.) The similarities were not entirely incidental, for at one point, Dora was an Old Vic player, the first Canadian to graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Her cousin was the noted playwright James Bridie. In the early 1900s, she had acted on Broadway and was a leading lady in Sir Philip Ben Geet's classical touring company. After marrying Reverend Frank Moore in 1916, she found herself back in London as the wife of an army chaplain. Ben Geet had become manager of the Old Vic, and she replaced his indisposed Viola in Twelfth Night. She returned to Toronto after the war to raise a family. By 1929, the combination of a Depression plus the arrival of sound movies had killed off professional theatre, leaving only the resolutely amateur offerings of Hart House and the Dominion Drama Festival. Even the American touring companies stopped coming. The only p§id work an actor could do was on radio. From these ashes a phoenix arose. Following the Second World War, Canada began to discover its own nationhood and to realize that it wasn't a British colony anymote; A movement was afoot to,adpjpt a new flag. We became Canadian citizens* a0t British subjects* A ^^fl^Commission, headed by Vincen^^^f es^^ill^led to Ae^i^^^^ffiient of the Canada Council (Of course, there wehe philistines who resitted of the Canada Council (Of course, there wehe philistines who resitted this move, including some MPs who equated supporting the arts with encouraging homosexuality In the English-speaking theare, this nationalistic moyement was embodied by Dora Mavor Mocii^ New Play Societiy.(The Dora Awards to are named in herllttp^.) And her son,(James) Mavor Moore,was to take it even further,if quite by accident."started writing while I was still in my teen,"he says. "I was waiting plays and music, and I started act-
ing for radio profe^S^%:^^l^^ Jbtifri^^... I wrote a lot of songs for the U.C. Follies at the UMv&rsity of^OTOfld^m J^finny Wayne— Lou Weingarten as he was then—an4fi^iik^teter? so Fd done quite a number of show songs." (The U.C. Follies, like Vancouver's Mussoc and
(jCI DIE
53
Town Tonics—the "Gibson Girl" number. Jane Mallett teamed up with Frederic Manning in 1934 to create the revue Town Tonics, which was performed at Hart House for close to ten years. Jane herself would augment the cash flow each year, as needed, to keep it going. Courtesy of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.
BMDivlom
54
McGilTs Red and White Revue was a farm team for writers and performers, including Shuster's sometime son-in-law Lome Michaels and actor Donald Sutherland.) As a university student, young Mavor had lived in a rooming house kept by Pat Rafferty, a veteran of the Dumbells. And he had been impressed by the Montreal revues created by Gratien Gelinas, Les Fridolinades. "For the first time, audiences were seeing one of their own on stage," writes critic Michel Vais. "The costumes, the frankness of the language and the situations reflected the reality of French Canada, which unconscious modesty—ascribed by some to an inferiority complex, by others simply to good taste—had never before permitted in 1 the theatre." In 1950, Gelinas brought his humour to English-speaking audiences when Ti-Coq opened at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. Once again, there was a link in the continuity chain. "Gelinas deserves the credit for insisting that Canadian theatre had to start putting its audience on stage," Mavor told me. So, when a stage adaptation of the Hugh MacLennan novel Two Solitudes failed to materialize, Moore quickly cobbled together a revue based around a sketch by Tommy Tweed (1907-71), an actor and writer with Spring Thaw, about labour relations in a department store with the working title It'll Never Get Well If You Picket. He knew it needed a catchier title. CBC director Andrew Allan suggested Spring Thaw, "for the time in Canada when the snow melts and exposes the old galoshes and Christmas trees and iron bedsteads of winter."2 The cast included veteran Jane Mallett, who was already a seasoned revue artiste, having performed her one woman Town Tonics at Hart House (and for whom the St. Lawrence Centre's Jane Mallett Theatre is named),3 Peter Mews (from The Army Show) and Don Harron as the young romantic hero. Like Les Fridolinades, Mavor Moore wanted to put the audience on stage, "to make it so Canadian in subject matter and personality that it would inevitably give the audience something they could not get from an American show or a British show." William Littler writes, "The congeniality of the revues format to the Canadian scene is readily understandable, given the habit of self-deprecation that Canadians evidently develop during the early stages of their toilet training."4 John Gray adds, "If you cant see something unique to your own area where you live in a theatre, what's the point of going?"
The first Spring Thaw opened at a theatre in the Royal Ontario Museum on April 1,1948, for a run of three nights. Rose Macdonald of the Telegram wrote: "The New Play Society, which has turned its hand to most kinds of play-acting from Charley's Aunt to Strindberg, is at this present doing a variety show and being hilariously entertaining about it... Mavor Moore, who wrote several of the songs... explained at the beginning that there was a thread running through the revue, though he admitted it might take a magnifying glass to see it... The cast had a grand time—and gave the audience the same, poking fun at today's radio newscasters, yesterday's movies in which Don Harron played with equal aplomb golden-curled Mary Pickford, the hero and the villain. Young Harron turned up finally as the rear of Laura Secord's famous cow!"5 (Laura Secord was a hero of the War of 1812 who warned the British that the Americans were coming. A friend and I once joked about opening a Laura Secord chocolate shop opposite Paul Revere's house in Boston, just to see if anyone got the joke.) To the chagrin of Dora, who regarded this diversion from serious theatre with deep suspicion, Spring Thaw caught on and would become North America's longest running annual professional satirical revue. "Everybody loved to see Spring Thaw" says choreographer Blanche Lund, "because it was political and it was well written. * . [The Americans] couldn't spoof their government the way we could." Over the next quarter century, its contributors would include author Pierre Berton, Lister Sinclair, comedian Dp|tfe Broadfeot6 (Air Farce is Spring Tbaw\ direct €Kffspring)|lkan Efeni^k (who went on to create the TV show Ta%t), i^tx^posftC ^lido Agostini ("a superb painter 0f musical portraits llid landscapes"7), film director Ndtipan Jewison Itnd songfvfiters Raymond Jessel and Marian Grudeff (wkose musical Baker Street would later be staged oil Broadway: by Htrold Prince). AIAou^h they never appeared in Sfnng 33few> Wayne and Shuster contributed sketches* \ "I'd never seen Spring Thaw before/* says Marian (Sradeff. "One New Year's Eve I was at a party... and I played some tunes I'd heard... I didn't realize that Mavor Moore was there. I didn't know who he was. A
New Play Society's Spring Thaw, 1951 (1-r): Andrew McMillan, Vern Chapman, Connie Vernon, Lou Jacobi, Jane Mallett, Patsy O'Day, Pegi Braun, Peter Mews. Photos courtesy of the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts.
Jane Mallett in her later years.
flCJDNE
55
IWWHY NORTH
56
month or so later he called me up and asked would I be interested in doing Spring Thaw" At that time their rehearsal pianist had to be replaced because he was non-union. "My teacher and my parents told me that it was a very bad move. I would ruin my career as a concert pianist. I said, 'If I become the greatest pianist in the world, they're going to forget that I did Spring Thaw. And if I don't, then I could use the money.'"The first year that Grudeffwas musical director, "Norman Jewison was one of the cast, and he was terrific... He used to break everybody up." Then she met composer Raymond Jessel. "We did a number called 'Roll on Mozart,'" says Jessel, "which was essentially a potted version of Cossi Fan Tutti done on roller-skates, which Alan Lund choreographed. It was rather marvellous—Barbara Hamilton rolled on one skate. Everything became moveable, and eventually the furniture started to roll on. It ended in a hockey match. We did a snowshoe ballet. We did a Wagnerian opera takeoff. We did a parody of Oklahoma! called Manitoba?' with a song called 'Everything's Up to Date in Kapuskasing.'" Another was called "Every Time It Rains, It Rains Dust Storms in Moose Jaw." One year they wrote the whole show, a comical history of Canada, with Don Harron. "We wrote all the songs and he wrote the book." Even author Pierre Berton was drafted to write comedy lyrics to Jessel's music. "When they moved Woodbine [racetrack], we wrote a song called 'Give a Toast to Good Old Woodbine' as a male quartet." Mavor had seen Dave Broadfoot when he auditioned for the CBC. He sent him to meet Dora. "Dora was not a woman who easily took 'no' for an answer," says Broadfoot in his autobiography. "Her phone rang while I was in her office. It was a worried bank manager. Dora's handling of him was quite remarkable—she demonstrated a deep understanding of psychology as well as nerves of steel. If the bank manager could not say 'no' to her, then neither could I."8 Another Canadian comedy legend to appear with Spring Thaw was Anna Russell, an operatic soprano who had turned to comedy after an injury—being hit in the face by a hockey stick (how Canadian can you get?)—had damaged her voice. For her Spring Thaw debut, she lectured on how to play the bagpipes—knowledge gained by looking it up in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. According to Broadfoot, "She placed the various parts of the instrument on the table as she spoke, seemingly unaware that, from the audience's point of view, the loosely assembled bagpipe parts looked exactly like king-sized genitalia."9 Another feature of hers was the "potted Met," an operatic spoof. At the same time, the real Met—New York's Metropolitan Opera—were playing Maple Leaf Gardens. On their day off, they all came to see Spring Thaw. "They
thought Totted Met'was absolutely hilarious/'writes Russell in her autobiography. It was the beginning of her international career. Although it never became a television series, Spring Thaw was adapted in the mid-1950s as a one-off TV special. But, more often, "the fact is it was plundered rather than adapted as Spring Thaw" explains Mayor, "largely due to two factors. As producer, I bought only stage rights to the material, so the writers/composers were free to sell their numbers elsewhere, which they did—to |pdip? TV and stage in Canada, Ldftdon, NY and LA, especially Laug6 In^l waajlrobably naiw> bil|J^i%hose shoestring days we just tb^^^t'4l>Oil|^3rtmg the show <^||pl!fen I became CBC-TV s first dtie producer, The Big Revue relied extensively
on Thaw songs, sketches and personalities. I think I would have felt in a conflict of interest had I ran ji/Z!^^ series as such! Then in the late '50s much of it appeared, uncredllln series as such! Then in the late '50s annuallyjh for CBC radio." h
A photo taken during the 1963 Vancouver International Festival includes some members of the Spring Thaw cast. Back row (1-r): Dave Broadfoot, Libby Morris, Jack Northmore, Marilyn Stuart and Dean Regan, three unidentified, and Bruce Swerdfager of the Stratford Festival; seated in front (from 1-r): Mavor Moore and Alan Lund. Courtesy of Roger Smith.
Yuk Yuk's founder M^^|^fo ^^^^^^S^ed^ymAy ^B ;^|ie cry of the intelligent and p
owerless, "adding , "on the world stage,isn't that us?'wUte koay pf tiiat statement is that nobody who really has a flair f comedy is entirely pQNmS^^ For a while, Canada deveoped an'itol^rnational reputation for political satire—mgeB |i|&rt diitmg tlhan anything the Americans were cqiEtog up with at :the time. When Reuben Ship's The Investigator—a stinging attack on McCarthyism—was broadcast on
flCllNE
57
May 30,1954, on CBC Radio, a bootlegged version sold 100,000 copies in the U.S., where in spite of conservative condemnation of this foreign "communist" propaganda, it is claimed to have contributed to McCarthy's downfall. It was also carried by the BBC in Britain. Producer Andrew Allan wrote in his memoirs, "The cries of approval and of rage that followed must surely be echoing somewhere in the galaxy."11 One enduring legacy of Spring Thaw was Don Harrons Parry Sound farmer-philosopher "Charlie Farquarson.""He came about through actual observation," says Don. "When I talked to Alec Guinness in '52, he said to me,'You shouldn't do imitations of famous people. You should imitate people who are not famous. Rather than an impersonator, that makes you a great actor.' He said he used to watch people in hotel lobbies, and when he really wanted a far-out character, he'd go to the zoo. Well, ten years before that, I'd spent time on an Ontario farm... so I found this authentic sound, and I must say I didn't do much with it for about ten years... So finally in [Spring Thaw] '52, Mavor Moore said, 'You've got to do a monologue or something to justify your starring above the title in this show, cause I know you can't sing and you can't dance.' I wrote this four-minute monologue and didn't think much about it. Then I came on stage and before I even spoke, people howled with laughter because they recognized something that was their own." Spring Thaw launched its first national tour in 1964, and began playing The Best of Spring Thaw to new audiences who had not heard their older material before. Of course, Toronto was not the only place where things were happening.
SMDiwlim
58
G. iNORNollHiii'ImEUniHEtep RAINBOWN STAGE
W
hen the City of Vancouver was established in 1886, one of the first acts of its new council was to set aside 1,000 acres of forest at the entrance to its harbour as an enormous park. Two years later, it was opened by Governor General Lord Stanley, and today is the third largest urban park in North America. With a view of the entrance to Burrard Inlet and the mountains of the north shore, it's hard to imagine a more spectacular civic park anywhere. In 1940, Gordon Hilker, along with E.V. Young, A.S. Wooten and Basil Horsfall1 started Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) in the Brockton Oval in Stanley Park with a production of A Midsummer Nights * Dream using two sets of actors: one for the actions, and the other, near microphones, for the voices. "Gordon Hilker was a very smart guy," remembers composer Dolores Claman. "A great entrepreneur, and the guy had balls." The following year, Hilker moved it to the Marion Malkin Memorial Bowl, a bandshell with no wing space and no flies, which had been built in 1934 by the former mayor, W.H. Malkin, as a memorial to his wife. There began the tradition of staging operettas and musicals. For a tijne in the late 1940s, CBC Radio broadcast a live variety show, From Leicester Square to Old Broadway from the stage of the Malkin Bowl during the TUTS season. The producer was Norman Campbell. This was Vancouver's first felly professional musical theatre, doing Broadway shows and operettas in the op£n air, led by dkectdf Jimmy Johnston and choreographerAi^k Broadbent, Actors wereforced to compete for attention with barking sea lions, peacocks and 0Aet;§iImals from the nearby Stanley Park 2^ *nd risk inhajittg an asso^ttl^ttt of insects* On one occasion, a lunatic decicbd to liberate afl of th0;
ir in 1949>the cpff established the Vancouver CMC %^tre Society to ^privmti^it,
"It wasy fof namt ge^le, a feitf^monA operation/* explained Gra£e; Macdonald* WHO CHOREOGRAHEDNo, No Nanette for them in 1950. *P6r instance, we'd start ill June with two weeks to do tfaci first show,> and there'd be four to six shows in a summer.** She explained, 'Then you'd set that show on the boards on a Monday night> and on the same Monday morning you'd start rehearsing the next show. It'd be mostly the same
ME
59
BHIY Urn
60
chorus, with different leads. Most of the chorus people would be working all day, stop for supper and then do an entirely different show at night. Then, on the Saturday night, they'd stop the show at midnight and everybody would have a big meal. Then they would start to run through the tech with costumes, music, props and scenery. We'd get through about six o'clock in the morning. We'd have Sunday off, and then we'd start the show Monday night." "For fifteen years, I was their press agent," explained Hugh Pickett, "but I did everything. Everybody did. You'd stay up twenty-four hours because you loved what you were doing. Those kids were getting paid practically nothing at the beginning of the thing. It was something that brought people together." In Vancouver, if it rained before intermission, they had to offer refunds, but often the audience stayed anyway. Even Bing Crosby sat in the front row with a blanket over himself in the pouring rain.3 The Maikin Bowl was rent-free, but TUTS had to pay for the lawn in front of it, which had to be completely re-seeded at the end of each season. For four seasons TUTS also remounted two shows a year in Victoria. "It was a madhouse," recalls Pickett. "You'd take the midnight boat out ... and go right to work ... The first year, it was in [Beacon Hill] Park. The opening night, the scenery all blew down." Then, in 1950, they did Chu Chin Chow in an indoor arena in Victoria. But even then, they were at the mercy of the weather. "The roof leaked. There was a terrific rainstorm, and all the music was getting wet. They had to quit." Aida Broadbent, their primary choreographer, had made her dancing debut on the stage of Vancouver's Capitol Theatre at the age of fourteen. She moved to Los Angeles, where from 1940 she choreographed a number of films, including Sis Hopkins with Bob Crosby, Susan Hayward and Judy Canova, and FourJacks anda Jill'with Ray Bolger, June Havoc, Desi Arnaz and Eddie Foy Jr. A sometime associate of Leon Leonidoff, she choreographed for Radio City Music Hall and the CNE Grandstand Show. She staged a Broadway revival of The Red Mill in 1945 that ran for 531 performances. She also staged musicals for the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, from which she would "borrow" the costume plots for TUTS. "She was very pragmatic," says Dolores Claman. "A lot of people said there's nothing really new about what she's doing. There wasn't, but she got every show on. She was the one that held the whole thing together." Until the Malkin Bowl was damaged by fire in the early 1980s, its backstage walls were covered with the autographs of all who had worked there, including Robert Goulet. "Bob Goulet did a stand-up singing job in a television show that Aida and I saw in her hotel room,"
remembers Hugh Pickett. "She said, 'Who is that? My God, he certainly can sing, and he's gorgeous looking. I wonder if he can act?' We made enquiries, and found out he was free in the summer. We brought him out. His first salary was $300 a week." They cast him in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with Loraine McAllister and Fran Gregory in 1956, but soon discovered he needed work. Claman remembers thinking, "He's got a good voice, but is he wooden!" "Bob was not an actor," says Pickett. "He was taught to act here by Jimmy Johnston and Aida Broadbent." They helped him to overcome the severe stage fright he had suffered since childhood. "Aida and I went to see him in New York in Camelot. There was a gang of people in the dressing room, and he said, 'This is the lady who made it possible.'" (Of Goulet's work in Spring Thaw, comedian Dave Broadfoot says, "What impressed me most working with him was his professionalism—he was always willing, no matter how late it was, to keep on rehearsing until he felt we had got it right."4) In 1952, TUTS produced their first—and only—original Canadian musical, and there is a plaque on a tree near the Malkin Bowl commemorating the fact. The book for Timber!!! was by Doug Nixon, then the BC regional program director for the CBC, and journalist David Savage. The music was by Vancouver~b0m Dolores Claman, who had recently scored a ballet, La Revefantasque^ for La jMUet Concert in B^J^al. Claman, who studied dfwggi ^pderj^iy*ri^ht WillkiiM^^^^Iille (brother of filmmaker Cecil B»and'&j^^ OF CHOREOGRAPHER aGNED)AT at UCLA, before winning'a^ia^ SCHOLARSHIP TO jULLLIAARED, HAD DECIDEDaA couple of years before that sh^wat^^ TO SHE WRITING A MUSICAL. She had already had one popular soni "dRAMERS PLASE lISTEN" RECORRDED BY Anita Ellis, the Montreal-boftfsp^ OF wEST sIDE sTORY'S lARRY ^t kERT (and (AND namesake for the character 1^|^ta".).TUTS producerr Bill BmSl^gham J
JL
JL
The program cover for Timber!!y Vancouver, 1952. Courtesy of Cecilia Smith.
\*
introduced he* to Savage tod 1^^ n,
who had alretdy writtea a libretto
for ah \inpro4i|?ei dpcfetta dbcmt the Cmboo jroM-rtoh (before the idea had been pre-empted by PmnfY&mrfflfagon)*Ikey shtft^ltheir stoiy line from gold prospectors to loggers, and work was sloWfy underway. The collaborators seldom met—Oilman was living and studying in New York, while Nixon was doing an internship at the BBC in London,
flCIlNE
El
Bfi»W|OT
62
but they eventually finished their story about Dan Dawson (played by bass-baritone Don Garrard, who later sang with Sadlers Wells Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden), a logger coming into Vancouver for the weekend with a wad of cash. He falls in love with Margery Manson (played by Jacquie Smith), the daughter of a disapproving timber baron. Timber!! featured three ballets choreographed by Aida Broadbent: "Birk's Corner," "Stanley Park" and "Hoe Down."The music was arranged by Neil Chotem of Montreal. The local media backed the show enthusiastically, although according to Vancouver Sun critic Stanley Bligh,".. .the story and text were weak. There seemed to be little point in the dialogue and the comedy was too obvious."5 It enjoyed the highest first night attendance in TUTS' thirteen-year history. The rest of the week was a sell out, until Friday, when it was struck by the scourge of TUTS—rain. "But so many people kept telling us that they wanted to see the show that evening, rain or no rain," said producer Bill Buckingham, "that we decided to go ahead anyway. About 600 persons sat and shivered, protecting their heads with oiled butcher paper, which we supplied to them—and the cast put on the best show of their lives."6 Unfortunately, on Saturday the rain pelted down all afternoon, and the show was cancelled—only to have the weather break right at what should have been curtain time. CBC Radio broadcast a ninety-minute version of the show on July 2. Doug Nixon, their program director, told the Women's Canadian Club, "we cannot have creation unless the audience is there to be created for... I deplore the attitude of Canadians who will go to New York and see 17 shows in 15 days—ANY show—and never know that they can see better at home."7 "And an excellent show it was," said Mavor Moore. "A fine score. I still remember some of the tunes from it." According to Hugh Pickett, "The dialogue was corny, but the music was good—that was the saving grace." Grace Macdonald was less generous. "That was a terrible show! .. .One of the worst things I've ever seen. Some of the musical lines were nice, but you never went out humming anything.. .The people here did not know what a musical was really like. It's all very well to put a story together and put little songs to it and say here's where a dance goes, but it doesn't always work if you haven't got people with a sense of what a musical is." In fact, Claman herself has no illusions about the show. When I asked to hear some of the score, she declined, preferring to play me her later Mr. Scrooge. She attributes Timber-//'s success to the fact that the local press came on board. TUTS would like to have revived it, but Claman insisted "only if they take the Mickey out of it." Less than a year later, she made
her London debut with two songs—"Dumb Animals" and "Call Me Doctor"—for the 1954 Laurier Lister revue Airs on a Shoestring at the Royal Court Theatre. TUTS folded after the 1963 season, a victim of Vancouver's unreliable weather. In 1969, it was revived as a semi-professional venture. In 1955, Winnipeg began a similar operation in a 3,000-seat bandshell in Kildonan Park, led for many years by Bert Pearl's nephew, bandleader Jack Shapira, sometimes described as the "Buddha of Bombast" or the "Custodian of Chutzpah." Their first musical was Brigadoon. Winnipeg-born Len Cariou made his professional debut there in 1959 in Damn Yankees. At first, they imported stars such as Julie Wilson and Jack Carter from the United States, but, according to Nathan Cohen, "the production standards were abysmal,"8 and they accumulated a deficit of $96,000. Then Shapira, host of the TV series The House That Jack Built, stepped in. They replaced imported stars with less expensive Canadian talent and semi-professionals. Jan Rube of the Canadian Opera Company starred in The King and I, and Catherine McKinnon made her book musical debut as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (she had already appeared in Spring Thaw). They overcame the weather problems that had plagued TUTS by building a triodetic dome over the seating area in 1970 at a cost of $200,000. To date, Rainbow Stage's only Canadian musical has been Anne of Green Gables in 1989 at the indoor Pantages Theatre. (The resurrected semi-pro TUTS also produced Anne in 20Q3») The Winnipeg Free Press put Rainbow Stage's success down to "its decision to stick with family entertainment* Both words are significant. No one need wonder if the show in Kildonan Park will be acceptable The Winnipeg Free Press put Rainbow Stage's success down to "its bored or provoked rather than simply entertained/'9
Anne of Green Gables was only the second Canadian-written musical to be staged at the Marion Malkin Memorial Bowl, Vancouver, in 1952. The first was Timber!! Courtesy of Roger Smith.
ME
63
I. IN THEIREST" or H NEW CHIN tat onald and Murray Davis came from a wealthy Newmarket family who had made their fortune in the leather business. (Their father EJ. Davis ran Davis Leather Company. According to Paul Illidge, author J of The Glass Cage, a history of the Crest Theatre, their ancestor James Davis, for whom Davisville Avenue is named, helped William Lyon Mackenzie to escape after the 1837 rebellion.) Donald, who was born in 1928, and Murray, who was four years older, both attended University of Toronto. In 1948, fresh out of university (and the theatre program at Hart House), they established the Straw Hat Players in the resort area of the Muskoka Lakes, where their family had a summer home. When Bill Freedman, a theatre producer whose father owned an Ottawa-based chain of cinemas, was in London on his honeymoon with his new wife Toby Robbins in 1952, Donald was working at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. He came down to meet them in their hotel room at the Savoy. "Donald and I went and had a quiet chat," Freedman remembers. "We ended up sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He said he wanted a theatre in Toronto. I called Nat Taylor, who was a Famous Players partner with a whole bunch of theatres. He said, 'Well, we have a theatre that has a little stage. In 1953, through their company Murray and Donald Davis Ltd., they raised $50,000 by a public share issue to take a lease on what had been the Belsize Cinema on Mount Pleasant Road. Their intention was to establish a company there with a mandate to "provide repertory theatre in Toronto comparable with the best of British repertory companies" and to "contribute to the cultural life of Canada by providing opportunities for the development of Canadian artistic directors, playwrights, designers, managers and technicians." The Belsize, which had opened in 1922 at a cost of $160,000, was designed by Murray Brown, a Toronto architect who had studied at the Royal Academy and had also designed Capitol Theatres in Port Hope, Saskatoon and Halifax. The Toronto Star praised its "fine arcade entrance lined with Venetian mirrors. The winding stairway is beautifully balustraded. The mezzanine is richly furnished with handwrought electroliers, friezes of'Carmen the Spanish dancer adorn the walls on either side."1 The name, which originally was connected to Belsize Road, was changed by Famous Players in 1950 when the theatre was renovated.
d
64 H NORTH
When the Crest opened as a live theatre in 1954, it was immediately picketed by the Musicians Union who claimed that, because originally it had been built as a vaudeville house, it was obligatory to hire a minimum of seven musicians per show, musical or not. For the first three years, the Davises continued to present their summer season in Muskoka, while spending the rest of the year at the Crest. Pretty soon it became clear that this theatre was not viable as a commercial enterprise: it continuously lost money. One reason cited was the short runs, but perhaps Toronto just couldn't financially sustain a commercial—i.e. not subsidized—professional theatre at that time, and in 1957 the Crest Theatre Foundation, a not-for-profit organization, was incorporated. The Crest was the launching pad for many careers. In 1961, the late James Doohan, who would later become famous as "Scotty" on Star Trek, played Kent in King Lear with Mavor Moore not only directing but playing Lear. "I thought that was one of the greatest there could possibly be of King Lear "he said. Doohan remembers the Crest as "a lovely place to play in." He had appeared there previously in a Canadian play called Bright Sun at Midnight. The auditorium, which seated 842, was a shoebox. Freedman describes it as "an old-fashioned kind of presentation house... They extended the stage. They didn't have proper wing space, they didn't have fly space, but they made do.'Tts location was out of the way: Still, they charged ahead, opening 45 weeks a year, presenting some 140 plays between 1954 and 1966. One, a production of J.B. Priestly's The Glass Cage (a play written especially for the Davises) even transferred to the Piccadilly Theatre in London's West End for a brief tuo. Some of the others were musicals, such as Barry Morse's production of Sa/adDays, which playedfcjfae'Crest before going to New York. - > , Some of the other musicals we*e cyea or^^al* In:Jmmf^1^59, they put together a revue cafled:^!SNI^ myfamilyammaappaannanpappaorbabyitsmeeeand original songs by various writmind^kathickwedssathyaksksksksdsdasddsAppelbaum. In 1961 and 1962, it a&ft playedple ^^^-^in^'^^.Mn Scrppge, with a book and lyrics by Ricia^t^ orriskakarthickwesdssathyasfsdfsdsdfsdf iffljfiic (an<^ additional lyrics) by'Efol^ opened kathickwedssthyatheyaregivenabeautifulbabyitsbeautyfulll as Ebenijzerkarthickwedssathyasasa vm ^^m^^^i^jt^^^'-i^^ on November 2fcf 190»w!tfa Jc^fa Shawin the tfitib rol
On May 13,1964, composer Miltoa Canaan*tyiridst Alex Barris and book writer Allan Manings (anothei; Spring Thaw writer) gave them Evelyn, starring Tom ICneebone, Diane Stapley and fourteen others.
(j[|(j||[
(j[j
Alex Harris in the mid1960s. From 1948 to 1966 readers of his column, "The Harris Beat," were introduced to a virtual Who's Who of Canadian performance. As Canadian broadcasting developed, Harris was the on-air host (along with jazz columnist/ author Helen McNamara) for "Tributes in Tempo." By the mid-1950s he was in demand both as a writer and performer. B arris also wrote original material for such theatre revues as After Hours and the long-running Spring Thaw. In 1964, he wrote the lyrics for an original musical, Evelyn. It was Alex Barris who composed the familiar theme song for the Juliette Show, featuring the popularly known "Our Pet Juliette." Courtesy of Kate Barris/Ted Barris.
Ham NORTH
66
"Brilliant premise," Kneebone says. "A British guy who's been in the war and they send him to the States. But he wants to study, and it's an allgirl school." It was not a success, however. "They didn't take good care with that." The show played to 19% houses, and its poor showing was later cited by the Canada Council in its decision to withdraw funding. Kneebone was also due to star in Kidstuffto be directed by Joseph Shaw in 1966, with book, music and lyrics by occasional Spring Thaw contributor Stan Daniels. The show, intended to be a revue showing present day foibles through the eyes of children, sought to raise $15,000 through the sale of 600 units of $25 each. Potential investors were told that the maximum possible return would be $28 per unit, based on a four-week sold-out run. But Kidstuffnevzt happened, and Daniels went to New York, where he joined Frank Loesser's stable of writers, and eventually wrote the score for So Long, 174th Street with a book by Fiddler on the Roof's Joseph Stein, based on Stein's earlier adaptation of Carl Reiner's novel Enter Laughing, and directed by Burt Shevelove. The show opened April 27, 1976 at the Harkness Theatre on Broadway and closed sixteen performances later. Daniels left for Hollywood, where he created the TV series Taxi. In spite of a pending merger with Canadian Players, the Crest collapsed, having accumulated a deficit of $127,000. All that remained was for the merged company, Theatre Toronto, which struggled on for a couple of
years, presenting plays at the Royal Alex and other venues, to repay its creditors (which it did, in full). Theatre Toronto was then absorbed into the Toronto Arts Foundation, which several mergers and name changes later emerged as Canadian Stage Company. The Crest had lost its Canada Council funding due to "indifferent" artistic standards, but Bill Freedman says, "They did good work, and theyVe never been given credit for it." The theatre reverted to being a cinema, although it occasionally housed theatrical productions, such as The Me Nobody Knows and Little Shop of Horrors. It is now a movie post-production facility by day and a repertory cinema in the evening. Murray Davis taught at the National Theatre School in Montreal for three years, then gave up the theatre in favour of cattle ranching. He died in 1997, and his brother Donald, who had continued acting and directing in Canada, New York and London, passed away the following year. Herbert Whittaker, in the 1989 Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre, reports that "some have argued that its programming of plays was ill-suited to its potential audience, favouring the avant-garde and the contemporary."2 On the other hand, in a article in the Toronto Star, Paul Illidge claims that the Crest "closed because the dictates of the box office reduced it to presenting lowbrow song and dance fare that pandered to popular taste."3 No consensus there, then.
flCIlNE
67
8. IE GLORY OF THE MODERN IGE' ntil the early 1950s, Canada's exposure to musical theatre came through movies, touring productions, amateur theatre and companies like Theatre Under the Stars (Vancouver), Rainbow Stage (WinniJ peg) and Melody Fair (Toronto) that presented summer seasons of Broadway shows. There were also a few early stabs at writing original shows. In 1940, the University of Manitoba Dramatic Society presented You Cant Beat Fun by Samuel Seetner and Earle Beattie, and starring Monte Hall. (Seetner became a dentist in Toronto, and Beattie was later a war correspondent.) Mavor Moore believed that the musical was "the glory of the modern age."1 What began as a radio adaptation of Voltaire's Candide, called The Best of all Possible Worlds in 1953, was brought to the stage as a chamber musical for the New Play Society in 1956. Retitled The Optimist, the Toronto Telegram found it to be a "highly agreeable entertainment."2 Candide was played by a young Robert Goulet, whom the Star s Hugh Thomson predicted "Broadway will grab him off quick as a wink."3 At one point, Tyrone Guthrie was interested in taking it to London, England. Instead, he later directed another more famous version on Broadway with music by Leonard Bernstein. Mavor's version was broadcast in colour under its original title on CBC-TV on January 17,1968, directed by Norman Campbell. Next came Mavor Moore's first full-scale musical, originally presented on radio on March 31, 1954 as The Hero of Mariposa, based on Stephen Leacock's eccentric account of his home town of Orillia, Ontario, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. He was largely in virgin territory. Sunshine Town (as it was known on stage) called for a cast of forty—against The Optimist's eleven—and a full orchestra, a burning church, a sinking ship and a steam locomotive. "With Sunshine Town" Mavor explains, "I set out to deliberately find a consistent style that would be my own, coming out of Canada." He adds, "It does have a quality... which... marked it as certainly not a Broadway show, but not in the English style...The forms I sought to begin with were original. I wrote the lyrics, in most cases, in what was a shape that didn't follow the standard patterns. I tried to avoid, at some cost I think, finishing the numbers with a great big bang because I had always resisted the big smash ending, which, in the American musical, led to applause at the
u
BRORDWHVNORIH
68
end of a number. I thought that they interrupted the dramatic flow. I wanted my numbers to end so that they would drift into the dialogue following." But, he concedes, "it s a tricky thing, and people who expect the American kind of show imagine that you have tried for the big American effect and failed, when in fact I was trying to get away from it." The result was a gentle and witty piece whose music was a mirror of Leacocks own whimsy. Ine television version, directed by Norman Campbell, was transmitted live on December 19,1954. In the Autumn of 2003,1 watched this version with Campbell seated next to me. I was treated to a running commentary that shed much light on the work, and on the straitened conditions under which live TV broadcasts were made: "The reason why the camera remains stationary in this shot is that it was up against the back wall of the studio, and there was no room for it to move." Curiously although the stage version followed the telecast by less than three weeks, it was a different production, with different choreography. The show was partially recast before opening for an "out-of-town"tryout at the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario. "The reason for the personnel changes was very simple—prewous commitments," says Moore* "The TV show was planned before I made thf bookings for the stage' tour. Several of those involved ifi^thc.TV shcf^ were not availaHe ^ Sgri up for a touring production with m opc^ehd*^^ Howard Cable's orchestt^^ The CBC engagement pakl for C^Vff cgpdhestratiio^'but 150,000 had to be raised for the stage"¥eM^^karthickwedshimself. Since the New Play Society *^a t&^ this could only be done tibfl^igh doriatioilfc^ftd loa&s. But lie diarged ahead anywmy/|Btffit:oii~aret&^: aBW Gtiiiidiari style* la & letter to Gfo$rnndM^^^tm^^^ WMttak^ he wrote, *I set out to ttake it Canadian—and almost by definition therefore^ I farted a slower pace."4 This was reflected in a relaxed ajpproacti to Alan and Blanche Lund's choreography, and in a general deadpan feel. The only American in the company was Arthur Lief, musical director for Toronto's
A newspaper advertisement for The Optimist, Mavor Moore's version of Voltaire's Candide, 1956. Courtesy of the author.
flCllHE
69
Melody Fair summer series, and a friend of Broadway musical guru Lehman Engel. The show previewed at the Grand on January 7, 1955, where the London Free Press proclaimed, "Mavor Moore has a hit on his hands." While the show was previewing, Mavor was still raising funds for the Toronto opening thefollowing Monday. (He described the first night as "amateur night in Hogg's Hollow.") The Telegrams Rose Macdonald said," It did not have that professional address hoped for," although she did take note of "a good looking young man with an attractive singing voice" named Robert Goulet. The Canadian-born British Tory MP Sir Beverley Baxter, former editor of London's Daily Express and friend of Lord Beaverbrook, was in the audience on opening night, and remarked the following day, "This morning I have a feeling of genuine pleasure."5 But he continued, "The musical as it stands does not meet the requirements of a metropolis like London. It is a little sweet, and of course the political jokes would not be quite so well understood." Herbert Whittaker of the Globe and Mail felt that Sunshine Town "proved that this country can have its own musical expression in this field, and that it can be a true expression and thoroughly entertaining on its own premises." London's Evening News called it a "bright and tuneful musical-comedy hit."6 It played in Toronto at the Royal Alex for two weeks before moving to Montreal for a week-long run at Her Majesty's. In Montreal, the critical reception was warmer; the Star called it "the first Canadian musical of any stature," although the audiences stayed away. "These were the days before people went to the theatre like they do today," says Blanche Lund. The Gazettes Harold Whitehead wrote that Mavor had "wisely avoided trying to imitate the big, lush Broadway musical... A Canadian show that Canadians can be really proud of."7 Sunshine Town closed with a loss of $30,000. Given the timing— opening in the second week of January—perhaps there was a reason why the Royal Alex had been so readily available.
BRORDIY NORTH
70
sathyasidfsd " "here are two small-scale musicals that have the dubious distinction of being mutually exclusive. The Fantasticks ran for more than forty years at the tiny Sullivan Playhouse in New York, yet has had little impact in London, England, beyond a small group of aficionados. And Salad Days holds a fond place in British hearts, but has never been understood in the United States What is interesting, in the context of this book, is that both were successful in Canada. When Canadian cinema owner Bill Freedman and his actress wife Toby Robins went on holiday to London, they saw Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds' smash musical Salad Days at the Vaudeville Theatre (where, forty years later, I worked during that show's revival), and were enchanted. What had begun as an end-of-season romp at Bristol Old Vic was now pulling in the "punters" in the West End (and would inspire a very young boy named Cameron Mackintosh to pursue a career in the theatre). Completed in six weeks, its title was derived from a line in Antony and Cleopatra—"Those were my salad days, when I was green in judgement." With its Freudian analysis and flying saucers, the flavour lay somewhere between Gilbert and Sullivan and The Goon Show. They brought the original cast recording back to Toronto and playe|J it for their friend Barry Morse, an expatriate British actor who had settled in Toronto with his wife and two children. ("English by birth, Canadian by choice," says Morse, who, although he now lives in London, holds dual citizenship and keeps a Canadian flag on the mantelpiece of his St. James's flat.) Together they acquired the Canadian rights, witt Freedman making his producing^e^ttttdMorse^ directing-^r^p^Kntly," according to Freedman—& production at !||irt House<;lliaire in the summer of 1956. They had a cist of twete ifeloiB f>lt)4ig twenty-seven characters (seven more than m the original ^ by Alan and Blanche Lund vidiom'Fitt^^ sathayskd his wife was on a TV program with them Mfed ^&$igl&&&u$* Morse, who had never sethe London pradwdioii^^ resisted! laEs to tone down its £tigi^ kathick ^B^^«44 say, %rft it too English for a Nortfc Anieficm tudience?*T0 which I'said, If it's not English, it's nothing. In fact, we must niake it even mom English. |t must look like and feel like a sort of tourist commercial for Great Britain/*1 Blanche Lund said, "It's like A Flea in /&r Jsar in that it has to be played straight, because the dialogue is so funny. You dorft have to camp it up... It was an
t
flCTONE
II
Photo of a young Tom Kneebone by Brian M. Smith. Courtesy of Dinah Christie.
BRORDWHYKORIH
72
unusual type of show, but the performers were very good." There was much more emphasis on dance in this version than in the original Old Vic production, which had used all classical actors. One song, "Let's Take a Stroll Through London" that had been cut in Bristol, was restored. The cast included: Eric Christmas, Jack Creley, Frank Petty, Barbara Franklin, Norma Renault, Gillie Fenwick, John Clark and Mary Savidge. Author Julian Slade came over for the opening. The Toronto Telegram crowed, "Morse Mixes Merry Madness," while the Globe and Maifs Herbert Whittaker called it "a happy, cumfy show." Morse wrote in his diary, "God, what a night!" The show was so popular it ran at Hart House until October, when the University of Toronto needed their theatre back. Then it transferred to the Royal Alexandra Theatre, three times the size of Hart House, then to Her Majesty's in Montreal. Freedman and Morse next began to think about the ultimate move—to New York. "Although we'd made a certain amount of money with it," says Morse, "we were a bit trepidatious and uncertain about taking it to New York, because it's a different ball game, which requires altogether different resources." First, they turned their attention to another production—Gore Vidal's Visit to a Small Planet at the Crest Theatre, with a rare stage appearance by John Drainie. Then they followed it with a pre-New York revival of Salad Days with most of its original cast. Frank Petty was replaced by Powys Thomas, a Welsh actor who would co-found the National Theatre School, while John Clark was replaced by Tom Kneebone, making his Canadian musical theatre debut. "I had done nothing but classical theatre," says Kneebone, but he remembered seeing the final dress rehearsal of the original production while training at Bristol Old Vic. "Julian Slade, who wrote it, subsequently became a very good friend of mine, and he remembered me from Bristol when he came to New York." Richard Easton, who in later years won a Tony Award for Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love, played Tim. "Dick Easton was very famous," says Bill Freedman. "He was part of the Montreal contingent with Chris Plummer and John Colicos." Salad Days reopened
at the Crest on September 17,1958 and ran until the end of October. It then transferred directly to New York. Through Barry's agency, MCA (Music Corporation of America) they were introduced to Nicholas Benton and Stanley Fink who "fronted" the show and raised half of the money. Instead of a Broadway house, they presented it in a theatre in the Barbizan Plaza Hotel, ("a darling little theatre," says Tom Kneebone) just off Central Park, which had only recently housed the revue Shoestring '57. (This theatre was to feature in the opening scenes of the Martin Scorcese film Raging Bull.} "The moment after we opened, there was a newspaper strike," Kneebone says. "It killed every show on Broadway." "We were relying entirely on the sort of notices we'd had in Canada to launch us for a run," Morse remembers. Although the reviews following the opening on November 10,1958, were not bad, it seemed the critics didn't quite know what to make of this eccentric frolic. Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times had already viewed the London production "with sobering astonishment" and found the humour "just as coy and gauche now." Walter Kerr in the Herald-Tribune found it "possible to enjoy certain aspects of what Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds have actually tossed at us."2 Neither really quite said that they liked it, although Variety was a little more decisive, "The production exudes an aura of charm and informality that emanates mainly from a thin but appealing story line, pleasant performances and a melodic score" and praised the "able direction of Barry Morse."3 T]ie houses, according to Freedman, were "always quite good—they were never wonderful." He adds, "I think we were breaking even on our running expenses, we just never got our production costs back." The producers were able to keep the show going only for a few weeks, and it closed on January 18,1959.*! ilwa)^:femember," says Blfsry^when I came back to Toronto aiid^HQ^S^ ffaeaifvfe to [wife] Sy&j^jiff the children that we had to close the dw^ltt-N^ cryihfbiit still tiding fe ^&g one of the Heyward went to the piattdycryingf numbers from the show, aiuji theii tamed Jjack toi4 %pd to Sydney, 'Mummy are we ruined again?* Morse later teamed up witi^f^imtt sathyaksddfgdfd show for television.
ICTflNE
13
I "lovttY. JUICY, SILLY FUN"
N
BHwm
14
ot long after the Stratford Festival was founded in 1953, the response to the idea of adding a music program was mooted. Louis Appelbaum, the Festival's first music director said, "If we are going to be able to attract an audience of this quality and size to see the best that we can offer in the way of theatre in this country, dare we lose the opportunity to show them what we can do in music?"1 He initiated afternoon musical events, featuring artists such as Glen Gould and Jan Rubes. From 1955, Stratford began doing small-scale musical productions, including The Beggar's Opera with Robert Goulet.Then Artistic Director Sir Tyrone Guthrie launched what would be an off-and-on Stratford tradition—the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, beginning with H.M.S. Pinafore. Appelbaum remembered, "In the Overture of Pinafore is a drum roll, a timpani roll. We, in this country in those days, had the tradition of opening a show with 'God Save the Queen.'That usually was signalled by a drum roll to get the audience to stand up. In the dress rehearsal, I hit this drum roll and I started to feel people rising behind me, so I held the drum roll long enough for everybody to be standing. Instead of launching into 'God Save the Queen/we launched into the opening bars of the Overture. De dump, de dump, de dump da dum. The audience just burst out laughing in self-conscious embarrassment. It struck just the right note for the evening."2 Guthrie later staged The Pirates ofPenzance, and successor Michael Langham invited Norman Campbell to direct The Mikado, with choreography by Alan Lund. "When the curtain went up," Campbell told Richard Ouzounian, "I took as my cue the alternative title that Gilbert gave the show, 'The Town of Titipu,' and I made quite a thing of the life of the town. We saw Pooh-Bah being shaved, people selling fruit, somebody going through with a squid dangling its tentacles... that kind of thing. We had a great deal of fun."3 In 1969, musicals at the Avon Theatre in Stratford took a more adventurous turn with Satyricon, a "disposable opera" adapted by Tom Hendry (co-founder of the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and Stratford's then literary manager) from the writings of Petronius, with music by American composer Stanley Silverman, starring Dinah Christie, Jack Creley and Eric Donkin. Herbert Whittaker in the Globe and Mail called it a "goodnatured extravaganza."4 The program note for this burlesque says, "It was quite a party atTrimalchio's. You know the sort of party—we've all been
to them—where the big difference between the wives and the call-girls present is that the latter are better-dressed, better-mannered and less obnoxious than the former; where the Mafia rubs shoulders with the money-ocracy; where anything goes, and if you don't like it, friend, why there's the door; the kind of party Hugh Hefner dreamed about as a child." Silverman explained to the Globe and Mail, "Because there was a great rush to get Satyricon ready, I had to compose music for the lyrics without knowing where the book was going."5 Oops. The Globes John Kraglund responded that "nothing which could accurately be described as a book ever materialized. So, rather than providing a suitable unified base for his music, Silverman had to be content with trying to link a series of totally unrelated songs." In fact, Hetidry was brought in to replace an earlier libretto |kat was deemed uS^Alkable. Originally intended to be am^jpfa* itt^eame a musical cp|^^|*When no suitably operatic voices were ay^ilabjfclt geted for a 75% house, tt'tfetoifiy'whi^ed 90 ovetl^f^r^Weekrun. In 1971, Artistic Director J^-lt^^ Michael Bawtree and Music :Stl|e^^ with a Music Theatre progr^^i^'fe|fe^?^ thSi^:^^^ ppluding Giancarlo Menottfs H^M^j^m
Scene from the 1969 Stratford Festival of Canada production of Satyricon with Dinah Christie as Circe (centre) and members of the Festival company. Photo by Douglas Sillane. Courtesy of the Stratford Festival of Canada Archives.
quiem for a,Pa^:^Mf^^ karhtickdksdkdfasdfsdsdfdfs
In 1979, American p%wright /Bait Shwdbw, wh^jjUd ecHratten A Funny Thing Happened on the Way M th$ f^wn and had directed a successful Broadway revival of No, NosNanttfa came to Stratford with Happy New Year, based on Phillip Barry's play Holiday with Cole Porter
flCTlNE
15
BHiYHORTH
76
songs interpolated. It even went to Broadway where it opened on April 27,1980, and lasted seventeen performances at the Morosco Theater. (It was followed there by Billy Bishop Goes to War.} It was in the early 1980s that the festival's most famous flirtation with musical theatre began. When Brian Macdonald staged The Mikado with Erik Donkin as Ko-Ko and Richard McMillan as Pooh-Bah, it was taped for television by Norman Campbell, reprised for two more seasons, then toured across Canada and into the U.S., visiting Boston, Washington DC, Baltimore, Detroit, Milwaukee and New York's City Centre. In Boston, the Christian Science Monitor called it "a treat for the eye more than for the ear."6 In New York, musical director Berthold Carriere told the Globe and Mai/, "The Americans see the show more as a musical comedy" (as opposed to an operetta). Eric Donkin said the audience enjoyed the show "enormously... but then they're Americans, they enjoy everything more." Macdonald revealed the same canny entrepreneurial streak that had fuelled My Fur Lady, his smash-hit revue that toured across the country a quarter-century earlier. Linking up with Ed and David Mirvish, he took The Mikado back to New York where it played for a month at the Virginia Theatre on Broadway, and Macdonald was nominated for two Tony® awards—for Best Choreography and Best Direction of a Musical. The New York Times called it, "Lovely, juicy, silly fun."The Mirvishes also brought it over to the Old Vic in London. Brian Macdonald's further Gilbert & Sullivan productions for Stratford included lolanthe (with additional lyrics by Jim Betts), The Gondoliers and The Pirates ofPenzance starring Brent Carver as the Pirate King and Jeff Hyslop as Frederic. All were adapted for television by Norman Campbell. Macdonald then he turned to more contemporary Broadway fare, staging Cabaret with Brent Carver as the MC and Sheila McCarthy as Sally Bowles. Other Stratford musicals over the years have included an ill-fated My Fair Lady starring John Neville (James Domville was brought in to replace director Jean Gascon, who died during rehearsals), Candidewith Andrea Martin and Fiddler on the Roof with Brent Carver. It was not until the mid-1990s that Stratford produced its first entirely Canadian musical. Richard Ouzounian and Marek Norman's Dracula had already been staged at Ouzounian's old home, the Neptune Theatre in Halifax. It was a popular hit at Stratford (where Ouzounian was a former associate director), and was taped (in a co-production with CBC-TV) by TVOntario, where Ouzounian was creative head of arts programming. Dracula has since been staged at the North Shore Music
Theatre in the United States and at the Charlottetown Festival. Sadly, Dracula has so far proven to be an anomaly. No new Canadian musicals have been presented recently at Stratford. Instead, they have fallen back on established Broadway fare such as Into the Woods (2005) and South Pacific (2W6).
flCIflNE
71
11. IHE fui FLIES
W
BHIY NORTH
78
hen I first heard about My Fur Lady, I must confess that I winced. For almost half a century it has been celebrated as a seminal moment in Canadian musical theatre. Its reputation even extended beyond Canada—when I mentioned it to Andrew Leigh, former general manager of the Old Vic, he launched into an impromptu rendition of one of its songs, "We Hate Each Other." Many of the great and good came out of that show—director Brian Macdonald, producer James Domville, lyricist Timothy Porteous, composer Gait MacDermot—but that title! It sounded like some cheap, throwaway college end-of-term revue. And that's precisely what it was. The principal lyricist was Timothy Porteous, a future director of the Canada Council. "I am also responsible for that terrible title," he admits. Since 1954, Porteous, Erik Wang and Donald MacSween had edited The Fig Leaf, a McGill University campus humour magazine, until it "withered for lack of advertising"1 (according to the New York Times, no less). The Graduates' Society, dating back to 1853, is McGill University's Alumni Association. At one time, they were responsible for much of the University's fund-raising (now done by the development office) and to this end, presented the annual Red and White Revue, a tradition dating back to the 1920s, and numbering William Shatner among its alumni. When, in 1956, Porteous reviewed the Graduate Society's Red and Blue Revue for the McGill Daily, he complained that it contained "almost no comment on local, or even Canadian topics." So he, Wang, MacSween and fellow law student and Fig Leaf contributor James de Beaujeu Domville (a native of Cannes who had studied at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland) set to work on the next Red and Blue Revue, essentially a stage version of The Fig Leaf. Porteous thought that any city that can boast of an establishment called the Notre Dame de Grace Kosher Meat Market ought to be able to laugh at itself, so inspired by the Fridolinades revues of Gelinas, they set out to satirize Canada's elusive cultural identity. MacSween, Porteous and Wang wrote the script, while Domville wrote most of the music and produced. The plot took some of its inspiration from the recent marriage of Prince Rainier of Monaco to Grace Kelly, saving its principality from absorption into France. Princess Aurora Borealis of Mukluko, a tiny island in the Arctic, is looking for a husband. Due to an ancient treaty, if she does not marry before her twenty-first birthday, Mukluko will lose its
sovereignty to Canada. So she sets to work to find a suitable candidate in Ottawa, guided by the Culturality Squad, described as "two effeminate men and one masculine woman." She learns that the Canadian Navy is on "high alert" (on a mixture of rum, Aqua Velva and duplicating machine fluid). She meets a farmer poet who delivers his ode to a cow: "Oh thou grubby teat/sucked by man and bit by flea." Although the issues lampooned included the flag debate and Quebec's draconian censorship laws, there is much in its search for a Canadian identity that still rings true, almost fifty years later. The direction and choreography for My Fur Lady were by twentyeight-year-old Brian Macdonald and his then wife Olivia. Macdonald had already begun his professional career with the National Ballet in 19|1. When he sustained an injury two years later, he turned to choreography, forming the Montreal Theatre Ballet in 1956 to create original works based on Canadian music. Macdonald had another side to him that was pure "showbiz": he had staged burlesque acts for Lili St. Cyr. Now* he and Olivia were spending long hours in their attic flat in Lome Crescent in Montreal, coaxing the formless material iftto something periferimiSlfe* By December 1956 they had begua; casti^ even tt^^fe &e script was far from being in shape* Some a similar number were engaged behind the $9jbf&l^ McGill Daily for a lyricist, but whett mm r^^ttded?Pori^>m was pressed into service. Harry Garber and Jisz piilfist Gait Ma£Deffhot, w|p would eventually strike it rich with Hair on Brotdw&fJ wrote tdditiohat%>ngs, and Roy Wolvm* who had written the ori^nal revue Qngfor the ffauh ccfhtribtited a awilpfe of numbers, including ^We Hate Each Other.*1 The show opened on February 7,19S7? at Moyse Hall in JVfcGilTs Arts Building. Clayton Sinclair of The Gazette called it "a sprightly reflection on Canadian life,*'2 The initial seven shows sold out and four more performances were added.
Detail from the album cover of the original cast recording of My Fur Lady, McGill Recording Service, 1957. Courtesy of Timothy Porteous.
flCliNf
19
BHlYNOflTH
80
It was so successful that Domville, Porteous, Macdonald, Wang and MacSween formed a company, Quince Productions, to professionally remount the show. Through its secretary, Lome Gales, they approached the Graduate Society for financial backing. The president, D.W. Ambridge, proposed to the members, "I want an expression of opinion, but I don't want a decision!"The members turned it down. But despite this, Gale arranged for the society to underwrite the show anyway, to the tune of $4,000, in exchange for an undefined percentage of the profits. When the show reopened on May 23 at Moyse Hall, the original company of 120 had been whittled down to about forty and augmented by professionals, including Frank Blanch, Bill Solly and Douglas Chamberlain. Each was paid a salary of $30 a week (later increased to forty). Then, on June 7, there was a federal election, the results of which were relayed to the audience through the character of the Governor General, dictating to his secretary. The ruling Liberals under Louis St. Laurent were defeated by John Diefenbaker's Tories. This necessitated a lyric change. At the end of act one, instead of singing, "Uncle Lou, Uncle Lou, tell us what to do," they sang "Honest John, Honest John, tell us right from wrong." Gavin Scott of The Gazette described it as a "banquet which roasts Canadian foibles and merrily fries our public figures to a beautiful brown."3 The original twelve performances soon swelled into forty-two, and money began coming in from the sales of the original cast recording—made on June 12 by McGill Recording Service. (An earlier, rarer recording had been made of the all-student cast.) Bolstered by this success, they took the show to Stratford, Ontario, where they opened on June 29 at the Avon Theatre, then still a cinema. (With the screen still in situ, they found a way to use it as a cyclorama.) To the cast s astonishment, they received a standing ovation. Herbert Whittaker wrote in the Globe and Mail, "Why is My Fur Lady so special among college shows? It is hard to say at first, for much of the time it is very like any other college show—in its suggestion of freshness, improvisation, of energy rather than professional skill... It has a sharpness of approach, a refusal to imitate other musicals, a point of view which is constantly bright and witty."4 Even London's The Times wrote, "Judging from such straws in the wind as Gratien Gelinas's foundation of an all-Canadian theatre in Montreal and the preoccupation of McGill University's dazzling revue My Fur Lady with Canadian culture, it seems there is a widespread desire in Canada to break away from theatrical subservience to Broadway and London."5 After forty performances as a fringe event at Stratford—the Festivals first Canadian play—they received an offer to open the Royal Alexandra
Theatre s fiftieth season in Toronto. Their three-week, sold-out run broke all box office records. "It did take some remarkable PR to turn My Fur Lady into a hit," says Gait MacDermot, "but the writers were pretty brilliant at that. Also, the subject matter garnered a lot of interest. The [Quebec Quiet] Revolution was about to begin." In Ottawa, they played before the real Governor General, Vincent Massey Although urged by their sponsors to omit all references to His Excellency, (virtually impossible, as the plot revolved around on him) the show went ahead as written. Afterward, Massey—who had his own brief encounter with show business a decade earlier when he made a cameo in the classic Powell and Pressburger film Forty-Ninth Parallel, starring his brother Raymond—told the actor who played him, "I learned a great deal about how to do the job." My Fur Lady crossed Canada from Charlottetown to Victoria, playing 402 performances in 82 towns, taking its final bow as part of Gordon Hilker's Vancouver Festival on August 3,1958. It had been seen by over 400,000 people and returned a profit of over $900,000 to its five producers (plus $4,000 to the Graduate Society). Some of this was reinvested in a less successful follow-up revue, Jubilee, directed by Macdonald and starring Dave Broadfoot, while some, in Porteous' words, "paid for a year in Europe and the beginnings of a retirement savings plan." The show also enjoyed some international exposure. The New York Times said it was a "phenomenon" that "ruffled the damp feathers of the Canadian theatrical season."6 Variety called it a "zingy romp." Even in Moscow, Isvestia said the satire was "very bold." It was also written up in Time and Newsweek and in papers as far away as Australia. The script took many swipes at the Canadian cultural burc|pd^cy— ironic when you consider hta
running the very establishments-^fhie^Cul^ality &ju^^^atdiey made fun of. Domville andlM^'^^filKlifi toft^k:to^'»itoectororgeneral ' , ' ' " '
'
s
;
>\°,
ff*"'?'
'?*
'"
*"*
of the National Theatre School* an^'^i^fflehtei; Film Board. Brian Macdonaldt lets Canadiens, then staged Festival. Porteous b9O|^ where Nixbftsas0fi€e,o|^ tried to mount a sm^r^otmpi^pi' against Mm^ M,^^^]of ^i^n^:dispute over seating arrangements at an Ottawa dttto^r* (Afl of which would have been splendid ingredients for satire, had B&teous continued in that vein.) Later, he was appointed director of the Canada Council.
|[| |(|[
81
Ann Golden, who played Princess Aurora, became a recitalist and teacher. She was head of music at St. GeorgeV School, Westmount, and she taught voice at Mount Royal College Conservatory, Calgary. She sang the role of the Nun in the Canadian premiere of Giancarlo Menotti's Death of the Bishop ofVbrindisi. In My Fur Lady, she performed the role of Aurora Borealis more than 120 times. In 1975, James Domville told the McGill News, "[My Fur Lady] was a major event that marked us all, one way or another."
iilillHI^ lllllilH
no 06
sathayshsdfdskhsdfsdgfhassdsdfsfsdfsfdsfsdsdfsdrtegevsrsdfgsrfgsef sathaysdfdsfdfdsdssd f you really wanted to start an argument among theatre-goers, you might just mention the word "cabaret."The word itself is derived from the Latin camera, or chamber. To some, it refers only to the vaguely decadent, satirical and often political performances in seedy Parisian night clubs of the 1880s, or to the Weimar-era cabarets of Berlin in the 1920s. Think Kurt Weill, Berthold Brecht and Lotte Lenya, and you're on the right path. Yet where I grew up, a "cabaret" could also mean a tavern where country and western bands played before beer-swilling truck drivers. Most of the cabaret that prospered in Canada from 1960-1985 was, in fact, musical-comedy revue. Here, once again, a certain snobbery raises its head. Revues were looked upon by some as middle-class dinner theatre, and thereby lacking integrity, although others regarded it as the one area of musical theatre where Canadians excelled. I was on the board of directors, along with founder Diane Stapley, actor Scott Hurst, Norman and Elaine Campbell and others, of an organization called the Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance. Our aims were to stem cabarft's decline, a taller order than we realized. When I was starting my musical career, I have to say that my enthusiasm for topical revue was somewhat muted, due to its essentially ephemeral nature. Music is best suited to expressing emotion, I thought, and there's little emotional depth in satire* However, in writing thii book and looking back on shows such as MyFurL®4y and Toron^^^onto, I am surprised at how much of the material stilt workayeait'life. Far from being a hotted of political extremes Mke 1920s Berlin, or having the fashionably intellectual cachet of Paris, Tdffiltd was always, on the surface at least, an austerely Btesf^terian, conservative town. A joke at the time offered a first prize of aiiW&k in Toronto; secpad prize was two weeks. Up until the late 1960s, t&yorie trying to flowerIrtistically was up against the school'of hard *Knox.'? *It was a very uptight town in those Aysf*$ay$ Ray Jessel "It was wry l^SP-f**"^ paee of liquor stores and churches/* WhHe our neighbours subscribed to *liie, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,** we opted for **peace, order and good government"—an approach, which, according to some libertarians, is not conducive to creativity. Ironically, it is under adversity that creativity
i
fldlNE
83
QHrtlH
84
blossoms. While Berlin had the rise of the Nazis to inspire them, Toronto had its alleged "goodness" to contend with. Yet it had enough of a sense of humour to paint its police cars the colour of taxicabs. Since that time, Toronto has gone through one of the most startling transformations imaginable—from "Hogtown"to the world's third largest centre for English-speaking theatre. Now, it is in some senses even more cosmopolitan than New York. It has, per capita, twice as many immigrants, as the "Caribana" and "Caravan" festivals attest. In Buddies in Bad Times, it has one of the continent's most significant gay theatres, although its old image is hard to shake off. The trouble is that Canada is not a trouble spot. If the October Crisis had sparked a November bloodbath, we would probably get invited to more parties. The phrase "Toronto the Good" has always been used facetiously. The phrase originated with a book written in 1898 by Montreal newspaperman Christopher St. George Clark, called Of Toronto the Good, which purported to be an expose of vice and inadequacy in the city (from the perspective, I might add, of its rival Montreal). So how uptight was it? Richard Morris, who had worked as a script writer for ATV in London before emigrating to Toronto in 1958 with his Vancouver-born composer wife Dolores Claman, remembers working on a late-night show for CFTO-TV. It was presented by Rick Campbell, who "insisted on ten minutes of jokes before every show, out of the paper of the day. I can tell you it was a real hair-puller. You had about three hours to write those bloody jokes, because he came on at eleven o'clock at night, and you didn't get the paper until mid-morning." On one occasion, his guest was to be Brendan Behan, the noted Irish poet, and a world-renowned tippler with a reputation Boris Yeltsin could only dream of. (The 1983 film Reuben, Reuben was in part, inspired by his exploits.) "He was only expected to stay in Toronto for a couple of days just to do this interview," Morris explains, "then he was going down to New York. We poured [him] off the plane... He insisted on going out to a pub, and he got blind drunk. The Toronto police picked him up as he was staggering with his escort along the pavement, and took him straight to jail... Couldn't get him out, there was no way—he was going to stand trial before the judge the next morning." This meant, of course that the show had no guest, so in his place, Campbell asked Morris to write him a monologue expressing outrage that the only hospitality being shown to this famous poet came courtesy of Her Majesty. "So I try to write a very careful opening for him... I got into legalities, touching on the illegal, but Rick Campbell has to en-LARGE on this. Before I know it, the Toronto police are up
at CFTO to arrest me. If it hadn't been for [CFTO owner John R] Basset, I'd have been in jail too." But the creative people persevered. In fact, the writers of Spring Thaw and other revues learned to use the city's supposed blandness as a Trojan horse, feeding irony and satire to unsuspecting audiences. But revue in Toronto did not begin with Spring Thaw. The Arts and Letters Club presented its first revue, The Old Court Minstrels, in 1918, and from 1930 their spring revue became a more or less annual event, give or take the odd war. In 1961, Upstairs at Old Angelo's became a dinner theatre, and presented Well Rehearsed Ad-libs, starring Dave Broadfoot and Jean Templeton, with musical direction by Ben McPeek. Soon after, Theatre-in-the-Dell opened. Broadfoot's Canada Goose played there a couple of years later, holding its own against a visit to the Royal Ontario Museum by the Dead Sea Scrolls, and claiming one advantage over the latter: the ROM did not have a liquor licence. Broadfoot was blessed with the support of the comely Linda Livingstone, whom the Globe and Mail predicted "will some day headline her own revue" (I can find no evidence that this ever happened) and by Vancouver folksinger Tom Hawken's apparently hilarious takeoff on Lome Greene's "Ringo." Another Spring Thaw-inspired revue, Clap Hands, also starring Broadfoot along with Corinne Conley, Jack Creley, Eric House, Araby Lockhart and Peter Mews, transferred from Hart House and managed a short run at London's Prince Charles Theatre in Leicester Square. Still, Toronto artists struggled against "Toronto the Good." At the behest of Howard Cable, Morris and Claman were hired to write songs for Jack Arthur's CNE Grandstand shows. "Jack Arthur put his head on the block for every CNE about hiring who he thought wa^fijjht for it" says Morris. The one e^ietptiofi wmjwhen Morris, who;l^^^lMtten for Spring Thaw, was asked to write a sgtecal^Dng aboutoi^rit Canadian politics. "My God, te-<M^elyi^ ^ifooMb^glJ^ it was a bit on the edge, ironic. The CN&b^ encountered a similar problejptt;\A^^;^p^ft| witib a;^llologue £rom the Member for Kicking Ho^;passp^^uyr controversial." (He had ^eiijfoned a $$ftc^^ horses were ori the ptj^Ji) 1&;§^ the day:1 Yet, this same creative envftotux^ The Investigator, wikh apologised to i*& bibe itid tooHnd prisoners. And neither did Jiri Shubert» who had ran jlls own company in Prague. He set up Shubert's, a fringe cabaret, in Pears Avenue, where he staged Piaf
(jd |K[
85
MfHYNORIH
86
and Marlene, Marlene with Peter Donate and Dorothy Poste. "Cabaret should surprise you,"Donato told Liam Lacey in 1979. "It's like pulling the chair out from under the audience and then slipping it back before they know what's happening." Shubert's space was later taken over by Jim Burt and John McAndrew and became Pears Cabaret. Of the more Brechtian, harder-edged variety, video-cabaret has endured. Founded in 1976 by Michael Hollingsworth, Deanna Taylor, the "Hummer Sisters" and others, they set out—according to their web site— to "invent theatrical vocabulary for the age of information."2 One of their hallmarks has been the "video-caricatures" using altered footage of real political figures with dubbed voices. An ongoing project has been Michael Hollingsworth's multi-part The History of the Village of Small Huts (a literal translation of the Iroquois word for Canada). The company has won fifteen Doras. Whether it was "true cabaret" or musical comedy, revue was a great training ground, nurturing both writers and performers, a few of whom gained further expertise in the "big time." Some of Mavor Moore's Spring Thaw material made it into Julius Monk's Upstairs at the Downstairs revues in New York. While still living in London, Dolores Claman had written songs with American lyricist Jack Gray for several Laurier Lister revues, including Airs on a Shoestring starring Max Adrian ("Bundles for Britain, and piles for peers!") and Denis Quilley, plus Pieces of Eight (with sketches by Peter Cook, and starring Kenneth Williams). From Here and There was a hybrid English and American show (its title referring to its binational subject matter) co-produced with New York's Michael Abbott and choreographed by The Boy Friend's John Haywood. Anthony Cookman of the Tattler wrote, "nothing in it can be praised whole-heartedly except the music by Mr. Geoffrey Wright, Miss Dolores Claman and Mr. Charles Zwar, consistently gay and often more expressive than the dancing or singing."3 (Among the cast was June Whitfield, now famous as Edina's mother in Absolutely Fabulous^) The plan was to take it to New York after its London run and to present it under a new title, Kaleidoscope, but this never happened. "It opened to a blistering hot summer," says Claman, "and you know what that does to theatre-goers." Although the show never travelled, several of the numbers were interpolated into other New York revues, such as the Tallulah Bankhead Revue and The Taboo Revue. Shortly after Claman and her husband Richard Morris arrived in Toronto in the late 1950s, they were asked to write for Purely for Pleasure. This was a revue planned by Stuart McKay, the CNE Grandstand Show's costume designer, who had also designed Timber!! for Claman
in Vancouver. "Stuart was a lovely guy," says Claman, "but he was not a businessman. He loved revue, and he wanted to dress everyone up/' It's interesting to note that, even then, Canadian shows had "outof-town tryouts" before coming in to Toronto. Purely for Pleasure was booked into London's Grand Theatre before an expected opening at the Royal Alex. "When we arrived in London [Ontario], the advance man was supposed to come and get some publicity in the papers. He had been and gone, and we never knew what had happened to him again." McKay had imported three American "stars," including Paul Hartman, who had recently appeared in the Broadway comedy Drink to Me Only to headline the show. According to Morris, "The American choreographer insisted that the stars be brought out, their names sung instead of a curtain call... These three could not agree about who was the real star. How many permutations of three? That's how many times I had to change the bloody lyric to fit their names in there." But that was not their most serious problem. "We had worked up quite a fair bill," says Claman, "because the food was good in the hotel. We were broke. We thought, 'We'll never get out of this hotel alive if they don't pay us.'" After one matinee, their opportunity came. "I'm in the pit, and Richard comes down and says, 'Everybody's getting paid if we come now.' The backer had a lot of money, but she dripped and drabbed it out. She was going to pay us, so we all ran down the main street to get to Simpson's, up in the credit department, where people were buying wedding presents. A lot of the cast had their makeup and costumes on. It was funny, but terrible at the time... Because Stuart had been a great costume designer, he was so upset that he just gave up and started sewing sequins on the costumes." Purely for Pleasure nw£r reached the Royal Alex. In addition to writers, cabaret and revue developed stars—6r?&t least, as close as Canada comes to AttTom Kneebone, who was bptti-Hi-New Zealand but trained in England at Bristol O^r^ic^ eftded^ip Pronto in the late 1950s while on itMdftfe AITOI^^tour that went pear-shaped In 1957, he played a small part as an &pe in ;$ J^TT'S^pl called Look Ma, Tm Human. According t^'^^^^^^i Cm^i^ he was *so unused to television that in-^Igying^tife<
ACT ONE
87
Tom Kneebone and Dinah Christie on tour with Oh Coward'in the early 1970s. Photo by Robert Warren. Courtesy of Dinah Christie.
BROHDMYlDRTII
88
After returning from the New York run of Salad Days, Kneebone spent two years in Montreal in a revue called Up Tempo, produced by Jack Greenwold, playing two shows a night, six days a week. (In the band was a drummer known as "Charles Sullivan," a pseudonym for a young Gordon Lightfoot.) He was so exhausted, he says, "I couldn't work after that." Back in Toronto, he appeared in a revue at Willy De Laurentis s Theatre-in-the-Dell called Ding Dong at the Dell "My clothes still reek of pasta and tomato sauce." In the early 1970s, he appeared with Dinah Christie in the Dell revue that made his reputation—Oh Coward! by Roderick Cook, with musical director David Warrack. The show began life as a larger revue called And Now Noel Coward, starring Kneebone plus Americans Dorothy Louden and Carole Shelly, which tried out during the 1968 Vancouver International Festival. After being scaled back, it enjoyed a long run at the Dell before touring to Chicago and Boston. When it later opened with a different cast off-Broadway in the early 1970s, Coward himself was in the audience, making his final public appearance. Kneebone and Christie then did another revue, From Shakespeare to Sondheim that predated Side By Side By Sondheim. Starweetts Jeremy Ferguson called him "Canada's most consummate revue and cabaret performer."4 In a later review, Blaik Kirby in the Globe and Mail wrote, "Dinah Christie... not only has the ability to make you guffaw and the ability to make you melt in a love song, but the rare ability to do both at the same time."5 In 1969, with the support of the Canada Council, actor Louis Negin developed a revue, Love and Maple Syrup, which derived its title from a Gordon Lightfoot song and also featured existing material from Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Gilles Vigneault, Stephen Leacock, Ian Tyson and others. "Maple Syrup started rehearsals immediately after {Ecstasy of\ Rita Joe finished at the National Arts Centre," remembers singer Ann
Mortifee. The show, featuring Negin, Bill Schustik, Sandra Caron, Gabriel Gas£on, Margaret Robertson and Mortifee (its original Ottawa production also featured Blair Brown, who would later star in The Days and Nights of Molly Doddon TV), toured to Washington, DC. Eventually it wound up in New York where it opened January 7,1970 at the Mercer-Hansberry Theater. While the New York Times Clive Barnes found it "too cute by three-quarters," he admitted that Mortifee "could be quite a discovery." (She eventually returned to New York to play in Jacques Srel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.} But, ultimately, he said that *only a nation with built-in insecurities and a dire need for blood sugar could have chosen [maple syrup] as its riational drink." Ouch. DoiA;:|ake it as a national slight, though—lie Of ce stijithat the CBG%^^felinest the inthe j^fM^ broadcasting organization in guidAlthough Second City beganinChicagointhe1950sunderthe gAidance of Bernard SehlansandSheldonPatinkin,itwasitsTorontooffshoot that gained fame for itsTVspin-off,SCTV.Intheearly1970s, Andrew Alexander converted anoldfirehalintoatheatrerestaurantand introduced Dan Aykroyd, GildaRadner,AndreaMartin,JohnCandy, EugeneLevy,MartinShortandotherstotheworld.Alexanders ' opera tion was so sucqessfiil thatitenentualytookovertheChicagoclub,and expandedfiird^'i^d. At the height of T^rdfifo^ cabaretboominthelate1970s,l97w>'3Da-
vid Warrack told the Gldbe mdMaifa %^^^^^^^ big problem we have is that there^l^ftefi wo place $0 gD Ifith our shows once weVe finished." He adds, "There isrft very mxidb like this going on in New
Left: The program for Oofs! (1972), David Warracks first show. Courtesy of David Warrack. Right: Connie Martin and David Warrack in Teasefor Two (1975). Courtesy of David Warrack.
NCIDNE
09
Three members of the cast of Praise, which opened on April 11,1978, at the Bayview Playhouse, from (1-r): Dana Still, Judy Marshak and Brent Carver. Photo by Melinda Phillips. Courtesy of David Warrack.
BMiY NORTH
90
York, for instance." 6 Marlene Smith's production of Sandra O'Neil's Sweet Reason, a satire on feminism that starred Barbara Hamilton, ran 444 performances, setting a record. In the late '70s, actor Rudy Webb came up with another unique Toronto tradition. Curtains Up was a free, open-mic latenight event in which actors came to perform their largely unrehearsed party pieces to an audience made up mostly of their friends and colleagues. It moved from venue to venue. In the early '90s, David Warrack took it over and presented it after hours at the Limelight Dinner Theatre. Here I met singers such as Melodee Finlay and Scott Hurst (with whom I was on the board of directors of the Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance). In 1979, Tom Kneebone spent his savings to present an avant-garde evening, Tom Kneebone at the T.K. Cabaret, produced by Joseph Deane and directed by Brian M.acdonald. "That was very bizarre," he says. "I got the best reviews ever, because I had been living in Germany and picked up a lot there from the cabarets and theatre I'd seen there. But it was very raw and ugly. I was not doing what they expected me to do, sitting at a piano with a cigarette and singing Noel Coward. I went in the other direction, which was a courageous step, but I liked that."
In 1980, musician Ruth Morawetz (former wife of composer and music teacher Oskar Morawetz) introduced a novel twist to the then declining cabaret scene. Classical Cabaret, a series of informal, intimate Sunday afternoon concerts that combined operatic arias with show tunes (Britten with Bernstein, Gilbert and Sullivan with Maltby and Shire) and provided showcases for singers from Ben Heppner to Louise Pitre. Morawetz also encouraged Canadian composers, featuring work by Jim Betts, Joey Miller and Ann Mortifee, and commissioning fifteen new works for classical, musical theatre and dance forms. She continued to present them until 1997. In October 1980, composer Charles Weir and lyricist Mark Shekter s Toronto, Toronto, the "smoothest cabaret show you have ever seen" according to the Globe andMaiVs Ray Conologue, took up an extended residence at the Theatre-in-the-Dell. Featured were Stratford veteran Elias Zarou, newcomer Jodi Glassman and American Billy Newton-Davis, joined by musical director Stephen Woodjetts. It took gentle aim at Toronto's newfound ethnic mix—in "Spadina-China Syndrome," two elderly Jews lament the changes that have happened to their old neighbourhood: "What have they done to Spadina? What is this dish, Vice fried? When you are looking for a bagel You get a cookie with a message inside!" After it had been playing for a few months, Zarou told Conologue, "It's starting to look like a cult item... It's becoming the Rocky Horfor Show of dinner theatre."7 Newton-Dgfis ^dded, "People here love wit and satire. They love to laugh. New Ifork is itiojr€r into slickness, 'Lc^'&t me, look at how beautiful I am^yy^^^^opl^wilityou to deal^^^pftfti on a reality level." Toronto, Toronto closed MAY ^$9S3* afterlf^o years and seven months, ; playing over 1,200 performance^*At fte ltoe> ;§ Was Canada's long runawned a sequel_Toronto, Toronto ning musical entertainment. ItlN^^^ II—and David Warrack ^^ot^^B^<^^ki^ Y$$? N^ffi3&r4 ]pfaich ran foreever / at Solar Stage, featunfig^^ iane StapleyB ut it didn't lastforfvefc In February 19f^Tli^ e-in-the-Dell closed its doors after tweaQr- . four years* O^ift Sfl Mid Joe De Lanrentk $did the ppp^rty for i4~ development as offices* and att era ended, Around the; lame time, the Teller's Cage and Upstairs at Old Angelo*s also closed/Actress Diane Stapley made a bold attempt to keep t|ie form alive through her Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance (CAMTA), which she formed in the late
|[j|||[
91
1980s with actresses Ruth Nichol and Kate Hennig. They produced a series of late night shows at the Factory Theatre called the Factory Late Shift. Among the artists featured was Brent Carver in a one-man show. But cabaret was finished. "I was glad it ended," says Kneebone. "Are you kidding? I had no life for years. Eight shows a week in cabaret—two Friday, two Saturday—I had no life. We went until one o'clock in the morning." So what killed it? "A chandelier and a helicopter did it in," he jokes, referring to the mega-musicals that were just around the corner. Kneebone then turned to running Smile Theatre, touring small, immaculately researched musicals on Canadian historical subjects to Senior Citizens centres. He continued this from 1987 until his sudden death in November 2003 (less than three weeks after I interviewed him). He still believed there was an audience for cabaret. "There is a hunger for it here," he said. "Last year [2002], I toured the country—for my sins, from West coast to East coast—with the one hundredth anniversary of Noel Coward's birth. Now, that's basically a cabaret show on a concert stage." He adds with a satisfied smile, "We sold out!" One of CAMTAs major concerns was the loss of a great training ground for both writers and performers, but although revue has—with the exception of Second City's improvs—pretty well passed from Toronto's stages, the city still produces great chanteuses. While Holly Cole is not a cabaret performer per se, her jazz stylings are not a million miles removed, either. (And her brother Allen is an emerging musical theatre composer.) And British Columbia's music education system managed to turn out the likes of Diana Krall before switching to a more "practical" approach. More recently, Diane Stapley, together with Jim Betts and Vince Metcalfe put together an anthology revue—A Matter of Heart, based on the songs of Stan Rogers, the Hamilton folksinger who died in a plane crash in 1983. It was presented at Hamilton's Theatre Aquarius in 2000, and at the Charlottetown Festival in 2001. At the time of this writing, Curtains Up was continuing after hours at Second City near the SkyDome, now the Rogers Centre.
BROHY NORTH
09 uu
13. HUMBUG
I
ben Richard Morris first arrived in Toronto, he took a job as a copywriter for McLaren Advertising. In the office next door was a fellow British expatriate, Ted Wood, a former policeman who had persuaded McLaren to give him a job by dropping off a different short story every week while walking his beat. Wood and Morris used to eat lunch together. "We talked the same language," says Morris. Both had come to escape the English class system. But Morris's wife, Dolores Claman, was not getting very much work as a composer. "I knew Dolores had done Timber!!, which I'd heard some music out of and thought was fantastic." At the time, he told the Globe and Mail's Kay Kitzwiser, "It was the biggest, freshest sound I'd heard. It seemed to typify Canada."1 Morris's father had been an antique dealer. When he bought a bookcase, he also got the books that came with it, many of them by Charles Dickens. He wanted to write a musical based on Dickens'yf Christmas Carol, but he was so busy with his copywriting job that he decided to ask Wood to help him with the book. (Although all three are credited as lyricists, Morris wrote most of the lyrics while Wood wrote most of the book.) "We presented it live to Murray Davis and his board of directors [of the Crest Theatre Foundation], right the way through, script and al|... [Davis said] Absolutely, this is us, we're gonna do it.' He was terrific." Rehearsals began in November 1963 and lasted about six weeks. Morris remembers one particular day very clearly—November 22, "We arrived outside the Crest Theatre. We were sitting in the car with the news on, and suddenly—Kennedy was kitted. We stayed in Ae car for about half an hour listening to this newii* Mr. Scrooge opened December 4» 1963$ directed; |f|r l^rr^ty Davis, choreographed by American import Har4ffl||' Dorn^ afawj'i^itfa music arranged and conducted by Howard Cable* Chffe-Wig^p^(^sii0 was living in Morris and Claman s basement it A& tl^^pliyed %fi^o^ while Bill Glover played Bob Cratchet?*$ith Don'fl^^lcs £$ thcf^toge^JJcrooge. digrdingcto ng ng to to Morris to Morri ,"wasMorris, tak-tatak-k"Chris Wiggins s greatest act |n £OT?#|^*^ accordigccororrdi MorriMors,sr,is"was E ing his false teeth-m$t Hiat wES-^fe msfi&v$* fewit^ar-oldold Betet : Young played X»y Tim> tmt after sk w<seks ef etmi%
ME
QQ DO
BRdiw|(ra
[)4
while Ron Evans of the Telegram said was "cheering as a steaming rum toddy." Only the Star s Nathan Cohen had reservations, "All that energy, talent and money has been spent on a marshmallow entertainment not worth the doing."2 "I got so annoyed," says Morris, "that I paid for a quarter page reply to Nathan Cohen," quoting the Telegram review in its entirety. "[Cohen] didn't like musicals in general. He couldn't understand why you take a famous story and turn it into a musical. This man was the most contrary critic you could find." (Ironically, Cohens daughter Phyllis became a musical theatre composer.) Mr. Scrooge was so successful that the run was extended by a week, ending on January 4, to make room for the next show in the Crest's season. Mr. Scrooge would return to the Crest's stage, but only after a somewhat fraught detour into television. "A [CBC] producer called Bob Jarvis, whom I had done some songs for, came and begged to do it. He promised an hour and a half and famous stars." As Scrooge, they cast Australian-born Cyril Ritchard, who had played Captain Hook famously in the musical Peter Pan on Broadway. "A Scrooge with a sense of humour appealed to me and helped me decide to accept the CBC's offer,"3 Ritchard said at the time. "Playing him this way is a real challenge. I have to have a sense of humour, and I break into song every so often, but I mustn't forget the essential miserliness and unpleasantness of Scrooge. He's a little like Captain Hook... and then again, he's a little like Richard III. Lots of actors—Larry Olivier, for instance—have played Richard for humour." But Morris, Claman and Wood were not happy. First, the CBC cut the time slot to just one hour, including commercials for the program's sponsor, Kraft foods. "We nearly went mad." And while Morris was thrilled to have English comedy actor Alfie Bass (The Lavender Hill Mob] playing Cratchet, he was less pleased with Ritchard's performance. "Cyril Ritchard acted as a camp Scrooge. He threw away lines that were funny." Nor was he thrilled with Jarvis's direction. "Bob Jarvis did not know how to move people on a set... Cyril Ritchard would direct the bloody thing." And Tessie O'Shea, who played Mrs. Cratchet, had an aversion to working with children. "She hit Tiny Tim a couple of times." In the final scene, plastic snow fell from the studio grid. Unknown to anyone at the time, the microphones were picking up the sound of the cameras squeaking over this artificial snow. This was only discovered during editing, and at that point it was impossible to fix it. One of the American networks had expressed interest in buying the show, but the writers felt that the finished product was not good enough to show to them.
The show was aired on CBC-TV on December 1, 1964. The critics were happier than the creators were. Bob Blackburn of the Telegram got out his rhyming dictionary and called it a "tight, bright, sprightly treat!" Herbert Whittaker of the Globe amdMmlvt'zs "inclined to gjb$ all the credit to Cyril Ritchard, whose sldlM handling of Scrooge provided most of the show's style and theatrical Tallied : Mr. Scrooge was revived at the Crest on November 28* 1965, starring Joseph Shaw (who also shared directing credit with^Mpxay Davis) in the title role. Then the rights were leased through the Dfamatic Publishing Company, where it remains popular with amateur and stoc^eompanies to this day. With two other partners, Clainan and Morris created Quartet Productions, Canada's leading commercial jingle house, and wrote ;the theme for the Ontario Pavilion at Expo '67 ("A Place to Stand*) and for Hockey Night in Canada. The couple wrote a couple of more musicals after Mr. Scrooge, including In The Klondike, based on the poems of Robert Service, which was
The CBC-TV production of Mr. Scrooge was based on an earlier stage version produced at the Crest Theatre. The show featured Cyril Ritchard as Scrooge, Alfie Bass as Bob Crachet and Tessie O'Shea as Mrs. Crachet. Photo by Robert C. Ragsdale. Courtesy of Dolores Claman.
flCTlNf
95
broadcast on CBC-TV on May 6, 1968. The last show they wrote together, Graffiti, about hard-up painters, was never given a commercial production. "Though there was quite a bit of interest from Peter Coe [the original director of Oliver]" says Claman, "nothing really happened. It feels out of date to me, though there were a few good songs in it." Ted Wood is now a successful writer of crime novels under the pseudonym Jack Barnao, and is a recipient of the Derrick Murdoch Award from the Crime Writers of Canada.
RROHDRRY NORTH
96
H. NDUSTRl
teTH
t's not easy being a theatre composer. It's very expensive, and so favours the wealthy. In fact, most of the Broadway greats came from affluent backgrounds; one of the few exceptions was E.Y. (Yip) Harburg, lyricist ofFinians Rainbow, and a lifelong socialist. But, for those who are able to turn their hand to it, there is a way to supplement their meagre royalties; the Canadian musical theatre has one bastard cousin whom, while the relatives don t talk about it in polite society, has put hot meals on the tables of many an actor, singer, dancer, choreographer, composer and lyricist. I'm referring, of course, to the industrial musical. (What a wonderful term; it conjures up images of men in hardhats tap-dancing in steel-toed work boots. Perhaps this inspired Tap Dogs'?) Little has been written about these motivational pieces, produced exclusively for the employees and dealers of major retail, automotive, soft drink and energy companies. Some of their American counterparts employed major Broadway talent—John Kander and Fred Ebb wrote Go Fly a Kite for General Electric in 1966, the same year as their Cabaret opened, and Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock did the 1959 Ford tractor show five years before Fiddler on the Roof. Actors Hal Linden, Floregce Henderson, Loretta Swit and Valerie Harper all did time in industrials. Some even produced cast albums. According to one anonymous musical director, "Doing them is like pimping your sister to a billionaire*" On the other hand, "Industrials are fascinating," says actor and sopgwriter Pat Rose. "I've written, compoged^ direct^cl, sung and emcee$|itieast a hundred industrials." But the pay was very,generous^ and;pr<^ctioi|^lj|^|pgh.Tliey also reinforced the aU-iitip;^^ In $•> *• f,*-&-^.*,^ ^ ,^',;- 3'.->,-,"- /, ,- ' ,J*g£t ^-x the early 1960s, Dolores Cl$gj^^nd Richard Morris were recruited by annual Howard Cable to write severa di^^annual General Motors Mofamma : dealer shows, which toured across Canada. Each year, Mo^m^^j^m^e up with the theme and script for a
complete^^i withcomplete eight to ten original n musical original ninetyminute musical, ^It^^^^i^b^l bers, as a morale booster for gm's dealers and their formilies. The showxs would employ top tilpt^filti^' BrMdw^'^pr';^%^^u fettttfeidl in one—and they were? choreo^aphed by BliutTi^a C-Bl5ody good choreographer," says Morris, *I mean $ol|il^) "ffie costumes were by Stuart McKay, who also did tlie Grandstand shows. *TOiey spent more money
flCIiNE
97
Dinah Christie in concert with Howard Cable at Hamilton Place. Photo by Robert Warren. Courtesy of Dinah Christie.
iRHiY NORTH
98
on those shows than any Canadian musical could afford. They did a lot of good for the actors and singers. They paid a lot of money." But these were the early 1960s, and attitudes were different. "Alan Lund would have the job of getting rid of anything that looked gay in the dancing," says Morris. Stuart McKay was openly gay—daman's daughter called him "her fairy godfather"—but the GM executives seemed oblivious to the fact. However his boyfriend Herman was another matter. "He got Herman, black and small and round, to do the hats. It was everybody's job who knew what was going on, when the GM directors came in and made their periodic visits, to hide Herman." It was like a scene out of La CageAux Folks. But one day, Herman didn't get hidden. "This awful man," according to Claman, asked Cable, "Howard! Who s that?" How this naive executive thought one could mk homophobia with musical theatre was a mystery. "Howard, we don't want those people."There were a lot of walk-in closets in those days. In 1969, Wayne and Shuster introduced Run For Your Money for Gulf Oil of Canada's service station owners, who were told, "It's gotta look good to sell good; it's just gotta be dressed for success." (At the time, they were also fronting Gulf's TV ads.) When I arrived in Toronto in 1983, industrials were still in full swing, if a little more modest than the GM extravaganzas. The business was dominated by Asterix Productions, run by Jeff Braunstein. "Asterix, as well as other companies have been very good to me over the years," says composer-lyricist Joey Miller. "I got to write original songs for different companies which helped me hone my skills as a lyricist as well. I could write a comedy song and hear where the laughs were and yes, there were some stinkers, but I was learning my craft." To Miller, these were not propaganda. "There is a craft to selling to these people ideas which are always filled with integrity and speak the truth to them." He cites as an example a song he wrote for Shaklee, an environmentally friendly company that sells health food and household cleaners. "I wrote a song... which was used in a candle lighting ceremony which bordered on the mystical. They would hold their candles high, and with tears in their
eyes, sing along proudly... The power of a song is the same as when writing for a musical. The only difference is that the audience is under your spell from the beginning." Beginning in the late 1980s, the big industrials entered a steep decline. Jonathan Ward, one of the few writers to document this strange off-shoot, puts it down partly to technological change. "The advent of home video allowed companies to produce cheaper corporate videos for similar effect."1 Rising production costs were also a factor, but so was the decline in popularity of the Broadway musical form. "Listening to or watching a Broadway musical was more of a unifying experience during the shows' heyday." But Asterix is still in business, and Miller continues to write for them, in between more conventional theatrical projects. "These shows stressed positive values where people learned that the fruits of their labours would always be financially rewarding and that they would have to work hard to make that extra buck." He adds, "I never had a problem with that. And these shows were rewarding for me as well."
flClQNE
on jj
15."lEPIIOHEflfSHnW-D(lllCEPROF[SSlfl[ISH"
I u
ijRHifflY NORTH
100
ust one more time...""But Grace, its two o'clock in the morning..." But no matter. She was going to get it right, even if it killed me. Stepstep-ball-change, Step-step-ball-change... When I was growing up, some of the most original musical theatre in Canada was coming out of Vancouver. People like Ann Mortifee, Patrick Rose, Jeff Hyslop, Brent Carver, Richard Ouzounian and Marek Norman were a mini-NewWave. And they all had one thing in common—they came through Mussoc (Musical Society). And Mussoc was Grace Macdonald. In the dingy-dumpy environment of UBC's old auditorium, the Musical Theatre Society, Vancouver's oldest amateur theatre group, had developed a tradition of producing reasonably high calibre musicals. It was also a launching pad for careers—Margaret "Margot" Kidder made her acting debut there as Muriel in Take Me Along. Bob Allen, who was theatre critic for the Vancouver Province before becoming literary manager at the Stratford Festival, had originally set his sights on an acting career. "I thought I was going to be a star... The old Theatre Under The Stars was still functioning then, and it always worked out that Mussoc people would wind up being in the chorus or playing small parts in a TUTS production the following summer, which was a professional gig. Jimmy Johnston was one of the prime directors of Mussoc, and he was also one of the directors of Theatre Under The Stars. Mussoc was like a bit of a farm team in a sense. Now, it just happened that TUTS folded a year later, and that ended that..." In addition to her work with Mussoc and TUTS, Grace also taught dancers in her private studio. Without question, her star pupil was Jeff Hyslop, who began to study with her when he was five years old. To him and his classmates, she was "Miss Grace." "The iron toe in the velvet shoe,"1 he told Dance Canada's Guy Shulman. At the age of eleven, through her influence, he was able to tour across Canada with the Bolshoi Ballet. He was even offered a scholarship to study with them in Moscow, but ultimately decided not to stay with them. "My generation was the last to come out of Vancouver and go away," Hyslop told me 1982. "I left when I was fifteen, and I went to the Charlottetown Festival," where he played Gilbert in Anne of Green Gables. "After that... all the dance schools in this town sort of died away," following the demise of TUTS. "Now, there's a great resurgence in dance, and people want to take tap dancing and learn musical theatre."
A new generation did emerge from Mussoc to follow Jeff's lead. "IVe danced since I was three years old/' says Moira Walley, a much later alumnus who left Vancouver in the early 1980s, and starred as Lola in Marlene Smith's production of Damn Yankees at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. "You sort of dream about being a ballerina and dancing around in a tutu. The first time I really started to take it seriously was when I started doing roles in high school. There it's always very confusing, because everyone is saying 'You have to go to university. You can't be a musician, or an actress or a dancer, you have to be a physiotherapist or a psychologist or a secretary.'" According to composer Marek Norman, "When one considers the rather illustrious parade of talent that has "strut and fret" its hour upon the old and decrepit University stage, well, holy Shakespeare, impressive to say the least. What memories I have. Long, long, 1-o-n-g rehearsal periods, and Grace Macdonald's ever-predictable cries of 'One more time.'Yes, Mussoc represents three very formative years in my theatrical career. I think of them fondly and respectfully." "Grace has left a phenomenal mark on me," says actress Ruth Nichol. "I remember one time Grace put me through a certain dance step twelve times in a row and I just kept throwing myself in doing it, and at the end of the twelve times, she called all these dancers and said, 'Okay, do you see what this girl is doing? And this girl isn't even a dancer!' It helped because these girls who had been saying, Ts she going to be in frgnt again?' decided that there was something more to do in the musical than just dance well." Bob Allen said, "The main thing about Mussoc, and I think a lot of it had to do with Grace's input* Was that you really were having t lot of fun, but you were being very, veiy professidnal, because Graa|^t>uldn't do it any other way."2 Max;W^ppJi, dat*C€ critic for the Pr^^^%rote that "to hundreds of dancers ac^oss^Ga^aHa^^jr^ce Macd^ii^ was hot sourseofof only the epitome of showNftti^ peofessiionalism, she was asource 3 lasting inspiration." Pat Rose played the lead &$^ 1965 production of rells Are Ri he walked into'fe^wJI^h the audition "expecting ing. At the age of eighteen, tto O <—» <_» ' ->V>' -V - ' J , ,\^<'\ * ' \f^ " dazzle them with*iny;ca^manner," he told Wyman. This was his fihrfirst > Macdonald,"Before encounter .wifti-jt^^^ you c^''4b^^:6b^^ and dandng^;^l^^^^%^iiig to haw to teach yt^ o walk." He said later, "EverytM^gl leamalAbout moving on a stag^I learned from her." When I first met Grace, then in her late sixties* she had just rescinded her umpteenth retirement to direct Mussoe's production of Anything s
ME
101
EMMY lira
102
Goes, where I played the walk-on role of Bishop Henry T. Dobson. For me, it was important to see that musical theatre was not literature: it was living and, above all, moving, and I had to learn how that was done. Grace insisted you had to learn to crawl before you could walk. Getting a show on its feet was one thing; getting those feet to move was another. Growing up in Winnipeg in the 1920s, Grace was taught by Geraldine Foley, an English dance teacher who combined tap dancing with ballet and other forms in her recitals, creating little mini-musicals. "Her sister, Cynthia Foley, was at that time working in New York as one of the Stepping Stones [a 1923 Jerome Kern Broadway revue], and she came to the school and taught me my first tap lesson when I was nine or ten years old," Grace told me. "That was my first clue of what musicals could be, and it was so much fun that it sent me off in that direction." And at Christmas, Leon Leonidoff and his assistant Florence Rogge would stage the pantomime at the Capitol Theatre (as they would do for a number of Canadian vaudeville houses.) Grace played one of the three bears. "This was not [like] anything we saw in Canada ever before. .. Any time I got a chance to be in anything where there was music added to the dance, where you could sing, bounce around and have fun, I considered was a musical." At the age of eleven she turned professional as part of a travelling children's vaudeville troupe, the Winnipeg Kiddies. "There would be parts in our little stage show that we would do that were really, again, little mini-musicals with little songs and dances and things put together." When her family moved to Vancouver in the 1930s, Grace continued her studies in Chicago and New York. When she came home, she opened her own dance studio at the age of fifteen. As a youngster, she had suffered a serious fall that led to vertebrae in her back being fused, meaning that she would never be a top league dancer, so she turned to teaching others and to choreography, staging operettas for the Kiwanis Club in the late 1930s. Like most teachers, it is through her pupils that her impact is felt. Her most famous student, Jeff Hyslop made his name in^ Chorus Line, playing the role of Mike in both the London and Broadway companies. "I auditioned like every other person for that show," recalled Hyslop. "Michael Bennett and [co-choreographer] Bob Avian had 400 people in Toronto audition. I was choreographing Company for David Y.H. Lui here for his new theatre, and I flew out on the Sunday, which was our day off, and David gave me the Monday as well. So I auditioned on the Monday, and after the audition Bernie Gersten, the associate producer, congratulated me and said, Til see you in New York/"
In August of 1982, I received a press release from Seattle's Fifth Avenue Theatre advertising auditions for the International Company of A Chorus Line. I saw this as an opportunity to profile some of Vancouver's up-and-coming dancers in an article for Playboard magazine. I began by notifying all the dance studios and talent agencies, and then phoned a number of dancers whom I knew personally, many of whom had been trained in Mussoc by Grace. (One of them was future Stargate star Teryl Rothery.) Also among them was her most recent protege. Hernando Cortez Jr. had just won the E.V. Young Award for most outstanding performance by a dancer or chorus member at Theatre in the Park, a semi-professional successor to Theatre Under the Stars. At the end of the audition, three people were shortlisted for a possible callback. One of them was Hernando. He never heard from them, but he was very pleased to have made it thus far. At seventeen, he was the second youngest of our group, and the only one to make it to the final stage. Soon after the audition, Hernando left for New York on a scholarship to study at Purchase College Conservatory of Dance (NY), where he gained a BFA. Upon graduation, he joined Feld Ballets, then spent nine years as a star dancer with the Paul Taylor company. In 1991, he founded Dancers Responding to AIDS (for which hf won a special Dance Magazine award). He has toured with Mikhail BajpfaMlov's White Oaks Dance Project^ and in 1996 formed his own troupe, Cortez and Company.
Actress Margot Kidder (centre) and Dave Overton (left centre), now a professor of theatre at Dalhousie University, with the cast of Take Me Along, 1966. Courtesy of the Musical Society (Mussoc) Fonds, University of British Columbia Archives.
Grace Macdonald passed away on April 4,1987* at tie age of 71. Hernando credited her with start&g his career, "She made me love it all. She taught me everything."
ME
103
inoMG TRULY NOBFUL' few years ago an English lighting designer named Benny Ball suggested to me, "You know what would be a really good idea for some bright young producer? Mount an English provincial tour of Anne of Green Gables" Although it ran for only nine months in the West End back in 1969, clearly it was remembered fondly A young Cameron Mackintosh saw it at least once. So did actor Simon Callow, who remembered it as a "charming show." In some ways, the most impressive thing about Anne of Green Gables is that it was not a complete dog's breakfast. According to some theories, it should have been—Canada had no strong tradition of musical theatre; there were no workshops, no Lehman Engel. Yet this show apparently emerged from nowhere to be an instant hit. Its composer, Norman Campbell, was actually an Emmy award-winning producer of opera and ballet for television. "I think it was just instinct that, as a TV producer, I understood dramatic construction," he says. And its librettist, Don Harron, is known to millions as the hayseed philosopher Charlie Farquarson. Not easy to pigeonhole, these Canadians. Norman was born in Los Angeles in 1924, and started school there, where his classmates included future dancing star Marge Champion. His family later moved to the West End of Vancouver to a house with a piano on Melville Street. Although he'd had about ten weeks of lessons, he learned to play mainly by ear. In grade four, he told his teacher that he'd set the Adventures of Sammy Fox to music. That was his first mistake. "Suddenly, in the middle of class, she said, 'Norman Campbell is now going to sing a song he has composed.'The blood drained out of my head, and I had to stand up and sing this song with all the sullen glances of the entire class on me. At recess, the class bully took me aside and bashed me against the brick wall of the building, and said, 'That's for your song.'" Campbell attended the University of British Columbia, gaining a degree in Math and Physics. Although he was active in amateur dramatics while at university, including Her Scienceman Lover, a one-act farce by Eric Nicol that also featured Lister Sinclair and Arthur Hill (in his memoirs, Nicol takes full credit for Campbell's later success), he initially pursued a career as a meteorologist. He told me that while spending Christmas on Sable Island in 1945, "we had no supply boats of food, and had on the middle of a huge oval platter our 'turkey,' a can of Spam with
A
liiiiiiiiiwNiiniii
104
gravy made from the last raisins poured over it. As we cut the Spam, we asked 'do you prefer light meat or dark?'"Their one radio picked up broadcasts from New York, playing the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. He resolved then and there to change careers. In 1946, CBC Radio got wind of his musical prowess and commissioned him to write a song a week for Juliette to sing on a series called Summer Romance. "I didn't tell them that I only had five songs in my trunk... I really had to scramble." On one occasion, producer Doug Nixon wrote a script in which Norman was to relate how he came to write this week's song. "He had me going to a baseball game, being socked on the head by a ball, and creating In My Granny's Wedding Gown or some such number out of my trunk." He adds ruefully, "I have never been to a baseball game." He joined CBC full time as a producer in 1948, and wrote his first musical, Oh Please, Louise (with book by Eric Nicol), the following year. His wife Elaine explains, "Norman just sits down and plays. He'll come in at any time of day—and often fairly late at night—and music comes right out that he's never played before, and sometimes even he doesn't know he's played a totally new song in all the noodling about." In 1952, he moved to Toronto as a part of the first generation of Canadian television producers, under chief producer Mavor Moore. In fact, he directed the first ever show on September 8, 1952. He gained a reputation for his TV adaptations of ballet, eventually winning two Emmy Awards. (He used to joke that his real ambition was to do Swan Lake on radio.) In 1955, he composed and directed his first TV musical (with lyrics by Elaine) for television. T&ke t&the Woods starred Robert Gonlef, with, according to Campbell, a "veiy foi^riy WJpt" by Eric Nico! Other musicals he wrote for televisi6WMKU^jwd 'Jp* Gay Deceiv$r$ 9based on She Stoops to Conquer) with a boo^f^;£^^ Perrault, and strarring American actress Inge Swenson, wiu$^^uld lster star in Jessel and Grudeff's Baker Street on Broadway. was During the same period, Ni|i^^rk critic Walter Kerr covering v the Stratford Festival and sp^^ ^^pajg;a^r Aatt^Oo^d Harron. Walter's wife, JfeaE K^.wito would later "Wiitfe ;$fe Bf^Way hit Please Dorit JEfc*^^^^ had written a play called king of Hearts, wfeMli wasto*t^Jj^duced in London. Kerr hired Harron for a supporting role, but just as he^a$ ^^^l^\^^^€^^x^^^^r, pondld,Cook dropped dead, and the sttow was canceled.-^Tktt^ Hfcnon told me, "Norman Campbell saidj Tve got mngty miimtes to fill on CBC Television. What'll I do with it?*I said,"... IVe been reading a book to my
ME
105
Left: The CBC live TV production of Anne of Green Gables was broadcast in 1956. Shown here are Toby Tarnow as Anne and John Drainie as Matthew. Photo by Robert Ragsdale. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell. Right: The CBC mounted another live production of Anne of Green Gables: The Musicalin 1958. Shown here are Margot Christie as Marilla, Kathy Willard as Anne and John Drainie as Matthew. Photo by Robert Ragsdale. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.
mow NORTH
106
kids1 that sounds like it would make a good musical. It's Anne of Green Gables'" Norman continued, "I handed it to [wife] Elaine, who reads things like that with more speed than I'm able to. She immediately said, 'Well this is a great idea... Here's a buggy ride, you could have a song with the clip-clop of the buggy.' She immediately started breaking the book down into ideas." Elaine Campbell is the perfect illustration of the adage that behind every great man is a remarkable woman. "She was bringing up five kids then," says Norman. "She'd be writing lyrics while changing diapers." (She also came from a remarkable family—brother Doug Leiterman produced This Hour Has Seven Days, while other brother Richard was cinematographer on Coin Down the Road wnA My American Cousin?) Anne of Green Gables was first seen as a live TV production in 1956, starring John Drainie as Matthew, Margot Christie as Marilla and Toby Tarnow as Anne. The music was arranged and conducted by Phil Nimmins. It was written over long distance; Don was working for the CBC at the UN in New York, and would send lyrics to Toronto by telex. "He was always worried," says Norman, "because he would be writing lyrics about a girl with red hair and this was the time of the McCarthy hearings. All this stuff going through the United Nations telex system was subject to some scrutiny."
Following its first live presentation,^?^ was repeated in 1958 with Kathy Willard as Anne. It then lay on the shelf for the next few years until 1964, when Mavor Moore was appointed director general of the new Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The centre was funded by the federal government and seven of the provinces. At the opening ceremony, which was hosted by Lome Greene, Queen Elizabeth remarked on one of the songs being played. Moore explained that it was from Anne of Green Gables. "I'd like to hear the rest of it," replied Her Majesty. Mavor Moore wanted to develop a festival of all-Canadian work to honour the Fathers of Confederation, who had first met in Charlottetown a century earlier. "Incidentally, the Fathers met there in a great fog of bonhomie—drank themselves into merriment, much to the scandal of the local newspapers. They had a great party. I felt the idea of having a good time at the birth of a nation was a marvellous excuse for a festival." A "Festival of Music and Laughter," he called it. The first offerings of the Charlottetown Festival in 1965 included Spring Thaw '65, Wayne and Shuster (who shared the artistic directorship of the Festival with Moore that first year) and John Drainie and Dave Broadfoot in Laugh With LeacocL But most daring of all-in this all-Canadian season, was the world sta^e premiere ofjfnm^Green Gables, put together by ch0iTO|p^pher Alan Lund who was making his solo directorial debut with only, thiK^ weeks rehearsal on a budgetof $60,000. "Alan loved to create," '«$$4k widdw Blanche fcund/aud this is why Charlottetown was th^e perfect place for him. Jli would sit and you could just see his mind gpiijjjj?, ; It took them until April 19 to.Stitaitt/thethe stage rights to tj^e novel. Don Harron was in .Los\^ureles filming Th# PmjM^ tndf Norman - - < * ' '" '-• ^"'^f ,-:•'"'••••'„,-•-.. - •' " * ' ' y\ ' ; " Campbell w^t§;^||^blg^&^OT6cti% the QmSall^ina for Walt Disney. Once ^^^^^^^^^^Mn'wms by long distance. **0nie of frty songs," recalls Hairop* ^had thirteen lines in the first vcwc, all rhyming with the same vowel, and eleven lines in the second verse, all rhyming with a different vowel.*J Yet, somehow Norman Campbell was able to set "Mrs. Lynde" to mtisic and make it work:
After attending an Anne of Green Gables performance in 1967, the Queen Mum congratulates Alan Lund for his direction and choreography, as Blanche Lund and Mavor Moore (far right) observe. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
DCJ DUE
107
"Mrs. Lynde Oh, Mrs. Lynde You have been wronged and I have sinned. My very soul is so chagrined I acted so undisciplined I should have laughed, I should have grinned I should have been more thicker skinned Forgive me, please, my hopes are pinned on Mrs. Lynde..."3
Shown are the three collaborators who, along with Mavor Moore, created the Canadian musical, 4nne of Green Gables, based upon the novel, Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1-r): Don Harron, Elaine Campbell and Norman Campbell. All four people were responsible for the lyrics. Don Harron adapted the orphan "Anne" into a musical and Norman Campbell composed the music. Mavor Moore was the CEO of Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown and launched the allCanadian Charlottetown Festival in 1965, by commissioning Anne of Green Gables. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.
BROIIY NORTH
108
Still, more work needed to be done, and Don wasn't there to do it. Mavor Moore wrote to him, "Sympathize with causes keeping you there but delay spells disaster for us."4 Ultimately, Moore wound up stepping in to write three of the lyrics himself: "Open the Window," "Did You Hear?" and "The Words," the latter of which is sung by a tonguetied Matthew ("I cant find the words/Cant get out the phrases") and reprised by Marilla after his death. Normans wife Elaine also contributed several lyrics, as she had in the original TV version, including the title song, "Gee, I'm Glad,""Wondrin " and "Summer." In that initial season, the orchestra consisted of only four musicians— including musical director John Fenwick and his associate Fen Watkin playing the two pianos, plus a trumpet and percussion, identical to that used by Spring Thaw. (Nathan Cohen remarked, "Norman Campbell's score is plainly adaptable to a much larger number.") In fact, much of the company, both backstage and onstage, came from Spring Thaw, including Peter Mews as Matthew, Barbara Hamilton as Marilla and Dean Regan as Gilbert, in addition to Alan Lund and musical director John Fenwick. As Moore remarks, "Only an acting company drilling together for years could have prepared two new musicals in one month while performing a third and added a fourth while performing the first three."5 At first, Don Harron balked at the idea of Barbara Hamilton playing the dour Marilla. She would be too funny, he thought. Marilla with a twinkle in her eye would be disastrous. Hamilton had said she wouldn't do Spring Thaw that year unless they gave her the part. "Alan really stood behind her," says Blanche Lund. "He said, 'I had her in That Hamilton
Woman [at the Crest Theatre, May 1963] and she's a good actress. I know she could do it.' Of course, she was wonderful." Cohens initial review in the Toronto Star seemed to damn it with faint praise (although as damnation it was pretty ineffective). "There's no doubt that it will be much improved when it returns to the Charlottetown Festival next summer. It wont be then, and it isn't now, a musical of world-shaking consequence, but even now it has a commendable steadiness." About the Festival as a whole, he said, "Something truly wonderful has happened in Charlottetown." Four years later, Cohen added, "It is hideous to contemplate what might have happened to the festival if the audience on their first night of Anne of Green Gables had hissed or booed it, or walked out, or just sat there in stony, implacable silence. Fortunately, their response proved that the gamble was no gamble at all, but a judicious assessment by Moore of a combination of factors and talents and what would result from their merger."The New York Times reported, "Prince Edward Island has a reputation for friendliness, but nowhere has sociability gone as far as it has the nights that Anne is on."6 However, they added, "Whether critics in New York or producers in Hollywood would agree remains to be seen." "When the show was judged to be a success about three weeks later," Norman Campbell explains, "a whole lot of wheels went into motion, and John Fenwick arranged the whole show for orchestra. We had the Atlantic Symphony in the pit the next year... It really blew me off in 1966 to arrive on the island and hear, from the pit, this glorious big sound. It was quite lovely," In 1967, it toured across the country as part of the Confederation centennial celebrations. After that, Alan Lund succeeded Mavor Moore as artistic director of the festival^ and, according to Blanche, "built it up to be the best summer theatre in Canada** Campbell and Harron ccmtiriiied to tMfeefwith the showt Jid^ii^fbngs here and there. "We had a scene in thej$!K>re where JV&ttfct^^s tc^buy the puffed sleeves for Ann^ffe^liai *emo^e0, %&d it %is a dramatic scene, a comedy scene, a lot of ftm witii t!te*girl behifld ;ttoe counter in Blair's store. But it was all in (fial^ii^aad lAa^ht w.flbdbd a song* In fact, every scene in a musical djAXGiM fO^feaw^:^>iig,'te'it So Jpon and I wrote'General Store/*
To coiuddCjf^i^tiie GeAteii^xyeai^e Composers* Au&ors and. Publishers Association of Canada and the Canacikti,^$0c^tioii^f Broadcasters released an album of rather dbee§y easy listening amngements of songs from Anne and other Canadian musicals. For this particular occasion, Elaine Campbell adapted tibe lyrics to 'Wondrin,' removing specific references to red hair (and slates cracked over heads).
ICIINE
109
BROMY NORTH
110
Then, in 1969, expatriate Canadian Bill Freedman, who had seen the show during its 1967 tour, tookdnne to London. "Everybody told me not to do it," he said at the time. "They said no one wants to see a sentimental kid's classic on stage."7 Freedman, who had another play called Hadrian the Seventh running at the same time, now says, "I could have bought a couple of Picassos instead of putting it on." Instead, he has a painting of the Anne set hanging in his Covent Garden office. "The man who was putting up all the money fled about two weeks before it went into rehearsal and I ended up spending a lot of money on that particular masterpiece." Although this would be Alan Lund's first time as a director in the West End, there were many people around who still remembered him from his Palladium days. (A few years later, he returned to stage Great Expectations, starring John Mills, with music by Cyril Ornadel, the composer of Pickwick, and lyrics by the late Hal Shaper. Shaper's Jane Eyre had played at Charlottetown. Great Expectations opened at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, then toured the UK and Canada.) Norman and Elaine Campbell took their three sons and two daughters with them to London, where Norman was also producing a TV series for Liberace. "Bill Freedman didn't want the critics to know that it was a Canadian show in any way," says Norman. "He just wanted them to come in and judge it as what they saw on the stage." Mame was about to open there starring Ginger Rodgers, and it had songs called "Open a New Window" and "Bosom Buddies."Anne had "Open the Window" and "Bosom Friends." Something had to give. "Freedman said, 'What a coincidence that is,'"remembers Campbell. "I said/Coincidence-schmincidence!'We wrote ours nine years before!" "Open the Window" was simply retitled "Learn Everything," but "Bosom Friends" had to go. Norman mentioned this problem to Liberace, and the next day found that a piano had been delivered to his flat. Ultimately, they noticed how often L. M. Montgomery used the phrase "kindred spirits" in her novel. So "Kindred Spirits" it became. Only three members of the Charlottetown company were used in the London production—Barbara Hamilton, Susan Anderson (as Diana) and Australian-born Robert Ainslie as Gilbert. Matthew was played by American actor Hiram "Chubby" Sherman, a veteran of Orson Welles'Mercury Theatre who had, earlier in his career, appeared in the revolutionary Marc Blitzstein opera The Cradle Will Rock. Anne was played by English actress Polly James, who had played in Haifa Sixpence on Broadway. Freedman wanted a new up-tempo number to replace Matthew's version of "The Words" (Manila's reprise stayed in.) "We knew that Hiram
Sherman... didn't want to do 'The Words.'We wrote this new song, 'When I Say My Say'... In Canada, people always preferred to sing 'The Words'... but this song, 'When I Say My Say' was a strong song and a funny song. He could talk to the cows and chickens, and they would pay attention to him, so it showed his chicken-hearted attitude. But I don't think he sang it terribly well." Unlike "Kindred Spirits," this song was never interpolated into the Charlottetown version, although it is included as an appendix to the published score. Norman and Elaine also wrote another new song in London, "When the Heartbreak is Over" for Anne to sing after Matthew's death, but it wasn't used. It eventually surfaced in another show, The Wonder Of It All. Anne opened on April 16, 1969, at the New (later Albery) Theatre to largely enthusiastic notices. The Illustrated London News found it "quietly likeable," while Punch promised it would "keep audiences happily smiling through their tears for months to come." Queen wrote, "The harmless ditties which accompany the translation of the story are exactly in the right key to guarantee it the kind of sugary success achieved by The Sound of Music "while the Sunday Times said, "This musical has the bounding happiness of youth... You cannot guess until you have seen Anne of Green Gables how exciting a quality innocence can be." Putting it all in perspective, Harold ftdbson wrote in the Sunday Time$> "Perhaps because »little had been expected of it, the discovery that what it had to give was considerable provoked an enthusiasm somewhat in excess of its deserts/* Barbara Hamilton was relishing it* She told the St&i*$ Harry J. Pollock, "You're constantly playing before your peers* so you do y0ur best every performance* Michael Redgrave will pop in to see the sfadw. Or Noel Coward* The other night Hubert Humphrey and his party were here. The place was surrounded Police. American Secret Service men— the whole schticL"8 CBS recorded a cast album, produced by Norman Newell, a respected songwriter in his own right; he had worked with Lund at the Palladium twenty years earlier. In the next room at Abbey Road Studios, four guys
Anne opened at the New Theatre in London on April 16,1969 to predominantly positive reviews. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.
flEimiE
in
Grade Rnley was a Prince Edward Island girl of eighteen when she began her theatrical career at the Confederation Centre Theatre in 1966. Two years later she was awarded the coveted role of Anne Shirley and played the role from 1968 to 1985. The first Anne was Jamie Ray, from 1965 to 1967. Gracie is the only PE Islander to have played Anne to this day. Photo by Malak, Ottawa. Courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
BRUIY NORTH
112
from Liverpool were working on a song about a cephalopod mollusc with an interest in horticulture. Anne concluded its London run on January 17, 1970, having completed 319 performances. Although Plays and Players magazine voted it the year's best musical, "It never caught on with adult audiences," Freedman says. "We used to sell out in the summer, half-term and Saturday matinees. They considered it to be a children's show. I was very unsophisticated in 1969.1 should have toured it. I would not have done it today without two stars." Barbara Kelly and Bernard Braden, a married couple from Vancouver who had become stars in Britain, were offered the roles at the time, but turned them down. Duncan Weldon and Paul Elliot enquired about mounting a provincial tour, but nothing came of it. Later that year, the Charlottetown Festival production was presented in English for 23 performances at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan, starring Gracie Rnley as Anne, Peter Mews as Mathew and Barbara Hamilton as Marilla. Gracie remembers the experience, "Mathew and I were in front of the scrim, and we knew behind us they had all of maybe sixty seconds to bring on the house and get it set up for the new scene... We heard a tremendous crash behind us, and we wondered what in the world had happened. Of course, we ignored it and carried on... The scrim went up, and everything seemed normal... Peter Mews and I looked at each other with a sense of relief that everything seemed to be in one piece. Barbara came down the stairs on cue, and began doing very strange things with her head and eyes... We still didn't clue in... The crash we heard was Annes dresser falling down onto the stage. The crew had hurriedly replaced it, but one of the Japanese stagehands was stuck up in the bedroom... Barbara was in hysterics, because when he realized there was no escaping, he tried first of all to get under the bed [which was] actually only about two by three feet... He pulled a drawer out of the dresser and placed a foot into the bottom drawer thinking he just might be able to hide there... The audience didn't know any of this was going on. This was behind the gable of the bedroom set... He finally suspended himself down the back of the set."
At Christmas \97\yAnne made a two week stop at New York's City Center as a part of a regional tour. Walter Kerr (whose abortive attempts to hire Don Harron two decades earlier had presaged the show) wrote in the New York Times, "As staged, the show's deliberate simplicity seemed to me synthetic and a bit pushy, its pig-tailed heroine seemed constantly on the verge of turning herself into Donald Duck in her eagerness to be recognized as a pint-sized force of nature, and its jokes—what might have been good enough if anyone had shushed them a little—kept spelling themselves out in the capital letters that belong on children's play-blocks, and should be swept right back under the Christmas tree." One wonders if ke knew that he bore partial responsibility for the show's emstenee, Qti^tf reviews wer^l&a^^^itive. In the same paper, Clive bARMES,T HAS & folksy ait: TO IT,AND is unpretentious, undemandiii^^t^ri^|^fe^M charm." Richard watts \5fetts in the Post found it "surprisingly disarming and likeable." tdeclared News whistle." ToUnitedit "clean Press bInternational.it as was a u
Anne of Green Gables was an enormous success in Tokyo in 1980, and was revived in 1995 and 2002. Anne Shirley's "home" in Prince Edward Island is a major tourist destination for many Japanese visitors. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell
was
cha ch yml mlyly charming." "warmly
A Japanese language production was presented by the Shiki Theatre Company to great succes in Tokyo in 1980,and was revived in 199995 and 2002.Don Hrron says," Anne of green Gables iis Japan's national story For some reason ,they've adopted that island,those people,that story." According to Norman Camphell," There was no strangeness Everyone thought we should r£act to a Japanese j^l w^^igB^^^ails, but it was perfectly natural." He added, *The casf WES' (6Jmlmty all of them being good musicians and having great schooling in theatrical arts."
ME
ll3
The Tapestry Music Theatre production of Anne of Green Gables was staged at the Elgin Theatre in 1991. Shown here in March 1991 are (1-r): Gordon Pinsent, Don Harron, Norman Campbell and Barbara Hamilton. Photo by Fred Phipps. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.
SiiDiYiira
114
A Swedish production also appeared in Gothenburg. It was even adapted by Jacques Lemay (who would later become artistic director at Charlottetown) for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet in 1989, orchestrated by Robert Farnon. "There is some overlap," Campbell explains. "I used'Wondrin and 'Humble Pie' and 'Great Workers for the Cause.'Then I wrote a lot of new material. Anne breaks out into dance when she meets Matthew, so there's a joyous waltz on a new Anne theme for the ballet." In 1991, a commercial production was presented in Toronto by Tapestry Music Theatre, directed by Lund and starring Barbara Hamilton as Marilla, Gordon Pinsent as Mathew and newcomer Jessica-Snow Wilson as Anne. Wilson, who had played a small part in my musical Shikara when it was presented on radio three years previously, was nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore award. She would later play Eponine in Les Miserables on Broadway In the mid-1990s, a group of American producers wanted to take the show on a regional U.S. tour, but insisted on some changes. At one point, we see the vicar sneak a drink of whisky, thus, they felt, rendering it unsuitable for family audiences. For Norman, a teetotal Christian Scientist, that and the "Watkins man" suggestion ensured that negotiations broke down irreparably. Now, for legal reasons, the show is referred to officially as Anne of Green Gables—The Musical™. By the end of the century it had clocked up over 2,000 performances at Charlottetown—more than either South Pacific or The Sound of Music achieved on Broadway. Still, during the time when Lund was in charge, he did his best to keep the show fresh, and would announce at the start of each season, "We're going to do a new Anne this year, as usual."9
Composer-lyricist Leslie Arden, whose mother Cleone Duncan was a member of the Anne cast for many years, says "The reason Anne of Green Gables has lasted so long is that there are actual stakes. She is an orphan and she almost doesn't get adopted, and then in the end, Matthew does die. It's not 'he almost dies but he's okay and it's a happy ending/No, he dies. And she doesn't go to university, she stays home to look after Marilla. There are stakes, and they don't shy away from them. At the same time, the lines are truly funny. So, yes, it's old-fashioned, but the reason its lasted and is so successful is that it's a well-constructed show and you believe that they have something at stake." John Gray says that Anne works "because it's about PEI and it's in PEL When it came out, there was nothing written about Canadians. The fact that its form is an American form—it's the only one that Don and Norman had to work with. [And the early American musicals, including those of Victor Herbert, were written in the Viennese style for the same reason.] They were just writing a musical, trying to write something about the area. At that time, in the 1950s, there was no Canadian form. There were no precedents to Anne of Green Gables. If you were doing it now, you would write it differently." Campbell and Harron had even planned, with Japanese backing, to make a movie of Anne, with Norman directing. In 1982, Harron told me, "It has to be just right. It has to be done in Prince Edward Island. It has to be done with an all-Canadian cast. People said, 'You're out of your minds! Films are international! Films cross borders!'I'm sorry. TJiis is our epitaph. This is very important to us. When we make this, it's going to be for all time." That plan hit a major setback in the late 1980s when Kevin Sullivan's non-musical TV miniseries came out. Although they retained the rights to film the piusical, sadly, it never happened, and Norman Campbell passed away oa April 12,2004. Campbell and Harron wsotg two moretatjtsicals together* 3|^^ (later revised as Private Turveys W^9\yf&& ON eARL bIRNEY'S NOVEL Adventures of Private Turvey^ wasp^s^itted tt tlti' Chtfl^flfWn Festival in 1966 starring Jack Duffy? $i|fj was fewc?<| ia £ cog^Mf^pmon by the Hannafbrd Street Silver BandWi^onto in 2004. T^^n4erofi(J// The y based on the life of Canadian ^^i^&i^^i^'W^^^^Mxd d m television in 1971, and on stage li|^|ctori%Botisli CoHi^i^ adecid^Iater. A sequel toAnng, ^^^J^^^!^A^^m^ s cwwo^h^ptd^JYm^ Theatre in NeipptfW^ 003. American writers JeffHochauserer and Bob Johnston have teamed withjpinidiaa composer Mt^^WMite (who played Ophelia in Cliff Jones* H&mkt ®ti radio)/a£c(based their show on Anne ofAvonlea and Anne of the Mfnd. As of this writing, Anne and Gilbert has yet to receive a full staging, * *-"";:*-v'
*, •••••'*. * , ,
•'•
..- ^'"•*•;•" y ,'"
^jf>*
^
D[j M_
||5
ll.1t Too OF IHEIR DOME In" I hen, in 1996,1 was a finalist in the International Musical of the Year contest in Aarhus, Denmark, one of the other names on the list was [ familiar. I knew that Raymond Jessel, nominated in the Best Song category for his musical version of Moll Flanders, had been a veteran of Spring Thaw. Jessel was born in Hereford in 1929, and grew up in Cardiff, gaining his music degree at the University of Wales, and winning a scholarship to study in Paris with the noted composer Arthur Honnegar. "I was always a very serious A student of music," he says, "and outside of that, I was a class clown." He emigrated to Canada in 1953, where he found work as a composer and orchestrator for the CBC. He was also musical director at Toronto's Temple Sinai, writing liturgical music. In 1957, he teamed up with Marian Grudeff to write songs for Spring Thaw. Grudeff was born in Toronto in 1927, and made her debut as a pianist with the Toronto Symphony at the age of eleven, playing Liszt's "Hungarian Fantasy." Soon after she played her first recital at the Eaton auditorium. Grudeff began her association with Spring Thaw in 1950 as musical director. "I started going to parties," she remembers, "and Raymond was at a lot of these parties. He would sit down and play and sing a funny song. I realized he was more or less a starving composer, so I said Tm looking for material this year. Why don't you write some of these things down?'" "She said I could earn a few dollars because they did pay royalties," says Jessel. "The music she was getting was not very good, so I started writing music to lyrics that they had. At first, Marian edited it, as she knew what the show needed, and what would work." "He used to come over and play me half-finished things," Grudeff continues. "One day, he played something and I didn't think it worked, and I said' Why don't you try this?'I pushed him aside at the piano and played something else, and I became a composer. I'm not very good at it by myself—I can only write with Ray." "Ray knows all the rules," says Grudeff, "because he studied composition. I would suggest something and he'd say, 'No, you can't do that.' And I would say, 'Why not? It sounds right' and I'd go to the piano and show him. And so I helped him break the rules. I know what he doesn't know and he knows what I don't know. When I first met him, he wanted to change the key on something in the second verse. He wanted to go
I
BiiiYlim
116
down, and I said, 'You cant go down, it's very depressing/"Jessel also received a popular music education from Grudeff. "Marian loved to sit down at the piano and play through the Rodgers and Hart songbook [among others] and would point out certain things to me, musically or lyrically." For six years, Grudeff and Jessel wrote songs together—each writing both music and lyrics—some of which were performed in New York in Julius Monk's Upstairs at the Downstairs revues. Jessel also occasionally worked with other collaborators, including Stan Daniels, with whom he wrote Look Ma, Pm Human, a caveman musical broadcast on CBC-TV on November 28, 1957, and starring Jack Duffy as Muk, "one of the first cavemen to think," according to director Norman Campbell. "His girlfriend was [played by] Carol Starkman and his dinosaur friend was 'Roget Thesaurus.' A great soft-shoe number was Duffy and Roget tap-dancing to A Mans Best Friend is His Neo-Tyranno PjeIcthio Roget Thesaurus'.*. In a live telecast we showed Roget dumping rocks on the monster whose feet we only showed the bottom of. With a prism lens we had the cavemen scrambling up a cliff side (by scrambling over the floor). A big number was Glump [Don McManus] singing to his lady love Irene Byatt, 'When I Many Hairy Mary/ Bnmo Gerussi was one of the first artists, a ^eolptor*.. It was a funny commentary on our [then] present way of life*.. It's one of m^fevourite productions." "One day, while in Caa&cb^says Broadwiy prodbcd?!Ale?cander Cohen, who was booking acts into the Q'Keeib Centre, f^* Was approached by two young musicians who had written a& auditsoa -Ifeore about RT. Barnum that they wanted ra6-|& hea& I was s& impieig&d by the work of Marian Grudeff and Raj^Qnd JcssdL*1 Qfuddf remembers, "We were BMI writers^* and they tai^yro haw to write iw or sk songs on s&zitf subject*m addition pieces for Broadway prodmt^bs, *We picked the life of Barnum because it was in the public doninjii,*-says Jessel. "We played our songs for Alex Cohen on the stageof the O'Keefe... We were signed up within a couple of weefcs to do Barnum" In fact, Cohen had announced a Broadway opening date of April 22, 1964.
Ray Jessel emigrated from England to Canada in 1953. Four years later he was writing songs for Spring Thaw with pianist Marian Grundeff. Courtesy of Ray Jessel.
fiCTlNf
117
B»DiY|ora
118
"For the next couple of years or so, we were traipsing around the country with Alex, trying to find somebody who would write the book who would satisfy Alex. We met writers who would satisfy us, but they never satisfied him. Meanwhile, he had the reverse problem with another property that he had." Baker Street, a Sherlock Holmes musical, had a book by Jerome Coopersmith. "The book was workable, but the songs were impossible," says Jessel. "At first, we were brought in to substitute half a dozen songs. The first director involved was Michael Langham, a British director who was working in Canada at the time [he had succeeded Tyrone Guthrie at the Stratford Festival] and he suggested we should be brought in to write the whole thing. Because the production was delayed, Langham couldn't stay. He had other commitments. We then were working with Joshua Logan for quite a while. We got along famously with him, but he had one of his manic episodes. [Logan was manic-depressive.] He went into treatment. The next up was Hal Prince, looking to direct something that he did not produce. He didn t like all of our score from the get-go, and eventually he brought [Jerry] Bock and [Sheldon] Harnick, whom he worked with on She Loves Me, to substitute some of the songs they had written." (When the York Theatre s "Musicals in Mufti" series did a staged reading of Baker Street a few years ago, they restored the Jessel/ Grudeff score and omitted the Bock and Harnick additions.) The first tryout opened in Boston at the Shubert Theatre on December 28,1964, then played a two-week run at Toronto's O'Keefe Centre, beginning January 20, 1965. There, according to Cohen, "Grudeff and Jessel were rightly saluted as the toast of their own home town." In fact, the Globe and Mails Herbert Whittaker felt it had "many of the ingredients of the present-day musical success—light, charming music closely integrated with the dramatic action, dramatic action that is often compelling, the usual excellencies of Oliver Smith's costumes and settings and, above all, characters worth following through the evening." It opened in New York at the Broadway Theatre on February 16,1965, where it remained for 311 performances. (It transferred briefly to the Martin Beck before closing on November 14, 1965.) Emory Lewis in Cue Magazine called it "...one of the best musicals of the 1960s... an enchanted, imaginative and very funny evening of pure joy."2 But, in his book Broadway Babies Say Goodnight, Canadian-born critic Mark Steyn says, "Much of it sounds like Henry Higgins retreads: an educated Englishman talk-singing very densely packed lyrics."3 Cohen hired them again to write the title song for Helzapoppin, a revue directed by George Abbott, which played in Montreal at Expo '67.
Although it never made it to Broadway, the title song was recorded by both Jimmy Durante and Louis Armstrong. In 1969 Jessel and Grudeff returned to Canada, to the Charlottetown Festival, to do Life Can Be—Like Wow, based on Moliere's The Bourgeois Gentilhomme and starring Dean Regan. "Instead of a bourgeois gentleman," says Jessel, "we had a very rich square who wanted to learn how to be hip. We used the language of what was then contemporary. If You Wanna Be a Hippie'was one of the songs, and we had much the same characters [as Moliere]. We had a conniving guy who saw that there was a way to make a few bucks off this rich guy. There was a song called 'You Are Nowhere If You Don't Know Where Its At."' Nathan Cohen in the Star described the music as "commonplace, unaffected by the beat of top rock and other recent fashions, and the lyrics and the story are perfunctory." Jessel says, "I think it was a little too hip for the Charlottetown audience. It was almost a rock musical." Jessel next moved to Hollywood, where he wrote musical material and comedy sketches for Dean Martin, Carol Burnett and others, then became a scriptwriter for The Love Boat. (Long before Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jessel penned a musical episode.) Grudeff returned to Toronto, taking up a teaching position at the Royal Conservatory of Music and resuming her classical performing career. In 1979, Jessel became Richard Rodgers' final collaborator, when he replaced Martin Charnin as lyricist on I Remember Mama. More recently, he has been touring North America, performing his own songs in cabaret. In the early 1980s, the late composer Cy Coleman had a great success with that Barnum idea. The musical played on Broadway and ran for several years.
flCIiNE
119
18. VAMCOVER: "THE THINGS THAT YOU YET WILL DO"
I
Jgrew up three thousand miles from Broadway, and musical theatre in ^Vancouver was filtered through some strong local influences. It was
iinevitable that the commercial heart of a province once ruled by a man iresplendent in the name Amor de Cosmos (Lover of the Universe) would have an identity all its own. Anyone stepping outside of home or office is immediately confronted by the sight of Grouse Mountain and is reminded that no clever rhyme or level of sophistication could ever match it for sheer grandeur. Beauty is valued above cleverness. Vancouver even possessed a poet laureate of sorts. The Mohawk "Princess" E. Pauline Johnson from the Six Nations Reserve near Brantford, Ontario, came to love her adopted home, where she died in 1913.
There's wine in the cup, Vancouver And there's warmth in my heart for you While I drink to your health And your youth and your wealth And the things that you yet will do1
RWNflYlORTR
120
As I grew older, and became more aware of the professional theatre that was happening there in the early 70s, I saw the cadre of recent UBC graduates who were to dominate local theatre. (A decade later, I would cover them as a theatre critic for the Georgia Straight.} These experiences, as much as any imported culture, inspired me to what would become my vocation. When Brent Carver opened in Kiss of the Spider Woman at London's Shaftesbury Theatre in the early 1990s, I told director Harold Prince that I first knew Brent was a star some twenty years before. During the early 1970s, a remarkable group of people came through UBC, one that would change the future of Canadian theatre. In addition to Carver, the group included Richard Ouzounian, an American expatriate who gained his Master's degree there, Marek Norman, John Gray, Eric Peterson, Ann Mortifee, David Y.H. Lui and Patrick Rose—many of whom worked together as a semi-cohesive unit, in what producer Lui used to call the "Movers and Shakers Club." Some British Columbia artists had deep theatrical roots. Former vaudevillian Fran Dowie, who for eighteen years ran the Barkerville Follies at the restored Barkerville historic site in east central BC, was the
grandson of Frank W. Dowie, the first minstrel act to appear at the London Palladium. Vancouver had been a hot spot for popular music ever since the Poppy Family (Terry and Susan Jacks) had a massive hit with "Which Way You Coin/ Billy?" in 1969. Artists from k.d. lang to Bryan Adams have called it home, so there must be something in its snow-capped mountains that makes people want to sing. When I lived there, it was also home to some of the country's greatest jazz musicians, including Fraser MacPherson and Wyatt Ruther. In the 1970s, a Swiss-born airline upholsterer named Willi Germann was known as the patron saint of jazz musicians. He spent his savings promoting small jazz events, many of which were recorded by CBC Radio and others. One became the album Fraser MacPherson Live at the Planetarium released by RCA. This was voted "Jazz Album of the Year" by Stereo Review magazine. (I worked with Willi on one of his later shows.) In the early seventies, Richard Ouzounian directed Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris starring Ruth Nichol, Patrick Rose, Ann Mortifee and former New York folksinger Leon Bibb (who had appeared in the original cast of Annie Get Your Gun on Broadway) ran for eight months at the Arts Club. At around this time, folksinger Ann Mortifee rented a house on Westham Island owned by friends of my parents. Born in Durban, South Africa, in 1947, Ann emigrated to Canada with her family in the eajrly 1950s. (She would later celebrate her South African roots in her musical When the Rains Come). When she starred in Haifa Sixpence in Mussoc, she had already become a fixture on the local coffee house scene. What really put her on the map was when playwright George Ryga asked her to write and perform title $OB|pi for his landmark w>jrk The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, which opeftfd attfae^^ieen Elizabeth B^p^hitoie on November 23,1967, directed by George Blo^mfield. Tdft% Ate tragic story of a Native woman and 'Kef4&$cent into substance iifeiise and death on the streets of Vancouver,-,£$$& pl^y^^'^e^^^j^i^t^B musical athe lan ce story; Rita inner voice, providing a lyrical counterbto s^^re was played by the late Frani3^/Hylpyi/and her father by Qpef Dan George, who would later wkj^n Oscar as* 014Lodge Skins in Ae film Little Big Man,, Uife Wamou^'tun^m^^l doift kp<)w if it is a grweatpky; Rat 'if the role of the stage is to communicate,^ Ryga and,*/Bioomfield have accomplished their purposed When it was revived by Alberta Theatre Projects in 1976, Jamie Portman of the Vancouver Province wrote, "It was—and remains—a play for all seasons and for all peoples." But when
| [y Jn[
121
BHWHYHORTH
199 I Li 6
it played in Washington, DC, in 1973, Julius Novick in the New York Times declared, "It is at once ponderous and vague, hampered by sentimentality and second-rate lyricism." Most critical analyses of Rita Joe describe it as a play, and mention Mortifee's music as incidental, if at all. Yet it was important enough to form the basis of a ballet staged in 1971 by Norbert Vesak for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Ann expanded her music into a full score, which was orchestrated by Wolfgang Knuttel, the original New York arranger for Jacques Brel. An album was released of the score the following year, combing elements of the play and the ballet. Michael Conway Baker later arranged it into a symphonic suite. (In fact, like many musicals, the score has probably weathered time better than the book has.) Although she won critical plaudits for Journey to Kairos, a "concert for the theatre," Anns first proper "book" musical was Reflections on Crooked Walking,which opened in 1982. "I had a dream when I was about sixteen that is the basis for the show," she says. "It was a long, full-length colour dream... it always stuck with me."The result was a sort-of cross between The Wizard of Oz and Yellow Submarine. "Reflections On Crooked Walking is an allegory," she explains. "There's a town, and everyone has fallen asleep [except for] four characters—Gabby, Feathertoes, Rev. Blinkers and Sufferton—who are still awake... so they set out into a forest to find the cure. They meet with various people in the forest who teach them various things. One main person is a doorman who is, in a way, opportunity; the thing that calls you on. Then there's Opia, who is those things that prevent you from inwardly growing." "I was looking for a title," she continues, "and I had a friend who had an alcoholic problem. He was one of those jolly drunks. I'd built a little chalet at Whistler, with a walkway up to the door, which I'd wound around two trees. He walked up it, and I said 'Oh, you should write your memoirs, and call it Reflections On Crooked Walking.'We laughed, then I went [snap] 'That's my title.'That's what our lives are like. They're like crooked walking, where you think you're going in the right direction, then you take a sharp turn right because you realize, 'Oh, gosh, I didn't take all that into consideration.'Then, suddenly, you're going right, then you're going left, then you're going forward. To think that you can say, 'Well, life is going to be like this' and go in a straight line is pretty ludicrous, so I started calling it that. Since then, I haven't been able to change it. I've tried to, but it won't change." Mortifee has certainly walked a crooked course herself. After recording her first solo album, Baptism for EMI (produced by Norman Newell, who also produced the London cast of Anne of Green Gables), she appeared to
be on the crest of a major career, complete with a concert date at Carnegie Hall. But she stepped back from it, and instead felt the need to find what she felt was lacking in her life. Coming from a wealthy family (her parents owned a photo processing business) she felt she'd always been too sheltered. First, she built her chalet at Whistler. Then she spent three months working with Mother Teresa in Calcutta. Her next stop was Beirut, the inspiration for much of Journey to Kairos. In Paris, after studying painting, she returned to music and came back to Vancouver in 1979. Ann mentions blues singer Josh White Sr. as one of her major influences; he taught her to be comfortable with an audience. Brel is another influence for the honesty and dramatic power of his music. Reflections was released as a concept album before its opening at the Arts Club on December 9,1982. Gabby was played by Anns sister, Jane, an actor and cabaret singer. "It had been about eight years since Ann and I had worked together," says Jane. "I knew that people would be hitting on that angle of the sisters bit, but that's all right. We are sisters, but with very different identities. I felt very close to the play because I had seen it grow. It wasn't my baby, but I was Aunt Jane." Jubalay, with music by Patrick Rose and lyrics by the late Merv Campone (an actor in the original production of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe) had an unsophisticated charm to it. Dean Regan, who staged the musical numbers, said thztjuba/ay was "the child in all of us... simple and naive." Although heavily influenced by Brel, one song, "The Craftsman," was dedicated to him, there were no songs about Amsterdam prostitutes in this one. Instead, it featured Pat as an anarchist ready to "blow up the city," until his wife/girlfriend asks, "Then who you gonna do it with on Saturday night?"In *T>ewey and Sal," Brent Carver and Ruth Nichol played a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like hard drinking pair of bar-ro<M&~brawlers who are closet romantics: They were love Sweet love They were a sonnet They were a painting in tte J*0uvre? Other songs dealt with youtk tud old age, Quebec separatism, and, yes, Canada's etoiiire odlmal identity. Some of Campone^s lyrics did not bear too close scrutiny—*She had another name that rhymed with 'itch'"—but its amiable tone, breezily tuneful music and terrific cast ensured a healthy run at Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre, followed by a national tour and a disappointing TV production.
ME
19Q I Lid
mm NORTH
124
It began at Winnipeg's Manitoba Theatre Centre, concurrently with a TV variety show called Inside Canada, written by Pat Withrow and which used the same cast. "It was pre-Saturday Night Live, only more musical," said Carver. "The producer had seen us in Winnipeg doingjacques Brel, so we did three shows as pilots and then he wanted to extend it. They wrote eight more shows for us. We'd do different songs—Cole Porter... Brel, things from Jubalayy original comedy stuff and skits. It was a very entertaining half-hour show... based within a musical theatre milieu, but it also had an attempt at short, snappy comedy." Inside Canada also proved to be a very effective advertisement i.m Jubalay. Before the show opened, Pat Rose told the Winnipeg Free Press's Janice Keys, "I had always liked musical theatre, but I couldn't see what Hello Dolly and Guys and Dolls had to do with me."3 But after his time in Jacques Erel, he saw how songs could communicate directly with an audience without elaborate production values. The reception at Winnipeg's Warehouse Theatre was warm. "Mr. Rose and Mr. Campone have every reason to believe thztjuba/ay will go on to become one of the best works of contemporary musical theatre,"4 purred the Winnipeg Free Press. Next stop was Vancouver's Arts Club Theatre, where Jacques Bre/had done so well. They almost didn't make it. Pat Rose's seventeen-year-old cousin John offered to drive the costumes—in Pat's car—from Winnipeg to Vancouver, while the cast flew. Just out of Regina, the hood blew off the car, smashing in the windshield. This attracted the attention of the RCMP, who were curious to know why this young man was driving a BC car loaded with costumes. Eventually he hit the road again, until he got lost entering Vancouver. As all of us are taught to do, he asked a policeman for directions. Noticing the new windshield—sans Motor Vehicle Inspection sticker, the policeman politely ticketed him. Nevertheless, the show went on, and Vancouver Sun critic Christopher Dafoe reported, "a wave of enthusiasm broke over the theatre after the final number, and there were moments during the ovation when it seemed as if the theatre might easily fall to pieces under the stamping, shouting and clapping. "s Jubalay combined musical comedy with hints of Gordon Lightfoot and, of course, Jacques Brel. Jubalay was long rumoured to be heading for New York. Four years later, it arrived with a different tide, A Bistro Car on the CNR, a different cast (except Pat Rose), and a largely rewritten score with additional lyrics by Richard Ouzounian. They tried to make it more sophisticated, but that only meant it had lost the innocence that made it work. The New York Times Richard Eder shared none of Christopher Dafoe's enthusiasm,
"The score by Patrick Rose is to music as typewriting is to writing... The whole thing should be towed away It cannot possibly move under its own power."6 As a teenager, all of this activity affected me deeply. Marek Normans two pop oratorios, Maranatha and Noel were particular favourites, staged in Christ Church Cathedral with a full orchestra and choir and featuring soloists such as Jane Mortifee and Brent Carver. (Both were released as live recordings and televised on CBC.) I took to phoning Marek for advice and guidance. I guess he was my first mentor. Marek's grandfather had been music tutor to the Queen Mother, and his father Karl was manager of the Vancouver Opera. At the age of eight, Marek had joined the Kitsilano Boys'Band, playing clarinet. Richard Ouzounian arrived at UBC as a graduate student in 1970, having already obtained his BA in English at Fordham University in New York. It didn't take him long to make his reputation. His MA thesis was a 1930s adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing with songs interpolated. Max Wyman dubbed him the "Noel Coward of the Pepsi Generation." While attending UBC, Richard joined Mussoc and played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. Perchik was played by Norman, who would become Richard's writing partner. For thpir first project together, they stripped Macbeth of almost all of its Shakespearean verse, added Vietnam-era references and set it to rock music, in one of Mussoc's very few original musicals. Next, they added pseudovaudevillian numbers to Shak^p^are's own dialogue with Lo^/s Labour's Lost, which opened in a pfofess|oftal productionat the he 'York Theatre on February 20, l^^^cmii^pffl^slop and Jt^^^Sf&kG. Ouzounians lyrics had a kind c^'€^§ttd ^ek-tl^i^^Siicherf by Marek's music:
An ad for A Bistro Car on the CNR: A Musical Journey that ran in the New York Times. Courtesy of the author.
I'm a lady of leisure I Ve learned how to treasiyg the time I spend' I'maladfcfl^
vc- Icam^^^^feil^^ft^-Wel^ 1 leiil:;' ".am Ie slntpoiyedlntpoia e s,po e slpur pointedly pointless am I." Purposely purposeless,
Christopher Dafoe of ^he V&nwwver $$n wfote^Curiously enough, the songs, no matter how far-fetched they may be, seem to spring naturally
flCTiNE
125
BMWRYNOW
126
from the text...There is nothing heavy-handed about this Shakespearean daydream. Ouzounian has maintained a light and easy touch, and Norman, in his music, has captured the mood exactly. Songs with titles like 'Born to Boogie/Iambic Pentameter Rag' and 'Sunshine, I'm a Comin hardly suggest a Shakespearean theme, but when you hear them sung, you accept them with pleasure."8 So is it revivable? "Marek and I actually looked at it a few years ago," says Richard, "and the trouble is that so much of the music is soooo '70s... Back then, it was contemporary, and it made a nice contrast with the Shakespeare. Now, unless we updated it ... there would be three layers of reference instead of two, and we thought it might be a bit jejune." I would argue that this version worked more effectively than the one filmed by Kenneth Brannagh, which used 1930s standards. A CBC transcription recording was made of excerpts from the show, sung by Jane Mortifee and Marek Norman, backed by a full orchestra. Some time later, the entire show was broadcast on CBC Radio's The Entertainers. Before Bistro Car, Rose and Ouzounian collaborated on Olympiad, a revue commissioned by John Neville at Edmontons Citadel Theatre, where it opened May 1,1976, starring Marek Norman, Barbara Barsky and Wayne Robson. The Georgia Straight said, "The show is a hit, there's no doubt about that... It has the potential to be the most exciting smash of the season." David Y.H. Lui brought the eight-hander9 to his own theatre in Vancouver for a two week run, starting June 14. Max Wyman in the Vancouver Sun called it, "probably the best original musical entertainment ever to come out of Vancouver." From there it went to Kingston, Ontario, and finally to the Olympics in Montreal. Of course, they all soon outgrew Vancouver. Journalist Alan Fotheringham urged Richard that, unless he wanted to be the oldest wunderkind on the block, he'd better move on. And so he did. And Marek went to Toronto, where he studied composition with Gordon Delamont, and then to New York and the Julliard School of Music. Pat Rose has also relocated to Toronto. His most recent show, Songs from the Front and Rear, about a singing group during the Second World War, opened at Harbourfront in 1982, featuring Gerry Salsberg, Sean Lawrence, Charlotte Moore and Edda Gburek. "Still fantasize about writing another show," he says now, "but most of my energies are taken up with teachfing] a music class with David Warrack and, yeah, enjoying life." For a moment, it seemed as if others would take up the mantle. Mussocer Ken Macdonald teamed up with playwright and actor Morris
Panych to create and star in Last Call—A Post-Nuclear Cabaret, directed by another Mussocer, Sue Astley.The show enjoyed a successful national tour. In 1980, producer John Russell organized a short-lived season of semi-professional musicals, most of them directed by Shel Piercy, under the banner of Vancouver Musical Theatre. "At that time," says Russell, "it was inconceivable to do a large, fully professional musical without charging $80 a seat. Your houses are only so large, and you can only run so long. So what I tried to do was get more professionals in key areas." His shows ranged from Hair, The Rocky Horror Show and Grease on the one hand to Fiddler on the Roof and a Rodgers and Hart revue on the other. "It was a seasickness method of choosing shows," says Piercy. "People wouldn't know where the hell they were going... This was partly because John Russell was searching for different audiences and trying to educate them, but the problem was that we played Presentation House [a studio theatre in North Vancouver], then we played the Arts Club Theatre, then we played the MacPherson Playhouse in Victoria, then we were in the Malkin Bowl, then we were in the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. We played everywhere in town, and we seldom played anywhere twice, not because anyone hated us, but because we couldn't get bookings, and we weren't planning far enough in advance. We didn t get season ticket sales or mailing lists, the things that are the mainstay of a good theatre company." Vancouver Musical Theatre folded after three years, leaving Russell with an enormous pile of debts, but it briefly enhanced the training opportunities for Vancouver's talent pool (myself included). Its alumni included actor Sandy Winsby and actress Jill-Diane Filion, both of whom appeared in Ragtime in Toronto and on tour. Liverpool actor and writer Simon Webb, who played Riff-Raff in Russell's production of Rocky Horror, arrived in Vancouver in the late 1970s, and teamed up with Andrew Rhodes to create the revue JLitbe find in Person at the Arts Club, (The posters carried the mock warning, "contains sax and violins.") ^Tlmt had quite a bit of success/* Webb told me in 1983. "That saw four productions eventually* * .Two of tfaein in Vancouver, one touring BC and one down to Seattle*,, Only the dieme was consistent—the material changed constantly which was nice/" Next, ^ebb and Rhodes teamed up with Alec Willows for Mabel'Leave$ Former. *WeVe always performed our own material/* says Webb, For Mm, Vancouver was "an ideal pkce to work* because for the size of town there's a hdl of a lot going on." In 1982, the Arts Club opened a cabaret space next to its Granville Island main stage. "IVe always felt that the reason behind the Arts Club Revue Theatre was because of the performers in Vancouver," artistic
fiCIiNE
127
Left to right, Bill Millerd, Leon Bibb and Ruth Nichol in the Arts Club Revue Theatre, 1983. Photo by Glen E. Erickson. Courtesy of the Arts Club Revue Theatre.
BROMY NORTH
128
director Bill Millerd told me in an interview for Vancouver Cable TV just before its opening. "I would like to involve some of them." In a press release, he said that the new theatre would provide "a wonderful incentive for the writers and performers of new work," but it didn't work out. Within a few years, the space was taken over by the Vancouver Theatresports League. City Stage also tried small-scale revue with Piaf: Her Songs, Her Loves starring Joelle Rabu. But the boom in original musical theatre in Vancouver had gone bust (although there's been a minor resurgence since the mid 1990s, with new writers such as Courtney Ennis and Grant Mitchell Hunter emerging). So, like many others before me, I decided to relocate to Toronto.
19. lEflRNmE RULES. THE!
taKlHEH
MI
y initial knee-jerk reaction upon arrival in Toronto was that the cultural gravitational pull of that megalopolis five hundred miles to the south was all too evident. Vancouver had a raw, unpolished originality, whereas Toronto was more polished but also more derivative. On the other handjjuba/ay and Mabel Leaves Forever notwithstanding, Vancouver never had much of a tradition for revue and satire. But, not for the last time, I arrived just as a boom was going bust. When the Toronto Lehman Engel workshop was announced in 1970, the Charlottetown Festival had been in operation for half a decade. From the Global Village, a show called Justine, by composer Robert Swerdlow and his choreographer wife Elizabeth, had recently transferred to the offBroadway Wooster Street Theatre under the title Love Me, Love My Children starring Salome Bey. It ran for seven months—the longest run by any Canadian show until Two Pianos, Four Hands a quarter century later. Some of the few outlets for Canadian musicals were in Ontario's cottage country. The old "Straw Hat" theatre in Port Carling went dark for the first time in 1971. Michael Ayoub and his actress wife Mary Bellows had acted there a couple of years earlier, and when they heard that the theatre had closed, decided to revive it. Having mortgaged thpir house, they re-opened the Port Carling Summer Theatre in 1972 on a shoestring, with actors such as Fiona Reid and Sean McAnn working for Equity minimum. Their first production was Butterflies Are Free, and their opening night hadsei^nteen people in the audience, but word of mouth spread, and they ended their season having played^ 7,000 people, and making a smalt ^^dt* Ayoub next added a second fpe^pott^ the ^raveB^^t'^^^a H#use» LOSTmonMONand began a tradition 0F STAGING NEW MUSICALS, BUT THE VENTURE lost ey. In 1974, both theatres ^j^is^^^ OVERBY mUSKOKA fOUNDATION of the Arts, thus securing fundiri||;i^ SPONOSORSHIP, WITHasaYOUB artistic BACK dOnald Davis to direct Bernard Slade's director. They even brought comedy Same Time, Next Year. 9sllade had, before hitting the big time, worked with Davis at the Crest.) Among the new shows tried 0tlt out it at ||M^ the Musicoka fb||^ in its later years was Jim Betts's Thin Ince With this activiQM^nurture them, there were enough wannabe1 writ-
ers (sixteen of them) to convince WfflattiHario^Moon of BMI Canada (later PRO Canada, noif SOCAN) to Ming Bfbidway guru Lehman Engel and his workshop to Toronto.
ACT ONE
]9Q I GO
Composer, producer and musical director, David Warrack. Photo by the author.
BRIRDHHYIIDRTH
130
Lehman Engel had been musical director for over 100 Broadway productions, including Guys and Dolls, Brigadoon and Annie Get Your Gun, and had won three Tony Awards. In the mid-1960s, he began giving workshops based on his observations of the previous three decades (the latter half of which he called the "Golden Age" of Broadway), under the sponsorship of Broadcast Music Inc. "Hit songs originating from musicals happen automatically when they have the talent and the know-how behind them,"2 said Lehman. The selected composers, lyricists and librettists would bring their works-in-progress in for a monthly critique. Engel's views were strong, and sometimes black-and-white: "I do not believe in art for arts sake... In the musical theatre, nothing completely workable has ever failed with critics and public."3 No ambiguities, no shades of grey, no "success destime." One of the participants, Joey Miller, a native of Montreal, grew up in the business. His mother was a singer and his father a comedy writer. As a fourteen-year-old, he played drums in a dance band, and was influenced by the odd time signatures of Dave Brubeck, and by Burt Bacharach. His first song was published when he was sixteen, and he studied music at McGill University. He was musical director for a number of musicals and revues and, after moving to Toronto in 1973, began writing and playing on pop recordings and creating nightclub acts.
After joining the Lehman Engel workshops, he and book writer Stephen Witkin created Eight to the Bar, a musical about four people who meet in a bus station on New Year's Eve; three of the characters talk the fourth out of committing suicide. The Globe and Mail's Ray Conologue described it as "Pure entertainment."4 Produced at the Charlottetown Festival in 1978, it has been presented across Canada, and revived by the Festival in 2003. "They both have a great understanding of musical theatre,"5 Alan Lund told the Stars Bruce Kirkland in 1979. "The biggest thrill to me," Witkin told Kirkland, "was making people cry." David Warrack, a native of Calgary, performed on radio for the first time at the age of five. He studied piano with Lois Webber, voice and conducting with Lloyd Erickson and composition with Stan Finn. This was followed by studies at Berklee School of Music in Boston and, in Toronto, he studied piano with Boris Berlin, composition with John Beckwith, orchestration with Oskar Morawetz and arranging with Gordon Delamont He joined the Lehman Engel workshop in 1972, and also participated in its New York counterpart. He has created a number of revues and small-scale musicals with titles like Oop$!9 Tease for Two, Tut Tut (about Tutankhamen), and Being Crazy is Fun, as well as the larger scale Wtnd$w (for the Charlottetown Festival, about the abdication of Edward Vm^and My Three Angels—and, of course, his latest huge ^access with the all-Canadian production of Rob R0y> staring David Rogers, that premiered at the Edinburgh Festival in the summer of 2006. Plans for the future of the production are in the works. I knew him as a brilliant «c0mpanist and writer of comical revue material. I remember a sho^hie did at Theatre4n~the~I)eE in the mid1980s in which he was thafleiigfed by the audience to improvise a song* Members of th§ aw^eripe chose five random notes for the melodic "hook/* and the words that would fit with them; one person suggested ^government," the next said "sex* and the last said "sjudrome*^ And so, within five minutes, a one-performance-only song called "The Government Sex Syndrome" was born* David also conducted the Broadway revival of
David Warrack and Michael Danso in Edinburgh, 2006, for the production of the all-Canadian musical, Rob Roy. The unique role of "Bard" was created specifically for Danso, a Scottish-born jazz singer. Photograph by Jim Marshall. Courtesy of the Scottish Studies Foundation.
fiCTflNE
131
BROHY NORTH
132
Shenandoah and produced the revue Toronto, Toronto by Mark Shekter and Charles Weir, which ran for two-and-a-half years. "My observation is that one must first and foremost create a sense that what is being taught is important," says Warrack. "Do that, and the pupil wants to learn. Once that atmosphere of respect has been created, the information passed along has a context. But that information is always going to be part fact and part opinion, and sometimes it is difficult to separate the two... Even an individual with Lehmans experience, intelligence, and insight is not always going to be right. If he had been, there would have been many millions in his bank account, and the oftquoted Broadway statistic that only 21% of the shows that open return their investment would have shot up dramatically!" It is also true that the Lehman Engel approach was at odds with much of contemporary musical theatre. As in straight drama, by the late 1960s, writers had begun to turn their backs on the "well-made musical." When I entered the workshop (some time after Lehman's death), I was warned that, "if you want to write like Andrew Lloyd Webber, then you've come to the wrong place."This was not just about writing commercial hits, but about writing well-crafted shows. Workshop members had to develop thick skins and to be able to retain a very clear sense of what their objectives were, for it was very easy to lose sight of them. I walked in expecting to blow everyone away, but I was quickly put in my place. My impression, at the time, was that much attention was given to the minutiae of the craft—accurate rhyming, good song structure—without necessarily determining whether the basic idea was sound. Lehman may not have been able to guarantee success, but he believed that his methods could prevent a lot of failures. For him, writing musicals was a craft to be learned by studying the masters. "As is the case with any art form, it's invaluable to get a strong foundation in how things work," says Jim Betts, who for a while took over teaching the Toronto workshops after Lehman's death. "Lehman brought our attention to the tools of the trade—structure, character, rhyming, the Veil-made musical,' Hammerstein's approach to book writing, Sondheim's skill with lyric-writing, etc." Since then, Betts has worked as an actor, singer, composer, lyricist, librettist and director. Some of his greatest successes have been with young audiences, having won the Floyd S. Chalmers Children's Play Award for The Mystery of the Oak Island Treasure in 1984 and for The Groundworld Adventure in 1990. He won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for best new musical with Jacob Two-Two and the Hooded Fang in 1984. The Fabulous Kelly, a "medicine show" starring Jeff Hyslop was produced at Young Peoples'
Theatre in 1987. Ray Conologue in the Globe and Mail said, "His songs, while rather passionless, are inventive and endearing." Perhaps his most respected work has been Colours in the Storm, his bio-musical about painter Tom Thomson. Conologue praised its treatment of "mature and important themes." It is important to note, however, that while Lehman did write incidental scores for straight PLAYS, $4tt was riot himself known as a musical theatre writer. His insights were ^moi by giving M§ batons for hits and flops over a period dH^**$G&* ^oftetfc to the potttt that heH get somewhat bored with batojaj^viiig and WotiM Itart ig$*js$E himself why some shows were better than;'^^g^0gccoirdiiig to 'p^ficipant Nelles Van Loon. "He found hims^^^ii^ i&we and moJte Ittterest^l in anIN TURN LED TO swering this question, WHICH toil ted to his teaching .and the writing S U B J E C T T H A T A R E S T I L L R E G A R DE ED D BEST A S 'HOW T H E -TO' S U B J E C T T H A T A R E S T I L L R E G A R D OF SERVERAL BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT THAT ARE STILL REGARDED AS THE intro<&tiof^ BY MANY PEOPLE, MYSELF INCLUDED." But Toronto ywjaot NeW!1fetfcf much as it sometiriies tried to be. (A joke went "How" many T&rontonians do^ it take to Screw in a light bulb?" The answer: two-^one to hold^e Wlb> the other to fly down to New York to see how it's done there.) "Lehman wasn't much concerned
Lehman Engel, the Broadway conductor/ author/composer, who led the BMI workshops from 1972 through 1981 in Toronto, surrounded by admiring performers at a gala celebration entitled "Musical Chairs." Standing (1-r): Araby Lockhart, Barbara Wheeldon, John Kozak and Mary Ann McDonald; seated is Lehman Engel. Courtesy of David Warrack.
ME
1QQ IJU
BI»Y NORTH
134
with issues that related specifically to Canadian musical theatre," says Van Loon. "However, his influence upon me—and I suspect many others—was huge and mostly positive." Susan ClufF adds, "We were learning about writing American musicals. Many writers obviously went on to write 'Canadian shows but not because of any encouragement of Canadianism from Lehman. He was an American and believed in the American Broadway musical." Warrack says, "I'm not totally convinced that Lehman ever truly accepted the necessity of an indigenous Canadian form for a musical. He was so immersed in the Broadway world, that it was impossible for him to understand that anybody might be in the business, but not choose to be in New York." Joey Miller says, "As a Canadian, I can only tell a universal truth through my own perspective." But, Mavor Moore says, "I hesitate to imagine what Engel would have done to Anne of Green Gables had he ever got near it." Since the days of Spring Thaw, Canadians had enjoyed some success with intimate revues, and small-scale musicals. It then became the received wisdom that this was our metier, and that to aspire to anything grander was somehow un-Canadian. Throughout the 1970s, a number of cabaret and dinner theatre venues prospered in Toronto—the Teller s Cage, Upstairs at Old Angelo's,Theatre-in-the-Dell, Variety Dinner Theatre, and the Limelight hosted shows with titles like Tease for Two, III Tell You Mine.. JfYou Tell Me Yours, and the long-running Toronto, Toronto. In 1977, Betts tried out his revue 777 Tell You Mine... If You Tell Me Yours, written with Bob Ashley, at the Buttery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The Toronto Suns MacKenzie Porter suggested he was "the budding of a second Noel Coward." The revue featured Betts, Grant Cowan (who created the role of Snoopy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown in New York) Edda Gburek and Janelle Hutchison. The Blyth Festival, established in Huron County in 1975 by James Roy, made its reputation exclusively with Canadian plays and musicals, including Raymond Storey and John Roby's The Dreamland, about a rural dance hall in the 1940s. The Lehman Engel graduates had an outlet of sorts in which to polish their craft. "Lehman did not really give that much consideration to small musicals," says Susan Cluff. "He taught us from his perspective, which was Broadway... not composers and lyricists who would be fortunate to get small shows produced at small venues, if they were produced at all." But Lehman recognized small musicals as a means for writers to cut their teeth. "Lehman saw Tut Tut at the Pauline McGibbon Theatre [in Toronto]," says David Warrack. "The response I remember most was that he felt the economy of the cast size (three, with one actor playing
multiple roles) forced me to be particularly creative in a way that a larger piece might not have demanded. He astonished me with his memory of so many details (right down to lyric quotes) based on one viewing, and his list of suggested alterations was short but amazingly on-the-mark. At no time did he seem to be bothered by the fact that it was a small production. He was, as always, fascinated by the creative process, and focused in on how it might develop even more." While Lehman placed the greatest emphasis on the needs of the musical "book," Toronto's modest cabaret and dinner theatre scene left little room for anything other than modest revues—in other words, Eric Nicol's tap-dancing harmonica player. And comedy numbers tied up with string were not Lehman Engel's favourite thing. "But," Warrack quotes Engel as saying, "'after you've been eating steak for a while, beans taste fine.' He attended many revue performances in Toronto, and enjoyed them immensely for what they were, having no pretensions to be anything more than entertainment with (generally) a satirical edge. Of course, within those entertainments were many moments of theatricality, and indeed, many of us cut our teeth on those shows and learned so much in the process. Lehman often commented how fortunate writers were in the early years of Broadway to get introduced to the White Way by way of one or two songs included in one of the compilation shows that were so popular at the time. And he absolutely recognized that the cabaret scene in Toronto from the early sixties to the mid-eighties was an entity which provided many of us with opportunities unavailable in New York, where cabaret always referred more to night club entertainment with no sense of a staged, themed show, or even original material." "When I went into his workshop in the Fall of 1980,1 was one of those persons who thought it was possible to write a hit show Ijf Stringing a bunch of songs togethift*$ays Van Loon. "And as a |3M^il%Ffact I did have a small success with a revile of myfiwn SONGS iT WAS when I decided I wanted to write * BOOK show that Il>egaij[ to J^hder, wasting two precious summers trying tgMti^MJ^^^on^GS INTO A 'LET';S Put on a Show' kind of musical. It w^ IlWiii pSl to swato^ifeeii I realized this approach was taking me4|prfi^ And it was at the beginning of a third summer, which I didrft ^tnt to be wasted^ that Ifound Leifmiifs The Making of a Mi^icf/atTiettrel^S* Al die principles h^ltelewd in wei:e feist there, but it was't..til J g0t IP the workshops and encountered hisfeisty passionate, and dead honest wi^ that the message bega^lo sink in/1 One other alumnus who has received critical plaudits, if not commercial success, is Leslie Arden. Her Home of Martin Guerre (which, incidentally, preceded the more famous Return of Martin Guerre by Les ,; , ;"•<***
...
., , .... ...... ,
'.. ,...,,,JV<^- ..;,,..,,,
*
*
,
-
'
'
„
V^l?/
•
'
.
'
'
-
"
'
|[| ||[
135
BROADNIY NORTH
136
Miserable! authors Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg) was presented at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and at the Canadian Stage in Toronto. In addition to her training with Lehman, she was a student of the Stephen Sondheim master class at Oxford University in 1990. "Lehman was very 'old school/ " Arden explains. "He was advocating writing in four-bar phrases and a lot of stuff I really thought we were moving out of; all our stuff had to be verse, A-A-B-A. It was just a step behind the times, but I realized that really early on, so it wasn't a problem. This was like learning your Bach or doing your scales. The best thing I got out of the workshop was just everybody I met. They're still my best friends." Lehman kept coming to Toronto for his monthly master classes, which were free to participants, until shortly before his death in 1981. At the end of each 'term/ BMI Canada would sponsor a public showcase of songs developed in the workshops. At one of these, Toronto Star critic Gina Mallet gave her assessment, "With due respect to Engel's long experience in the theatre, I wish he'd be tougher on his pupils, make them mad, make them feel something, so that their work assumes an involvement that it now simply doesn't have."6 But, according to Betts, Lehman was very concerned about involvement. "Of everything he ever said to us, this is what I remember the most. That musicals are perhaps the best art form for expressing joy, and that at the heart of every successful piece of musical theatre is a joyful core. One of my favourite examples of this is in Sweeney Todd—not what one would normally think of as a musical about 'joy'— where Sweeney ends Epiphany with the words And I'm full of joy!'" Mallet went on to say, "Canadian musicals shouldn't copy American or British musicals. But neither should they be pale echoes of both." Did Lehman Engel encourage his pupils to be derivative? When I arrived in the workshops—more than a year after Lehman's death—I was given an assignment: "Write an additional chorus to 'Oh What A Beautiful Morning' in the style of Oscar Hammerstein. This came just when I was learning the importance of developing my own voice. (Only later would I learn that Hammerstein was, in fact, mimicking the style of Lynn Riggs, author of the play upon which Oklahoma! was based, and that the line "There's a bright golden haze on the meadow" was lifted directly from Riggs' stage directions.) On the other hand, many writers actually boast that, before writing their first musical, they had never even seen a Broadway show. Even Paul Simon thought he could show Broadway a thing or two before his Capeman fell on its face. Would you be happy to hear the announcement, "This is your captain speaking—two weeks ago, I couldn't even
spell 'pilot'—now I are one?" I didn't think so. And a musical is at least as difficult to make fly as a 747. "It is absolutely vital," says Warrack, "no matter what art form you tackle, to understand and appreciate what has gone on before you. Of course, often, early works from anybody have an aspect of imitation to them. That's how you learn. But then you go on from there and find your own voice. No one encouraged that more than Lehman Engel." Joey Miller adds, "Lehman encouraged the people in his workshops to learn the rules and then to break them. He talked about musicals like Oklahoma! to Maury Yeston who went on to write an original piece like Nine. He taught Ed Kleban about Showboat and Pal Joey and Ed went off and wrote the groundbreaking A Chorus Line? But, Arden counters, "He just didn't suggest to anybody to break them very often." In fact, a few successful musical writers have ignored the "rules" from the outset. In Paris, the musical's "black hole," Alain Boublil and ClaudeMichel Schonberg had little exposure to contemporary musical theatre when they wrote Les Miserables, and they regarded their ignorance as an asset. According to Professor Anthony Field, "They had to create their own style whereby there is a perfect synthesis of all the elements—music, words, direction and design."7 Richard Maltby Jr., who worked with them on Miss Saigon says, "It is true that they invented their style without assessing all the great musicals, although they loved West Side Story and what Andrew Lloyd Webber was doing... It was Trevor Nunn [and John Caird] who led them to the structure they have now. It was that collaboration that reinvented the musical form... They do strive for a seamlessness of energy, and they do things unheard of in a musical (though common in opera) such as reaching the sung climax and not stopping but continuing on." (In fact, although thej may have plecfIg^imiice of musical theatre, Schonbergi fe^wle^^ pf opera was said bf,fti^;io be "encyclopaedic.") About Lehman Engefs tf^^adi) *¥bu hw to pldfc^jpfl choose what you're going to take from hims* Leslie Arden ^laim^4^^iiwe to figure out how to apply it to what you '%:^* opposedft>just takingggeverything verbatim."But, she feels, somt^^'p^d|^li^ ^^tm;'^t^Rmy all shipped thee grgf(m^h^W^^don^mdl-M^^^Tmnopmj^^^mg derogatory about $o) at aEL * /$8 %rottow$ I feel they haven't gone as far, ^'i^^aj^^^^^^ of^t^Witik- Cohwrtin tbeMtwm^^ Betts found that "when I chose to throw out the formula, I hiAtoore stoeeess." Universality was also important to Lehman^Leltoah stressed good stories and characters^ says Joey Miller* **He once talked to me about Pacific Overtures, that wonderful Japanese musical with costumes by
|(;J|K[
]-J7
fiRdiYlim
138
Florence Klotz and sets by Boris Aronson etc." (However, The King and /, much loved in the West as a musical with "universal" appeal, causes deep offence in Thailand for its portrayal of King Monkut as a barbarian, and its assertion that it was "Mrs. Anna" who brought civilization to the kingdom.) Is anything truly universal? "Certain musicals play better within their own country than outside," says British producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh, and his examples might have surprised Engel. "Guys and Dolls has always proved to be the longest running musical in New York when it is revived, whereas in England it would be Joseph [and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat], Oliver! and My Fair Lady. A Chorus Line and Hello, Dolly! are two of the longest running musicals of all time in New York, yet only managed to run a couple of years in London, whereas Fiddler on the Roof, Phantom [of the Opera], Les Miserables and Cats have proved to be universal long runners. Inevitably, some shows play better in major cities rather than out of town, and occasionally vice versa."8 By the late 1980s with the arrival of Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables, Toronto was now enjoying a commercial theatre boom, however, virtually all of the small-scale cabaret venues in the city had dried up. A group of performers and writers, led by Diane Stapley, banded together to seek a solution. They called themselves the Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance, dedicated to the preservation of "cabaret and small-scale musical theatre" in Toronto. (Diane invited me to join their board of directors. My one accomplishment was to persuade them to delete the phrase "small-scale," believing it to be both restrictive and redundant.) Sadly, CAMTA folded in the early 1990s. Of Lehman EngeFs contribution to Canadian musical theatre, Jim Betts says, "I still miss Lehman, and I often think of what he gave me. If IVe made any contribution to the Canadian Musical Theatre, Lehman can take a lot of credit for giving me the tools to do what IVe done. He was a very positive force in my development, and in the careers of many other Canadian Musical Theatre writers. He was a good teacher, and a great inspiration." Michael Bawtree, co-founder of COMUS Music Theatre and artistic director of the BanfFCentre's Music Theatre Studio Ensemble, says, "He adored Shakespeare and Moliere, and felt that musical makers should always learn from the great dramatists." So what happened to these Engel-trained writers when they went out into the world? Miller and Witkin returned to Charlottetown with a full scale musical, Ye Gods!, a broad comedy based on Greek mythology. Of Miller s adaptation of Gordon Pinsent s story A Gift to Last, the Toronto
Stars Robert Crew wrote, "Joey Miller's music and lyrics are clever and tuneful and (praise be) advance and comment on the action... It's smallscale and homey and its Canadian heart is very much in the right place." His The Growing Season, with book and lyrics by the late James Saar, drew its inspiration from the plight of financially embattled Ontario farmers, and was presented in 1986 at Hart House. More recently, Miller collaborated with playwright Brad Eraser (Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love) on an adaptation of the film Outrageous!, based on Margaret Gibsons short story, Butterfly Ward, about the friendship between a schizophrenic girl and a female impersonator. In 1985, David Warrack pulled off what appeared to be a theatrical coup by securing the rights to the 1953 comedy My Three Angels by Samuel and Bella Spewack. Apparently succeeding where Lerner and Loewe had failed, he overcame the Spewack's reticence by sending them a sixsong demo and assuring them that, unlike the 1954 film Were No Angels, he would remain true to the original play about convicts from Devil's Island. With a budget of $450,000, he secured the St. Lawrence Centre's Bluma Appel Theatre for a Christmas 1985 run. The cast often was led by Eric House, Tony Van Bridge, Douglas Chamberlain, Sherry Flett, Kevin Hicks and Cynthia Dale, and directed by Heinar Pillar. (It had been announced earlier that Len Cariou was to star, but he proved unavailable.) "IVe lived my life on a precipice," Warrack told the Toronto Suns Bob Pennington.9 "I would sooner try and fail than not try at all. Even so, there is a very thin line between courage and stupidity, a line that has not seemed all that clear of late^Ray Conologue of the Globe and Mail called it "an astonishingly agreeable show," but Robert Crew of the Star said "[David Warrack] is right in saying that two years is an ideal j^iribd for musicals to be workshopp^A before they they get on stage. On.dj^^BSftnce of last night's opening performance* this one|ks ari^Ai^i^iMtely one year and eleven mm^^'^^^^^^B^jA^^^ $l59^JS^ budget did not provide enough of a contia^en^ to teep A^ show running on a less than a break-even box office/aStf^thout the cash jM^the show was forced to close early Composer Phyllis Co|iift,Is the 4&&ghter of the laite critic Mathan Cohen. She a&df her collaboration tarhristine foreter (oael^e"fa£ad writer; Hobo)develo[e for The LMtiat ed a mimber of shows i& I^htBaii; Etig|ft workshops, including Emrything But Anchovies, a fo^f-hander about high school students retumiiig home from a qufe show humiliation. Ray Conologue of the Globe and Mail ^rn^^t has charm and conviction and an occasional beautiful melody/* Cohen and Foster also adapted Fredelle
ME
liq luu
DRORDWRY NORTH
140
Bruser MaynarcTs short story Raisins and Almonds, about a young Jewish girl's first taste of Christmas. Sadly, Cohen gave up the business some years ago and hasn't written a musical in the past decade. Arden was invited by Cameron Mackintosh to take part in Stephen Sondheim's master class at Oxford University. "A friend of mine, David Malek, was playing Marius in Les Miserable* and one night when Cameron was seeing the show, David happened to have a cassette of some of my songs with him. David gave Cameron the tape, thinking Cameron might be interested in an example of what was being written in Canada. The next morning, I received a call from my agent asking me how quickly I could get to Oxford: I'd been invited to participate in the master class." Several of Lehman's students had work staged at the Charlottetown Festival: Jim Betts' On a Summers Night (based on A Midsummer Night's Dream), David Warrack's Windsor and Witkin and Miller's aforementioned Ye Gods! and Eight to the Bar. From the mid-1980s, the outlets for Canadian musicals began to dry up. Many of the cottage-country theatres closed during the recession of the early 1990s, and few of those that survived were in no financial shape to take risks on new shows. However, some, small town theatres, such as Theatre Orangeville (Jim Betts was one of the founders and the first artistic director) came into being. The newly restored Opera House in Orangeville, Ontario, opened its first season in 1994. Other theatres survived through amalgamation. Huron Country Playhouse, established in 1972, joined with Drayton Festival Theatre in 2000 to form Drayton Entertainment, under Artistic Director Alex Mustakes, a protege of Alan Lund. The Guild of Canadian Musical Theatre Writers eventually folded (as did CAMTA) and was replaced in the late 1990s by the Association of Canadian Librettists, Composers and Lyricists. Perhaps in assessing Lehman Engel's contribution to Canadian musical theatre, we can try to separate form from substance. Yes, he came from the Broadway musical theatre, and that was the world he understood, and the vocabulary he used. But that, in itself, needn't lessen the impact of his teaching. The fact that he brought his workshop to Toronto—his only non-American stop—showed that he believed in the potential of Canadian writers. He taught people to think, but not what to think. Most of the principles he taught are as applicable to Canadian musicals as they are to Americans. Books must be well constructed. Lyrics must be clear. Songs should either advance the plot, establish atmosphere and character or comment on the action. The differences are in style or subject matter. Not everybody sympathizes with the same
things. (^776 did not play as well in London as it did on Broadway, for obvious reasons.) Still, Lehman was sometimes wrong. Some of the shows he judged as failures continue to be revived (Man of La Mancha, Hello, Dolly!) and some of those he hailed as great (Annie Get Your Gun, Brigadoori) now show their age. That doesn't matter, that is subjective. And one should always have more than one teacher. He didn't specifically tell people to study the impact of Spring Thaw, yet his exhortation to study the work that has gone before led me there (and to write this book).
ME
Ml
2l.1lOiQFtal":taL01TETOWIlflFIE[illNNE
BHniii
142
n the summer of 1985, just as I was beginning the initial phase of my research for this book, I made my first visit to the Charlottetown Festival. Norman Campbell went to the airport to meet me, (which was a shame, as I was at the bus station). I would see four shows in three days: Anne of Green Gables, Fauntleroy, Swing and Sleeping Arrangements. Without the Charlottetown Festival (or as Charlie Farquarson called it, "Yer Charlatan Festeral"), Canada's musical theatre writers would have been all dressed up with nowhere to go. But, in Mavor Moore's vision, new musicals were to be the heart, if not the entirety, of the Festival. "I realized that there were simply not enough Canadian musicals—even if you threw in the revues—to make this possible without commissioning new ones... The idea was to commission a new show a year, and sometimes more." The Festival was the only theatre in Canada to produce full-scale musicals in repertory. Part of the inspiration behind the Festival was the summer tourist audience. "The population of the island, which was about 120,000, quadrupled every summer with the tourists who came," said Mavor Moore. But this also brought with it limitations. Charlottetown's reputation was based on wholesome family entertainment. According to Blanche Lund, "Alan always said, Tt's entirely different when you're presenting summer theatre to when you're doing something in the winter,'" claiming that Alan would never have done a show like Dracula (2003) in Charlottetown. "Not for summer theatre." Linda M. Peake, writing in the Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre in 1989 said, "Charlottetown has become the most show business-oriented of the national summer festivals, putting tourism before art."1 Still, tourists were coming to see shows they couldn't see anywhere else—a lesson that Toronto's commercial producers would do well to learn. Mavor ran the Festival for its first three years. His first new musical after Anne was also by Campbell and Harron, their first to be written directly for the stage. "Every time I left Canada in those days," says Don Harron, "I'd take some book with me, some piece of Canada. For example, I took a book called [Tbe Adventures of Private] Turvey by Earl Birney, and I turned it into a play [for the New Play Society, 1957]. Later, we turned it into a musical. We did two versions of this musical. We did the one we wanted [Turvey], then we did the one Earl wanted [Private Turveys War]. I think the one we wanted was more successful."
Nathan Cohen was not so sure. Although he praised Norman Campbell's "varied and pleasant tunes,"he felt that Harron's book "shifts viewpoints so often and hops around so much in terms of character and incident that the character and story fail to achieve an organic unity."2 The later version, with some new songs added, was given more of an anti-war slant. Of this later version, Herbert Whittaker in the Globe and Mail wrote, "Private Turveys War is sparse, swift, funny and it's eventually another warning to Canada that war may be entertaining, but it's still hell, hell, hell."3 In 1967, the Festival presented Pierre Berton's Paradise Hill, which the Globe and Mail deemed "a real eye-catcher," but which the Star called "a ghastly mistake."4 "By stages, I divested myself of the general directorship [of the Confederation Centre],"says Moore. "I continued running the Festival itself for another two years, and then handed over the reins to Alan." At the time, the Festival's Jack McAndrew reported, "Mavor felt the Festival was now sufficiently established that he could hand over his responsibilities to a team of people with new ideas."5 In Mavor's last year with the Festival, he presented a revival of Sunshine Town and a new adaptation of Elmer Rice's Johnny Belinda, the story of a deaf-mute girl who is raped, for which he wrote the book and lyrics to Festival musical director John Fenwick's music. "Not in the ordinary musical comedy style," wrote the Globe and Mail's Zena Cherry, "Ijjut based on folk songs of the Maritimes—a sensitive, in-keeping score."6 This had been preceded by an earlier unproduced musical version by Karl Blumencranz and Bernard Spiro, from which one number, the "Sign Language Song," was retained. Of the 1983 revival tour, the Globe reported, "Firmly embedded in nostalgia* the musical makes for a sort of Canadian : Oklahoma! without the benefit of memorable songs."7 "Johnny Belinda looked like a failed attempt |b write $ Broadway show," says Mavor, "but it was nothing remotely like it. The attempt was to avoid stereotypical hit numbers. ^S>tAe seldop given qrftt if you tty to do something that is different from the sort of thing tiiat is acceptable in the big leagues."The Festival has reefed Belinda soflie hal£,jt dozen times since its 1968 debut Mid toured it Noimaa Campbell later directed a television adaptation, which has also heen seen in the United States on HBG» Spring Thaw contributors Ray Jessel and Marian Gttidei^ who had already enjoyed a modest Broadway success with Baker Street\ did the intriguingly titled Like Can Be Like Wow* which, in spite of Nathan Cohen calling it the "rattling of mouldering old bones,** averaged 73% capacity
^\^[
143
BROMIH
144
houses in 1969. Jessel was later Richard Rodgers final lyricist on I Remember Mama. In 1971, Howard Cable's Mary, (based on the life of Mary, Queen of Scots) featured lyrics by the late American writer Christopher Gore (brother of Leslie "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To" Gore), who would later pen the screenplay for Fame. Like Jane Eyre, this too had a previous outing three years earlier (when Gore was only nineteen) at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, starring John Cullum and Inge Swenson. (Leslie Arden, whose mother Cleone Duncan was a member of the Festival company, cites Mary as an early influence.) In the Charlottetown production, Marilyn Lightstone appeared in the title role. Herbert Whittaker of the Globe and Mail praised Cable's "resounding music," although he said "it's hard to declare Mary a musical in the commonly accepted sense, for Cable has chosen a supporting role as a composer, his score making its greatest points with a skirl of pipes and the blast of horns into echoes of Camelot"* Ballade, presented in 1972 (and revived in 1973) with book and lyrics by Arthur Samuels and music by Michel Conte, concerned the love affair between a thirty-year-old woman and a 150-year-old ghost on the Gaspe peninsula. The Stars Urjo Kareda called it "a musical of considerable interest and even greater accomplishment," saying that Conte's music is "the best that I have ever heard in a Charlottetown musical."9 The Globe and Mail also thought "Conte's tuneful score pushes Arthur Samuel's book into the running as another Anne of Green Gables for this summers Charlottetown Festival."When it toured to Ottawa and London (Ontario) it didn't fare so well. The Ottawa Journal moaned, "What a dreary musical Ballade is," and the London Free Press said, "the actors try hard, but they have an impossible task of making sense, or even good nonsense, out of the hodgepodge." Cliff Jones'Kronborg 1582, first presented at the Festival in 1973, wound up on Broadway as Rockabye Hamlet. Two years later, Jones replaced David Warrack as composer of The Rowdyman, based on Gordon Pinsent's screenplay of the same title. Jamie Portman of Southam News Service called it "a distinctly lightweight specimen" and complained that "there is no real sense of time and place—despite Pinsent's careful Newfoundland dialect... The idiom is certainly not Newfoundland, only Broadway derivative." In 1978, David Warrack brought his version of the Edward and Mrs. Simpson affair to the stage. Much like the 1997 London flop Always, he chose to build up the fairy-tale love story that we all now understand to be bogus. (In truth, from my perspective, it wasn't Edward's relationship
with a divorcee that brought about his abdication, so much as his flirtation with Adolph Hitler.) The Toronto Sun declared that "David Warrack. .. has come within an incli—well, let's say two inches—of creating a musical fit for Broadway or Leicester Square." But the Edmonton Journal dismissed it as "bad soap opera which reduces the love affair... to the level of a fragmented comic strip." Joey (1973), with a book by Helen Porter, based on A Summer Burning by Harry Boyle, and with songs by Nancy White and Ben McPeek, told a story of adolescent sexual awakening that would foreshadow the furor of Are You Lonesome Tonight? a couple of decades later. One parent complained to the Festival, "We were shocked by the language and filth, so much that we had to leave before the end of the first act." (The offending words included "bastard" and "titty."The novel it was based on was on the secondary school reading list in several provinces, and according to its author, "even a Protestant missionary school in India."10) The show endured for only fourteen performances. On a Summer's Night (1978) was Jim Betts' modern take on A Midsummer Nights' Dream. The Prince Edward Island Journal Pioneer said, "The play holds many surprises, not the least of which is a highly effective score," but the Ottawa Citizen complained, "There's not much one can do with a book so lacking in conflict, narrative clarity and wit, or with songs which so often seem irrelevant to matters at hand." The London Free Press went even further, "When considering how and if tjiis production can be saved* I am forced to repeat a line from one of its songs: Anything is possible, but probably it's not!'" The 1981 Aimee!, with book and lyrics by Patrick Young and music by Bob Ashley, told the story of theCaaadiaa-born evangelist Aime&Semple McPherson, the Jim Baker of her day* wfag disappeared into c/^j^&y after an alleged adultery sc^n^^^'m^^^d.shG hadbecpj^^^^ed). The Globe and Mail dubbed it adezzliing array of theil^f _ _ _ to the Ear, _ * .,.*. r& „'''. ^ - V'^lrL ler 47^1:%C^A and Stephern Wit Eight a fcwu*^foti^^ '\& became ' ' v * *••>\'•&>,**''-'* '°- * ^*»&ip5^'<. '' theaters kin enjoyed greater success '•>">"" wd theatres popular with reginol around the country. Of this teSllf^nd told the Stars bruce kirland "It's a talent and it can't just ]ji^^^^hey can,t write in a a vscuum can't have a feeling of/;a i^j^cl^ The edmonton journal calleditita "brashly likeable show disn jlkjbjbodfby a succiencen of neat and imagan \s&$ natiw~soim^x s
^O
^v?#v«* * 5
.
'
"
" «
:
:
:
- , - ' " ' ,
;-V<
, i$
' - ^
/«>'
%
iX ',f'*\y-'
In the late l$7(fe^dwt f^^ ^m^^^(s^^^:^^ m^Mons. In 1978, an eleven-city tomofJnm m® <^M^£"mt executive director Hugh Palmer resigned and was repla^drf by Bill Hancox. At the time, Anne accounted for more than half of the total box office. A 1981
(j[||n[
145
BROHDRHY NORTH
146
national tour made a profit of $155,000 without subsidy. In 1982, they hoped to take Anne to the Soviet Union, but the federal government's cultural sanctions then in place put the kibosh on that plan.12 In the early 1980s, the Festival initiated the Eric Harvie Award, named for the Calgary oilman who was chairman of the steering committee that established the Confederation Centre. The rules required that the entrants have had at least one musical produced in a full Equity production by an established professional theatre company in Canada. As the Festival was very nearly the only game in town as far as musical theatre writers were concerned, this meant that the intake of new blood would not be vast, but it did help to nurture the likes of Leslie Arden. On the one occasion when I met Lund, he told me that any show he did had to have "a lot of heart." According to his widow Blanche, "Alan built [the Festival] up to be the best summer theatre in Canada." But not everybody saw it that way. To some, Lund was turning out "Broadway clones."The Globe and Mail reported, "The Centre's almost fanatical preoccupation with light musical fare does little to reflect Canadian life or themes."13 At one point, the Canada Council withdrew its funding. "When the management looked into why," says Blanche, "the Council said that what they were doing was too light and fluffy Alan said, 'What do they want me to do? Hang somebody from the middle of the stage and have everybody go out scratching their heads?'" An Alan Lund musical was nothing if not upbeat. Even when he staged jane Eyre in 1970, (a reworking of an English musical by lyricist Hal Shaper, book writer Roy Harley Lewis and composer Monty Stevens that had enjoyed a 1961 tryout at The Theatre Royal Windsor), "it had comedy between the butler and the head maid. It had light moments. It wasn't dark and dismal." Of course, others might argue that Jane Eyre is supposed to be dark and dismal, but Herbert Whittaker declared it "a happy show in the Charlottetown tradition. Obviously, this festival is not about to jeopardize a mood which has already brought in approximately $60,000 this season by experimenting with anything sordid, rude or otherwise unsuited to the family trade."14 Sometimes his light touch put Lund at odds with the show's creators. When Mavor Moore was commissioned to complete an unfinished version of Little Lord Fauntleroy by the late American songwriter Johnny Burke, "I was given carte blanche to use not only what I wanted of the existing material, but any other of Johnny Burkes musical numbers from the many years that he worked in Hollywood and New York ... I wanted to stay away from his well-known numbers... but early on it happened that there were two places in the show where I needed numbers so like
'Pennies from Heaven and 'Pocketful of Dreams' so I decided to use them... There is this moment where... Ceddy is so depressed about going to England and his mother is saying, 'Don't make up your mind that it's going to be bad. Nice things do happen accidentally/ " Moore interpolated "Pennies from Heaven" in this spot. "However, 'Pocketful of Dreams' is a different kettle of fish. I wanted to use that at the beginning of the show to make a strong, strong statement against sentimentality. .. You simply cannot have sweetness and light from beginning to end... I wanted to use it to show a really depressed, grungy New York, which would contrast with what happens in the very rich castle of the Earl of Dorincourt when they get to England. But, unfortunately, [in the 1985 revival] it's been totally misinterpreted. It's a structural matter... You had a show that [originally] began with something very downbeat, a most unusual thing for a musical. Then later on the show began to take off in terms of vitality with the Fourth of July parade, which Alan Lund staged marvellously [in the 1980 production]." (Because of the Fourth of July sequence, some accused the show of being overly pro-American, which for a staunch nationalist like Mavor is ironic in the extreme.) "But in the [1985] production he had decided to take out the Fourth of July parade, feeling I think that it interrupted the story a little bit, which I didrft feel. But then once he'd done that, he obviously felt that the show didn't have enough energy, so he tried to turn the opening number into a& eneirgetic bit of Broadway pizzazz, whereas if that happened after thi$ iwfebeat opening, you've got an entirely different effect* In 1985, John Gray told me,a*Ihe Charlottetown Festival limps along from year to year and does quite weE in terms of audience support* If what you're doing is perfectly suited to tM toiirkt family audie&ce and to Alan Lund's choreography and to threresotirdes tfa&t they haYe^yeSj it'ljjbe done there, but nowhere else,** he limghs, *And it wifl play to Americans $>ming up to Prince Edward Isbtnd*, *jilnw&f Green G%$tes is one that s a perennial and it worics and God bless Norman Campbell and Don Haixon* It's wonderful. But it's the eiception that proves the rule." < Alan Lund's tenure came to an end in 1986* His last show was Cliff Jones' Babies, Bless Them AIL Sid Adilman wrote in the Toronto Star, "It would be nice and even gentlemanly to bid Lund farewell to the Festival
Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. Photo by Barrett and Mackay. Courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
flCIflNE
147
Alan Lund at rehearsal for Legend of the Dumbells, Elgin Theatre, 1989. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
This scroll was presented to Alan Lund for his 25 years of directing the musical, Anne of Green Gables, at the Charlottetown Festival. Courtesy of Blanche Lund.
BifiDiYlflRIH
148
with an upbeat review. But it would not be honest in this case."Most of his criticisms were aimed at Lund, rather than Jones. "The inventiveness and the framework are there. And the songs, for the most part, are tuneful and dramatic." It averaged 61.9% houses and was revived—with a new script—the following year. More worryingly, Adilman points out that "the Festival, during Lund's time, has trained no directors, no choreographers and no musical conductors. It s all so sad that this national institution shows such signs of decay." One director-choreographer who did benefit from working with Lund (not at the Festival, but at a community theatre outside Toronto), was Kelly Robinson, who also worked with Brian Macdonald, and later staged Peggy Sue Got Married for producer David Mirvish in London. In 1987, he told the Globe and Mail's Ray Conologue, however, that he felt that the Festival "fell down on its commitment to composers and librettists. They had a mandate and they didn't fulfil it." Lund was succeeded in 1987 by Walter Learning, who set controversy blazing on two fronts when he staged British playwright Alan Bleasdale's Elvis play with music, Are You Lonesome Tonight? Bad enough that it was not Canadian, but the majority of the complaints related to the frequent use of profanity. Still, the season chalked up a 12% increase in attendance, while Are You Lonesome Tonight? averaged 92.3% houses. The board chairman, Catherine Callbeck reigned in protest. (A few years later, she became the province s first woman premier.) Things got worse before they got better. In 1995, under artistic director Jacques Lemay, they staged a disastrous production of Guys and Dolls. Once again, they were stripped of their funding for doing non-Canadian work, and, in 1996, produced only Anne on the main stage. "Even though we make better money," said Norman Campbell at the time, "Don Harron and I feel Anne should always have companion pieces." The following year, due to budget restraints, the Festival tried to cut the orchestra size on Anne, replacing strings with synthesizers, but Norman wouldn't have it. "I told them that I'd be happy using synths in a new show, but that Anne had run 27 years, and there's an expectation of a certain quality in the experience." Contractually, the minimum orchestra size was
nineteen musicians. In the end, they allowed two synthesizers in the pit in order to accommodate the Festival's other show, The Great Adventure, but the total number remained at nineteen. Campbell adds, "The audience was appreciative." At one point, somebody suggested that, if they really wanted to save money, they could change all the half notes to quarter notes, and thereby go home earlier. "It s very hard dealing long-distance with a bean counter with tin ears," Campbell told me, "but I will keep at it." Happily, their 1997 revival of Johnny Belinda was a smash hit, and rescued the theatre's fortunes—for the time being. In 1999, they staged their first new Canadian musical—the Festival's raison d'etre—since 1992. Emily, based on L.M. Montgomery's Emily of New Moon, had a book and lyrics by Richard Ouzounian and music by Marek Norman. There are those who still claim that the Festival should simply abandon its aim to develop new musicals. They say there is not as much interest in musical theatre as there was in 1965, and that there are more quality Canadian plays out there than musicals. Well, firstly, musical theatre remains by far the most popular form of theatre. Secondly, why should Charlottetown become just another regional theatre, doing the same thing as everybody else? And since hardly anybody else is doing it at all, surely it makes sense for one company to do it exclusively. In 1997, Curtis Barlow, whom Norman Campbell described to me as "an operator in the political sense," was appointed executive director of the Confederation Centre. In 1998, Barlow, said, "Musicals are what we do. We are one of the few cultural institutions that has the financial resources to produce musicals of scale. So if we don't, who's going to?"15 Two years later, he told Carlton University Magazines Lori Mayne that he wanted the centre to be a place where "interesting and challenging and thrilling musicals are produce^/1 It is clear from my conv«^^^;wA^avor Moore tih#t,d|p^|fefival of Music and Laughter's ma^^ Was always to favarogfvnew mushkgjj in fact it is my belife that this should be tighened they should all be be e musical, all Canadian, and fppttrilJfe'bjMi'iSwWs ^iw^:&|y.aal scores. rr-l T^ :"^y ^v , ° \ , . * * < '' *j^. ' ~''7 "' *&£6?& me Festival should have a wrtn|$j$^^ in Toronto At least one onenew jnew main stage musical should b0J$j^^ issioned each year ad originally en ?
<
visaged. And the mo$t;fn^^^4 ^<^Cf^^^'p^^^;^st Aiif&s. Of course, dSmto the
^stii^<^^^^^^;^"v';A; ;; ::-;;^v;H ^-f:v
(ME
149
21. A"RADIOPHONIC" MUSICAL
1
A flyer announcing the CBC Radio musical, Hey, Marilyn!, written by ClifFJones. Courtesy ofCliffJones.
BRIM NORTH
150
hen I entered the office of Ron Solloway, head of CBC Radio Variety in late 1983,1 felt that I must be on friendly turf. On his wall were various theatrical posters, along with a signed photograph of Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury in a studio, making the Broadway cast recording of Sweeney Todd, He spoke knowledgeably about the inner working of the musical theatre—of Leonard Bernstein's unfulfilled plan, together with Betty Comden and Adolph Green, to make a musical out of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth before settling down to business. I had come to him with a proposal to write an original musical for radio. At the time, CBC Radio had a tradition—almost totally unique in the world—of commissioning original musicals. As early as 1927, the Canadian National Railways network, the predecessor of the CBC, presented Alice in Wonderland as a musical adapted by Marjorie Reynolds in Vancouver.1 In 1949, Norman Campbell wrote his first musical for CBC Radio, Oh Please, Louise^ with book by Eric Nicol in Vancouver, starring Juliette. In the 1950s, they had commissioned Mavor Moore's Best of All Possible Worlds and The Hero ofMariposa. Throughout the 1970s, original CBC Radio musicals tended to be dominated by one man—Cliff Jones. (They also adapted stage musicals for radio, including Love's Labour's Lost, Olympiad^ Bistro Car, Rock and Roll and, in August 2004, Pelagic) Jones s Hamlet—A Musical was picked up by the Charlottetown Festival, where it opened in the summer of 1973 in a largely rewritten form as Kronborg 1582. Then, three years later, it opened on Broadway as Rockabye Hamlet. The fact that it closed almost immediately did nothing to quell the notion that this was the "way to go." Soon after, Jones began work on his follow-up, Hey, Marilyn! He cast Beverly D'Angelo, who had played Ophelia in Kronborg at Charlottetown, in the title role. Curiously, she played Marilyn Monroe as a split personality—the breathy, sexy on-screen persona, and a more down-toearth off-screen Norma Jean. The show was virtually through-sung, with thirty-seven numbers. Following its initial airing on February 16, 1975, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald claimed, "The tragedy of Marilyn Monroe... has never been more poignant than in the new musical by a Canadian
composer whose name will one day be a household word—Cliff Jones." But the Globe and Mails Blaik Kirby said, "The overall effect is not what it should be. You'll tap your toes for two hours, but seldom think of what Marilyn went through... Cliff Jones' catchy music does not often evoke the feelings of the event it is describing."The Stars Dennis Braithwaite used it as an opportunity for a rant about "the sad irony of this country's lack of identity," maintaining "it is Broadway, not the Charlottetown Festival or the St. Lawrence Centre that ultimately defines Canadian artists." Both Hey, Marilyn! and Hamlet received several encore airings on CBC Radio over the following months, including one as part of World Music Week. When Toronto actor and writer Alan Gordon was a student at the University of Toronto, he came across Niccolo Machiavelli's sixteenth century comedy of lust and manipulation La Mandragola, and immediately saw it as the basis for a musical. The story is based on actual events tjiat took place in Florence in 1504. The beautiful Dona Lucrezia is married to the wealthy but elderly and sterile Nicia. (This being sixteenth-century Italy, he doesn't admit he's impotent, so the problem is obviously with her.) A young "buck" newly arrived from Paris, named Callimaco, spots Lucrezia and instantly lusts after her. Upon hearing of her predicament* he has a solution of his own, but one that is clearly unacceptable to the wrtuous Lucrezia. So he and Senor Lugurio> his sideki€k> hatch an elaborate plot to deceive both Lucrezia and Nicia using a number of disguises and a mandrake (mandragola) root—an aphrodisiac with a deadly kick "When I attended a theatre coherence in Montreal^ ocjslains Gordon in a 1977 CBC press release^/there were complaints that Canada isn't producing new theatre writers* An artistic director in Edmonton said he'd be glad to commission a playfrdm a young writer, I spoke up and said Fd always wanted to do a musical version of Mandragola. It just popped out, 'Terrific!' he said* *Send me tn outline/1 did, and approached Doug Riley to write the music—^weH done jingles together* He agreed and we went to work. We had three songs roughed out and the musk for them written when we heard that the funding had fallen through in Edmonton. But we
The LP album cover for Mandragola produced by the CBC in 1977. Courtesy of the author.
flCJDNE
151
RROMINY NORTH
152
were so keen that we went on with the music and book anyway. When we had a bit more done, we made a tape of it, played it for the CBC Variety Department, and were told to go ahead. We were both busy with other things, and last May [1977] when we learned that the show would be taped in early July, we had only twenty-seven pages of dialogue written [for a two hour show!] and only seven strong songs. But we got busy and completed the script and score in time." Martin Short was cast as Callimaco, with Jack Duffy as Nicia, Mary Ann McDonald as Lucrezia and Don Francks as Lugurio. "Working on the show was the best professional experience I ever had." When I met Jack Duffy a few years later, he concurred, saying that it was one time when he really looked forward to going to work. Gordon says, "The whole cast contributed to the dialogue and suggested amusing bits of business and sounds, not only for their own parts, but for each other's, too." Gordon (who was also producer of Ninety Minutes Live with Peter Gzowski, Canada After Dark and co-creator of the Theatre-in-the-Dell revue Ain't We Got Fun) and Riley made one very serious error in the early stages. Although Short and McDonald were both accomplished musical theatre performers (Short eventually starred on Broadway in The Goodbye Girt) they were not sight readers, and Riley didn't have time to rehearse them, so he brought in two studio session singers, Cal Dodd and Sharon Lee Williams, to dub their songs. The voices did not remotely match (Williams is a Black soul diva, McDonald clearly not) and all characterization went out the window. To further complicate things, it was taped out of sequence. Unfortunately, the cast's enthusiasm wasn't shared by the critics. Sid Adilman in the Star dismissed it as "a jumble of widely varying and uncomplimentary dialogue and pop musical forms—including speeches from the original, throwaway Wayne-and-Shusterish-like lines, and faddish inverted Jewish delivery. It padded out the script when cutting back was more necessary. And what is there to say about musical lyrics such as, 'When I see that exquisite face, I want to see her beside me... under me.'" Blaik Kirby in the Globe and Mail called it "a two-hour dirty joke with leers instead of laughter. After this, how can anyone pretend there is merit or promise in the CBC's musicals?" Ultimately, the CBC released an "original cast" recording of the show on disc. Still, the CBC continued to commission musicals—for a while at least—including two more from Cliff Jones. Some of My Best Rats are Friends was first aired January 28,1978. It starred Martin Short as a psychology student working with lab rats. Jones, who himself has a degree in psychology, developed a story about a scientist who sympathizes more
with his rodent subjects (played by Pat Rose, Nancy White, Suzette Couture and John Kastner) than he does with humans. The Globe and Mail's Katherine Gildey said, "There is no easy way to label the bizarre mix of ingredients Jones has wrought... Again, his reach has exceeded his grasp." Cliff Jones s final effort came six years later. After a dire TV outing with an adaptation of Sheridan's The Rivals, he returned to musical biography with For the Love of Howard, starring Ross Petty as Howard Hughes. But the Stars Henry Mietkiewicz said, "Jones has suffered defeat in his efforts to understand Hughes... The superficial nature of Jones's work simply cannot be ignored." One of the final musicals to be commissioned for radio was the only one with which I was acquainted during its development (if only slightly). Composer-lyricist Jim Betts brought a couple of songs into the Guild of Canadian Musical Theatre Writers workshop during 1984, telling the story of a Stanley Cup championship between Russian and Canadian hockey teams, and the "evil" forces that attempt to throw the game in order to replace sports programming with fine arts on CBC-TV. The actual production, which aired on March 31,1985, featured real-life hockey legends Gordie How%Wtyne Gretzky and Don Cherry ia €Uppoirtiiig roles, alongside Bgft^ttimilton, Douglas Chamberlain, and Michelle Rsj£ But Meettincvnlfjldlfjl i&the Star said, "There's no getting arotod the fact that Thin I&$ too long* too silly and badly in need of songs with stronger melodte^ <3^:lfry> spkited lyrics." Betts teamed up with lkx>k-wiitet Doug Ellis to'flf&kpt Thin Ice for the stage, and it was presented Hi; the Muskoka R$ti¥allir;1987v
Some of My Best Rats are Friends (1978) and For the Love of Howard (1984). Courtesy of C/iffJones.
For years, I hadferf off soipte, demo tapes and other paj^Keraalia to the Radio V ia the hopes of eMting interest, but varerejhffhg,gtotjrevatjtoilthe hodkfjatjoliuvssssome jkdfjdlbit always receiverprinted rejection slips until now for i had lrerfxfclfkl; had flection slips—until now RofTh^i'leafi^d a lesson of sorts—to wiite a musical that would only woik^n radio. Closed Session concerned a narcissistic* self-absorbed songwriter (a great vote winner in a musical, 1 thought) named Cliff Kydd, and his struggle to put his autobiographical (of course) artistic vision onto vinyl. The
fldlNE
153
programs main conceit would be that the audience would hear only what passed through the studio's sound desk. I had recently seen Richard Rush's film The Stunt Man, and so wanted to play havoc with the audiences perceptions. For instance, I planned to open with the sound of wild applause at the end of a song, only for it to suddenly cut off as we hear the sound of tape winding back. In other words, it would all be artifice. The thought that the audience might be set adrift in a bog of confusion and incomprehension didn't bother me. I expected them to be swept up by the sheer brilliance of the concept—and for a while I thought that somebody might have agreed with me. Solloway said, "That sounds very—as we like to say—Vadiophonic.'" Solloway s first step, an unusual one and one taken because I was still an unproven talent, was to commission only four songs, to be recorded as a demo. I was assigned a producer, John Stinchcombe, who had also been responsible for For the Love of Howard. I was allowed to choose the singers, Mark Bastien and Karen Linsley, and the musical director, David Warrack. But there my control ended. As we went in to the CBC s Studio 4S—the same room where Hey, Marilyn! was taped—I had entered a whole new realm of union jurisdiction and of cultural bureaucracy. Overdubs were out of the question, as the CBC would not pay doubling fees. So, evidently, was retaking a track just because the singer got the lyrics mixed up. In the meantime, the CBC had played musical chairs at the top. Ron Solloway, the man who gave us Royal Canadian Air Farce, was out and Keith Duncan was in. Duncan was more interested in comedy than musicals, so while Thin Ice (which was already in the pipeline) went ahead, Duncan, who was disappointed that Closed Session did not involve spikyhaired punks and techno-pop drones, killed my show. There were no signed pictures of Len Cariou on his wall, and the "golden age" of CBC radio musicals was over. (The thought that Closed Session may have, in some small way, contributed to its demise does not bear consideration.) Still, I was imbued with the notion that radio musicals were the way to go, and so I shelled out $2,200 of my own money to produce my musical Shikara—a story of tigers uniting to defend themselves against hunters ( a visual show if there ever was one) on the University of Toronto's community radio station. I soon discovered one great disadvantage in radio as a medium for new musicals—no applause. In fact, no audience reaction at all. I never really learned whether my musical worked. And, thirty years after Mandragola, Alan Gordon still doesn't know if anybody laughed at his jokes. |ROilY|[ffl
154
M/IBY. TRY. BIN FOR THE SKY' |ou have to admire any Canadian musical that dares to dream. To think f big. How un-Canadian. At a time when most home-grown shows had no more than five actors and a trio of musicians, Beowulf Tiad a thirtyseven piece orchestra and a choir. Upon seeing Winnipeg for the first time in 1879, impresario R. W. Marks said, "I could have vaulted across Winnipeg on any clothespole. It was just a muddy, fresh-rigged town with about 1,500 inhabitants that Easterners thought was a thousand miles northwest of the North Pole and didn't care if it moved another thousand miles closer."1 Fast-forward ninety years or so, and Winnipeg had established its theatrical credentials by being the first Canadian city to have a regional theatre. It had a world renowned ballet company, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, and a musical summer stock company, Rainbow Stage, in business since 1955. Its talent exports included Tony-winning actor Len Cariou, star of Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music. So it was, by then, a reasonably fertile birthplace for a new musical. "I kept going around [telling] people in Winnipeg that I wanted to write a musical," says composer Victor Davies, a jazz pianist who studied composition at University of Manitoba and Indiana University, |fid conducting with Pierre Boulez in Switzerland. He had already written a couple of modestly successful shows, including a children's musical called The Magic Trumpet for the Manitoba Theatre Centre. Bill Wylie was general manager of MTC and his wife Betty Jane, a playwright, often chatted with Victor at parties. "Our children attended nursery school,^ |hb says. She was writing puppet pkfis for a touijng group, and when olife 6? the songs she had written needed to be transcribed i>r publicttidii^she tamed to Victor. "I asked Vic if he'd ever read.SMWuffi* Widely regared as the English language's first poem, Wylie i^ggested it: as a basis jfjbr a rock opera, believing that the Saxon "ketiliiig*—a compound word that Describes an object without naming ii^^mind^Wnor^"^^ road**—itesimbled the sprung rhythms of r^ck mniiei^He hadtft heard of it* At university, Wylie had ma|0rad in f^rentieA-century poetry and minted In AngloSaxon and Old-Norse, While at university; she wrote lier own translation of Beowulfj on which she based her Mbretto, "adding, of course, other themes—e.g. 'He's too good to be true"* She suggested that Davies read the original epic poem. *I read it," he says,aand thought 'this is like lead!
I
ACT ONE
155
Beowulf composer, Victor Davies and his wife, Lori. Photo by the author.
KROIDNAY NORIH
156
Who would want to know about this?'" But Wylie was persistent, and he found the heart of the material when he came, in her draft libretto, to the part where the old king Hrothgar says to Beowulf, "I knew your father before you were born, but I never thought I'd need a helping hand." Davies' own father had recently passed away, and he felt a connection. "I found my way into the material." "I said to Betty Jane, 'What is this? Is this a theatre piece or an album?'" They had already tried to interest the Stratford Festival, where Wylie's husband Bill was now general manager, and the Charlottetown Festival had offered some encouragement. "She said, 'Well, it's an everything'2 My little brain said to me, this can't be an everything. My instincts were [that] this was theatre, we have to make these people believable, even though there's a monster and dragon and everything else." By the summer of 1971, he finished setting that first song, "Beowulf You've Paid This Visit Out of Friendship," to music. When it came time to make a demo tape, he couldn't afford to pay the musicians. He needed a drummer, so he said, "How about if I give you my old TV set?" One of the tunes, "Armless, Charmless, Harmless Grendel"was actually Wylie's, "which occurred to me as I thought of the company with an extra arm for an allemande," says Wylie. "The music came out attached to the words. Vic at first rejected my tune but later phoned and asked me to hum it to him." Some of Wylie's lyrics adhered very closely to her earlier translation: "Earth, Hold What Men have Failed to Keep" and "Death is Not Easy to Hide From." Others, such as the Queen's song "How Can I Love Him?" were more conventional theatre lyrics. "Throughout the work, I consciously used simple words with Anglo-Saxon roots (not Latin) and employed kennings and alliteration." In most cases, she wrote the lyrics first, although there were exceptions, including the battle between Beowulf and Grendel, "Cold and Lonely." With Victor in Winnipeg and Betty Jane in Stratford, much of the writing was done via long distance. Then, when Victor had finished demos of most of the score, he sent them to Betty Jane who sat down with her
husband to listen to it. Then, quite unexpectedly, tragedy struck. Bill Wylie had a heart attack and died while listening to the Beowulf 'demo. (In fact, it was during a song called "Cry, We All Die.") This stalled the project for a while, but ultimately, Betty Jane felt that, as Bill had been such a firm supporter, it should continue in his memory. "The only thing I knew to do was write, so that was what I was doing." Because the success of Jesus Christ Superstar had established a precedent, they decided to produce it first as a concept album. Victor first approached Columbia Records in Toronto, where he was told, "I get a rock opera every week." Then he asked Don Hunter, manager of The Guess Who, if he had any contacts in New York. He was referred to RCA Victor, The Guess Who's label, but their most recent venture, Gait MacDermot's Via Galactica had been a dismal failure, and he was told "If it's more than five seconds old, I'm not interested." Metromedia cheerfully suggested, "Kid, why don't you make a porno movie and make some real money?" At Chappell Music, he met a man whose office was just big enough for a desk and a chair. "If this was illustrative of this man's position in the corporation," he thought, "I'm talking to the wrong guy." On his way home, he stopped off in Toronto where he met Frank Davies (no relation) of Daffodil Records, a label with a few major Canadian rock and pop acts in their stable, including Crowbar and Klaatu. He said, "Okay, I'd really love to do this. This is a great idea, but I can't offer you much." Victor asked, "How about a distribution deal?" thinking tjiat he could produce the master independently, as in the film business. This was agreed. Next, they needed to raise money—about $80,000. Through his work on the score for The Beginning^dEnd^fthe World, a planetaritito show that had gone bankrupt, he loie^;Daid4<jarvey, wha^helj^P^lm to form a company, Beowulf-B|^|^|ses^Ad4'tP raise m°W^|^P^uce the master tape. "We would juj^^ and sit in people houses and play [the demo tape] and pitdhrl!!^ on thee whole thing it toot then a year to raise the money Then he began to put a ca^^^^^fJ^;^^Ml'^^^:t0 play Beowulf was Patrick Rose, witjb||^ omm hed worked on a childerpiece piece called The Sound Ste&lw:* beowulf0^^:'^^'^ lotafel ;^fc^p]^^lucky guy," says Victor And for Queen Wealth he tried to get Ann MorM0i> the whole thing he Wound pu vca tifee, Itit ferthwad veert col abouttt&^^ c ing Christine'Chattdfai wl*|^l ten mj^^;%/i^ at/f&Ctarlottetown Festival, and wte ifeo happened to-be *itiw J^ffif lend of Dave Young, who would play bass on. the ^tnim iDbe voice of Grendel the monster was played with great gusto (a,. looking for blood...") by Frank
icrliE
157
BRDHDNHYlDRTH
158
Adamson, who would later play Sgt. Brown on the popular TV series Seeing Things. The rhythm tracks were recorded at Toronto Sound, Doug Riley's studio. (The part of Hrothgar would be played by blues singer Doug Mallory, lead singer of Riley's band "Dr. Music.") The music was done in layers— the orchestral parts were not written until after rhythm and vocal tracks had been laid down. Next came the vocals, most of which were recorded at Winnipeg's Century 21 Studios, who were also investors in the project. "Once we started," Victor explains, "I just took over the studio." Owner Jim Hildebrande would come in and say, "Will you get out of the studio? WeVe got to make some money!" Christine Chandler, who would die tragically in a car accident not long after the album was released, was appearing in a stage production in Winnipeg, and recorded all of her parts one Saturday afternoon during the break between a matinee and an evening show. When it came time to record Beowulf's part, Victor encountered a problem. Pat Rose came into Winnipeg on a break from the tour ofjubalay, which he was expecting to take to New York. "When we saw him in Jacques Brel, he was fantastic," says Victor. "He was my ideal Beowulf." But Pat \&AJubalay on his mind, and his energy just was not there. "I went home and listened to it and thought, there's no way anyone is going to believe this." Instead Victor turned to Chad Allan, one time the lead singer of The Guess Who. "He'd never done anything like this before, but he had a certain dramatic quality. We were there for days and days. I had him lying on the floor in the isolation booth [in Beowulf's death scene] with the lights shut off, trying to get into the space of Beowulf." Once the principal vocals were recorded, Victor began to orchestrate the music for up to 37 musicians drawn from the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, in addition to the Holiday Festival Singers conducted by William Baerg. To save money, mixing and editing was done at night, working from eleven in the evening until seven in the morning. They had run out of money, so Dave Garvey went to the Bank of Montreal for a loan. "Can you believe it?!" Victor laughs now. "A loan for a rock opera!" Before the album came out, the bank manager was transferred and the loan written off. Frank Davies maintained a hands-off approach, considering this to be Victor and Betty Jane's baby. In hindsight, Victor feels this was not good. "He didn't say, 'Victor, you really need a hit song, something I can flog in terms of a single.'" But when it was finished, Frank decided that, at three records, the album was too long. "Nobody is going to buy this."
So it was edited down to two discs. Then the tapes were sent to Sterling Sound in New York to be mastered. The noted engineer Robert Ludwig, who had worked with Paul Simon, failed to calibrate the DBX noise reduction properly, and the sound that Victor had worked so hard to perfect was seriously compromised. "I was furious." Daffodil Records tried to plug the song "Try" as a single, without much success. The record company earned their bread and butter by distributing Island Records in Canada. But while this was lucrative on paper, it took too long for them to collect their money, and this created a cash flow crisis. A month after Beowu/fw&s released, they went bankrupt. (They had also neglected to put copyright notices on the LPs, which under U.S. copyright law meant they were in public domain. It took thousands of dollars in legal fees to reinstate the copyright.) "Not a propitious time," says Victor. "We figured we were deader than a doornail." In the meantime, he continued sending it to producers, trying to get a stage production. Believing it needed to be a spectacle, somebody in London said, "If only Sean Kenny (the designer of Oliver!) were alive, we'd love to do it." Other prospective producers came and went. Then, in the autumn of 1976* Victor was musical director for a production of Dames at Sea at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. The director and choreographer was art American named Voigt Kempson, who had earlier directed the same show at Paper Mill Playhouse, starring Bernadette Peters* and had also appeared on Broadway as a dancer in Hello Dolly, One night Victor invited him over for dinner and played Beowulf im him* Kempson didrft say much^ but later phoned his wife in New TS>rk and said, "My God* this is jhe show that's going to take me to BroadwayP A year passed and Victor had moved on to other things* He was musical director for a nightly TV series called 90 Minutes Lwe with Peter GzowsJti on CBC, and at the same time was also writing songs for another series in Winnipeg called Lets Go with Chad Allan. He and his wife Lori had just made an qffer on a house in Toronto when Kempson called. "Where the hell are you?* he said. Victor replied, "I'm
Flyer advertising the Beowu/fLP, 1983. Courtesy of the author.
fiCIlNE
159
BROHY NORTH
160
here in Toronto. Where the hell am I supposed to be?" Kempson had convinced New York's AMAS Repertory Theatre—where Man of La Mancha had received its world premiere—to present an Equity Showcase of Beowulf." You Ve got to get down here," he said. "We're going to start casting next week." Victor and Betty Jane went to New York and began to rewrite the show, which would open at the beginning of December 1977. They added one new song, "All the Lives IVe Lived I've Loved," which was written in about five minutes. Davies told Wylie, "You're lyrics are molten." Wylie says, "That is not often given to one, that speed and serendipity. It usually takes longer than that." Kempson told Davies, "In order to do the show properly, we need a cast of Ben Vereens." Except for Tuck Milligan (who had already been on Broadway in Equus), who played Beowulf with a Pippin-V&iz quality, what they ended up with was, according to Victor, the "dregs of New York choreography left over from nowhere." AMAS Repertory's scenic resources were limited. There would be no Sean Kenny spectacles here. A gorgeous dancer played Grendel's mother as a kind of femme fatale. But Victor knew that the dragon had to be special. So he cashed in his life insurance policy and spent the money—about $3,000—building a dragon out of streamers. Garbage-can lids became shields. Instead of a 37-piece orchestra, they had five musicians behind the stage. Some Harlem kids, who had never seen live theatre before, were invited to the preview. "We're going to get killed," Victor thought. "We are going to be dead people." But they were quiet as could be, and when Beowulf died, they gasped "No!" Wylie adds, "What I still remember about all those Black kids is their feet in running shoes tippy-tapping away to the rhythms of the music. They couldn't sit still!" Voigt's agent was Jean Dalrymple, who had been a producer at New York City Centre, and also represented Mary Martin and Leopold Stokowski, among others. She came on opening night, and Victor asked her what she thought. "My dear, it's brilliant. Some of the most exciting theatre I've seen in the past fifteen years." Does that mean it was going to Broadway? "Oh, no, it's not commercial." The Nederlanders and the Shuberts all gave similar answers, as if reading from an autocue. Davies and Wylie collaborated again on Soap Bubbles, a cabaret musical, which was workshopped by director Tom Swertzer at Gravenhurst in 1979. Davies has since concentrated on film scores, including The Last Winter, for which his daughter Heather was a featured vocalist. His Mennonite Piano Concerto was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.
To date, Beowu/fhas ss never been presented on stage again. Voigt Kempson remembers it as "a show I really loved and enjoyed very much, and feel to this day should have gone on to Broadway." In fact, Davies work did reach Broadway, thanks to the Famous People Players, who used his music for A Little Like Magic. At the suggestion of his wife Lori, he eventually released the full three record version of Beowulf— including "All The Lives IVe Lived IVe Loved."This time the noise reduction problem was solved, and with help from Bruce Yeko, (who made the first recording of Stephen Schwartz's The Baker's Wife), it found a cult following on university campuses. A CD reissue is imminent.
IT DUE
161
2r COULD CHANGE THE HORLD' I everal years ago, I participated in a workshop on "popular theatre" in Toronto. Those in the group who believed it would be a dissection j of the merits of Cats, Les Miserable* and Phantom of the Opera, were ' soon set straight. No, "popular theatre" was not commercial theatre. On the contrary, it was a form of agit-prop commonly found in Central America, in which a group of actors would enter a community, study its social issues, then feed them back to the citizenry in the form of a collectivist, improvised drama. Something similar to this had also taken root in Canada's alternate theatre movement in the early 1970s. Just as the "well-made plays" of Noel Coward, Terrence Rattigan and J.B. Priestly were under siege in the 1950s by the "angry young man" John Osborne and the semi-improvised creations of Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at the Theatre Royal in Stratford, East London, so the "golden age" musicals came under assault, albeit a decade later. Littlewood maintained, "I do not believe in the supremacy of the director, designer, actor or even the writer. It is through collaboration that this knockabout art of theatre survives and kicks... No one mind or imagination can foresee what a play will become until all the physical and intellectual stimuli, which are crystallized in the poetry of the author, have been understood by the company, and then tried out in terms of mime, discussion and the precise music of grammar; words and movement allied and integrated."1 Once Canada's network of regional theatres was established, a sort of "loyal opposition" evolved in the form of alternate or fringe theatres, many with a highly collectivist ethos. In 1972, Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille (theatre without walls) went to the town of Clinton, Ontario, interviewed the locals, then put on a show based on the lives of Clinton's inhabitants. The Farm Show then received national exposure on CBC-TV. For a time, this collectivist form of creation was a vital new form in Canadian alternate theatre. Although few shows are written collectively any more, this method has been very influential on more conventionally written shows such as Billy Bishop Goes to War. The Theatre Passe Muraille is still thriving. George Luscombe, a five-year veteran of Littlewood's company, formed Toronto Workshop Productions. Any "musical theatre" that emerged here was hardly likely to be of the Cole Porter clinking-champagne-glassesin-a-penthouse variety (although future Broadway song-and-dance man Victor Garber gained much of his early experience there). Rather than
S
B*D1Y|OT
162
smart cocktails around a baby grand, one was more likely to see men in overalls strumming guitars and singing about prairie droughts. Their 1974 production Ten Lost Years, based on Barry Broadfoot's oral history of the Great Depression, was culled together by dramaturge Jack Winter and actor/folk musician Cedric Smith (who had initiated the idea). Luscombe and Winter structured the book in revue fashion, contrasting present-day prosperity with earlier hardships, laying the blame at the door of greedy capitalists. These collective creations made heroes out of types. The heroes of Littlewood's Oh What a Lovely War! (of which Canadian writer Ted Allan was one of the uncredited authors) were the soldiers as a group, rather than as individual characters. In 1975, Passe Muraille's Paul Thompson came to Saskatchewan to create The West Show, telling the province's history. This, in turn, inspired Paper Wheat, a creation of Saskatoons 25th Street Theatre. Beginning with barely a rough outline, never mind a text, the show toured the small communities of rural Saskatchewan, interviewing locals as they went, using improvisation to piece together the epic story of the birth of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool. Told in a style resembling a school Christmas concert, with sketches alternating with songs, this was closely allied to another form known as Popular Theatre, a kind of agit-prop way of reflecting a community back to itself. Don Kerr, in his introduction to the published text, says, "Paper Wheat is a celebration of a heroic age when men and women took on the world and won."2 It ended with the line, "I'd give it all to be young again and feel that I could change the world." Some Toronto critics, such as Saturday Nighh Martin Knelman, sneered at the play's "rural folksiness."Its form was loose and improvisational, and, tellingly, in the published script, the songs are indicated by lead sheets—ie^ n^tlody line and ehofd^f&bols, but no detailed arrangement ]paf&r Whmt no doubt touched;a|Sl^e on its home turf, and more surprisingly, eomiddSng its su tftatter, in other parts of the country as well, Other companies also engaged in colleetif^ cre^llfti^especially of "community" plays, or "popula£*]pd^ of Newfoundland was origini%*£mil^ Lynn Lunde to revive thef}t$4ition <^£tfe<^ troupe isg oflactors; performing hiOTiorotiS sketches and songs/0!''tinted Jp 'Wie^!^yt Newfoundland had a theatre of aintilqtiity/1sa Brooke^ *Wd ttmt there was more than a bunch of British sailors getting off a sMj) and performing stuff in St. John's in the last centpry; I had a belief that it was the original theatrical form we had.*3 The trouble was, mummering had died
flClQNE
163
\m\m\\m
|[J4
out for a reason—it was banned in the 1860s after a man was murdered by a gang of mummers. Brookes s troupe sidestepped the law initially by performing only where invited. They also began to present collectively created plays such as What's That Got To Do With the Price of Fish? and the controversial They Club Fish, Don't They? They disbanded in 1982. Donna Butt and David Ross, who left the troupe in 1978, went on to establish Rising Tide Theatre, whose collectively written Joey—or "God Created Man But I Created Newfoundland, * about the life of Joey Smallwood, Canada's last Father of Confederation, toured across Canada in the early 1980s. The disadvantage with a collective creation is that there is no one person's creative stamp on it. However, collective creations have influenced individual writers, most notably John Gray. Although not written collectively, Billy Bishop was written in close collaboration with Eric Peterson, the actor performing the piece, and Gray had worked extensively with Passe Muraille. In 1977, Cedric Smith's The Road to Charlottetown, based on the work of Atlantic poet Milton Acorn, toured on a shoestring to local jails under the sponsorship of Theatre Passe Muraille. The Globe and Mail's Bryan Johnson crowed, "What a delight it can be when the Canadian history we've all written off as numbingly dull turns out to be wildly exciting." This little show gathered enough momentum to be invited to the 1977 summer season at the Charlottetown Festival. Variations on this form have also been tried in the commercial musical theatre as well, no doubt due to the popular success of Oh! What a Lovely War. Two of the most successful examples would be Godspell, which was originally created through improvisational workshops, and A Chorus Line, which was based, like Ten Lost Years, on tape-recorded interviews with Broadway dancers, many of whom wound up playing themselves in the original Broadway production. One Canadian "collective" musical made it to New York—but only just. Sex Tips for Modern Girls was the brainchild of two Vancouver actresses, Kim Seary and Christine Willes, who were appearing together in a production of Alan Ayckbourns Norman Conquests. They met with several of their fellow thesps, interviewing each other about their sex lives. Then they improvised scenes based on these scenarios. Composer John Sereda was engaged to add some songs, and Touchstone Theatre produced the end result in February 1985, directed by Mussoc alumnus Sue Astley. The Toronto Star proclaimed it the "surprise hit of the season... unfailingly paced, knowing, humane and hilarious." The Globe and Mail
said, "it finds a lot of women—and some men—in the audience shrieking with the laughter of recognition."The Vancouver Sun found it "articulate and witty." After running for more than a year in Vancouver, they courageously decided to bring it to New York, opening at the Off-Broadway Susan Bloch Theatre, and billing themselves as "Canada's longest running musical smash hit." After being held up for a week due to immigration problems, the show opened on October 7, 1985. Once again, Gotham's critics had a chance to sharpen their pencils at the expense of their neighbours from the Great White North. The New York Times called it "little more than a glorified rap session." Clive Barnes in the Post called it "everything you ever knew about sex but were too bored to repeat," while Howard Kissel of the News wrote, "These days the sexual revolution we used to hear so much about seems like ancient history. Judging by the coyness of Sex Tips, they haven't had one yet in Canada." Added to this roasting, New York author Cynthia Heimel claimed that the idea was plagiarized from her 1983 book, Sex Tips for Girls, a notion vehemently denied by the show's creators. There were other shows that, while not written collectively, reflect a similar "grass roots" approach. Ken Mitchell's "country opera" Cruel Tears resets Shakespeare's Othello among Saskatchewan truck drivers. (Although the title sounds like a hurtin song, it is in fact derived from Othello's speech "I must weep, but they are cruel tears.") Othello the Moor becomes Johnny Roychuck, a "bohunk" (Ukrainian) who marries the boss's daughter. His "best buddy"Jack Deal engineers his downfall, through gossip, innuendo and t VQry lago-like tendency to statin the back. The music, by country folk act Humphrey and the DttHiptrucks, comments on the action (t^cbgs not advance the plot) fa f^Kthe same way as in an old English Wkd.cqpdc^^pe scoit is a$ times lifely, sometimes lyrical and wh0fif t^ sathyawedskarthcik towards the banal and are not brilUaijttf crafted: the Well we got a song about thes$Jfe& But we don't wii&ywltogetill dfppe^l nowsathyaerkaisathyaisaogidmanamakalkarthickwedssathyasdidksddfkdfsdfsdftewehjklukisubdffgers Cux:youvl^^^^^ip;gTOd':aiid s0ttte':»e',1jad.4
Cruel Tears opened March 1ST, 1975, at the Pej^phoneTObeatre in Saskatoon with Winston Rekert ?(who later starred in YV*s Adderley) as Johnny. It then toured to Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and other cities. The
ME
IBS
Vancouver Sun called it "a delight" while the Globe and Mail deemed it a "cracking good melodrama." It was revived at Regina's Globe Theatre in 1999, at which time Mitchell heightened the racial aspect by making Johnny a Native. The "grassroots" musical form would be developed further with Eighteen Wheels, another show about truck drivers by John Gray, who would go on to write Billy Bishop Goes to War. Although few shows are written collectively anymore, as noted earlier, companies such as Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille continue to develop original Canadian plays and musicals.
BHMYNORIH
166
21 THE KI L LER h to to? tefflim a
wouldn't do a Lehman Engel workshop for the world," said John Gray, author of Billy Bishop Goes to War. "I don t want to write like Hello, Do/fyf'And nobody would ever mistake him for Jerry Herman—Gray has carved out his own distinctive path. "Each show John does is a little different," says Mavor Moore. "He's got a voice all his own, out of his own period, his rock and roll experience." That "rock and roll experience" consisted of playing piano with The Lincolns in his home town of Truro, Nova Scotia, in the early 1960s, an experience he would one day recall in his musical Rock and Roll. "I don't know very many writers of musicals that came out of the background I did," he says. He graduated from UBC—"The only place you could study directing"1—with an MA in 1972. He was a founding member of Vancouver's Tahmanhous Theatre Workshop, where he wrote songs for Mussoc alumnus Jeremy Long's Salty Tears on a Hangnail Fence, among other things. His first full-length musical was Eighteen Wheels, a show about truckers that Paul Thompson directed at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. It broke attendance records when Richard Ouzounian presented it at Festival Lennoxville. The Globe and Mail called it "damned near marvellous." Gray eschews formulas. "When I wrote my first couple of musicals, I'd never seen an American musical," he says. "I'm not copying anybody... You can analyse Oklahoma!^ but that won't to any degree tell you the process by which the writers did it. After the fact judgements like that don't tell you anything." Robert Crew, theatre critfe for the T$r#nt% Star wrot^ ICfeilians have rarely tried the broad sweep of ting traditional Qroad^iy style Musical. Our style, right front the start of the ^fentury, hats%fen intimate, ironic, detached."2 (Has it? Was Sumhing f|fe#f intimate? IsAnne of Green Gables ironic? Was Mn Scr^^-^tw^^ In the beginning, at least, karthickwedssathyacongrats aiid of Gt;jy%work waskarthickwedssathyapoo was not just aestlxstic^t waskarhtickwedssathyscongratsationpoo director, any theaft^,li*f^ 'Aa^'i^dSred'seats was *btg time* for jikg,, A Bored while workding apliyi& Ottawa^ actor Efic PetptsdM t0ld him about a book he had beet* reading. Winged W»fore\^y Ciptain William Avery Bishop, the tdp fighter pilot of the Royil Flying Corps in the first World War. "We regarded the man with apprehension and curiosity," wrote Gray in the script's preface. "Was he a homicidal maniac?... What
l
flCTlNf
1GI
The album cover for the original cast recording, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Tapestry Records Ltd. 1979. Courtesy of the author.
monDNRY NORTH
168
did all this have to do with our colonial heritage, our sense of inadequacy when it conies to our position in the English-speaking world?"3 Gray has very strong feelings about tailoring theatrical forms to suit the subject. "I think that if you're going to write something unique in Canada, you have to write something in a form that comes out of the country. "Billy Bishop was a case in point. First of all, how do you stage an aerial dogfight in a theatre? Even if you had the London Palladium and a £10 million budget, you'd be hard pressed. But Gray made another observation that, for him, dictated the show's form. "Canadians don't much like listening in on other people's conversations. They think it's impolite. This plays havoc with the basic convention of theatre itself, so what do you do? Well, you drop the fourth wall and simply talk to the audience. They tend to relax a bit because they are in an arena whose aesthetics they understand: the arena of the storyteller."4 The setting was an officer's mess, where Bishop is addressing new recruits for the Second World War. Gray and Peterson were both in RCAF uniform, Gray seated at a grand piano. "Bishop was a hawk, a survivor, a hero and a killer," Gray told Macleans magazine.5 "His is a side of Canadians that doesn't get shown very often." Using only his microphone and a toy plane, Peterson re-enacted the battles, playing Bishop in addition to sixteen other characters, including his aunt Lady St. Helier and a French chanteuse. When Billy Bishop opened at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in November 1978, audiences were small due to a newspaper strike, but word of mouth slowly caught on. Then it toured Saskatchewan in January, and rural Ontario in February and March. During the Vancouver run, the late New York producer Lewis Allen was brought to see it, and wanted his partner Mike Nichols, with whom he'd produced a perennial cash-cow named Annie four years earlier, to see it. Along with Vancouver East Cultural Centre director Chris Wooten, they travelled through a snowstorm to the tiny village of Listowel, Ontario, where Gray and Peterson were struggling with cold, flu, lack of a stage or proper seating and "a piano with six important keys missing."6 Nichols stood at the back. To everybody's shock, he enjoyed it, even though Gray and Peterson had just given the worst performance of their lives.
In Toronto, Billy Bishop enjoyed its greatest success at Theatre Passe Muraille, and Nichols and Allen came back to see it again there. "We thought it was original and funny and moving," said Allen, "we thought it had transcended the life itself to become of universal significance. It's a very Canadian show, set in its own very specific milieu, that can speak to people everywhere in a terribly entertaining way."7 Aliens wife Jay Presson Allen, who wrote the screenplays for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Cabaret, called it "The most original theatrical concept since A Chorus Line'' Once Nichols and Allen were on board, Wooten got down to brass tacks. Wanting the show to have a strong Canadian stake, he corralled seven Canadian investors to put up half the budget of $US300,000 while Nichols and Allen raised the balance. In return, Vancouver East Cultural Centre retained Canadian and world rights (excluding the U.S. and the U.K.). As co-producer, they also retained 25% of the American production. Billy Bishop continued to tour Canada, bolstered by word of its "Broadway bound" status. Somebody even dubbed Gray a "national treasure," but he was oblivious to this. "It's all selling," he says. "It's nothing alchemical. There was a lot of press in Canada, but I never saw any of that. I was just in New York working." When the musical finally arrived for its first American "tryout" at Washington's Arena Stage, Gray and Peterson were greeted by a congratulatory gang of Pentagon big-wigs. "They all said they loved the show, and if there was anything they could do for us, we were to just let them know."8 He added, "I couldn't think of anyone I wanted killed or invaded, so I let it drop/ Then came the Broadway opening at the Morosco Theater where, following seveijipreviews, it opened^!*''May 29, 1980. The theatre's prewops-tenanthad been Haffy^M^i^^rea by Burt Shevelove, a Stratford iWtibtl production thttljto^f^wenfeen performances. The opening was sensational Gtiuiice B'eirg^n^-P^^^cDiller, Dick Cavett and Paul Simon all dffi^;^\p*ri^.^t Sar^|Aady Warhol said, "I love it! It's so Canadis^-p^fr'liehjtoili Engel tcfedit* But there was something wro^-'-Or^jtnd Pstorsoadtefi^ uncomprgten^^ silerncebaby ^^mce^^Wt/l^:b^m h$pi&jj fori^ttle m€«;,gpp^ktiicNQi, d£ irb»y^ but -AMtncmB^^^iM^m^t into irony"10 The reviews were generally upbeat In the New Y&rk JFfeftf, Clive Barnes said "Billy Bishop flies Wghf But Walter Ketf* writing for the New York Times, damned it with faint praise, "When Billy Bishop realizes that so
flCIlNE
169
BHWHY NORTH
170
long as he is in the ground forces, he is 'a casualty in training, and the only way out is up/you understand him and you're with him. It would be a saving grace to understand the Billy Bishop who came down as well." (In fact, this was a reservation that Nichols and Allen had shared: we never really saw how war had changed him.) The following morning, the producers were debating closing the show. The tickets just were not selling. It closed on June 6 after twelve performances (plus seven previews). But Gray, Peterson, Nichols and Allen may have been down, but they had not given up. Not yet. They moved it to the three hundred seat Theatre de Lys (now the Louise Lortel Theatre) in Greenwich Village, where Gray concedes it probably should have gone in the first place. A further cash infusion of $50,000 kept the show running until the end of August, when the actors left for the Edinburgh Festival. In Edinburgh, they were again greeted by standing ovations. "The Scots know what it's like to be under the Imperial thumb," wrote Gray.11 After this, and a successful eight-week run at Los Angeles'Mark Taper Forum, they still had one more kick at the big-time can—London. It was announced that producer Peter Bridge would bring the show in, aiming for the four-hundred seat Ambassadors Theatre. Unfortunately, the Ambassadors proved unavailable, and ultimately so did Bridge. Following a "palace coupe," it was Ken Renton who eventually brought the show to the much larger—and more expensive—Comedy. Like New York, the reviews were largely good. The Telegraph praised its "exemplary charm and emotional power," and Michael Coveny in the Financial Times said "the presentational conjunction of lights, music and sound effects is truly breathtaking." But still there were nagging reservations. The Observer said, "Its opening lyrics... 'somehow it never seemed like war at all' are simply and hauntingly set and suggest irony. But it never materialises. Ambiguities are bypassed, the evolution of a killer-hero unexamined." But my colleague Dick Vosburgh, author of the Broadway hit A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine^ wrote in Punch that he was "gripped and amused." Company stage manager Meryl Robertson remembers it "as being a really charming and happy show to work on, even though too short-lived. Eric Peterson had enormous charisma and was completely engaging... His skill as an actor playing all the parts was only part of his talent—to hold the audience needed a charm which he had in abundance." Billy Bishop Goes to War was not the only Canadian show on in London at the time. Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave was also playing at the Criterion, but London's flagging economy couldn't support both, or even one of them. Not with the newly opened Cats in competition. Billy
Bishop closed on July 11,1981. A couple of years later, Gray and Peterson returned to Britain to tape it for BBC-TV. He followed it up in 1981 with Rock and Roll, which toured across Canada and was produced on television under the much better title The King of Friday Night. (Nichols and Allen are said to have nibbled at this show as well—a pity they didn't bite, as it may have travelled more successfully than Bishop.} Don Messers Jubilee, which premiered at Halifax's Neptune Theatre in 1985 was an affectionate bio musical of the famed Cape Breton fiddler. But while Gray holds his work up as an example of indigenous Canadian musical theatre, some others disagree—especially those whose ancestors did not come from the British Isles. In one sense, John Gray accomplished his mission. Before, Bishop was an obscure war hero whom nobody had heard of. But when my sister became the owner of a high-flying cockatiel, she named him "Billy Bishop."
flCTlNE
171
This page intentionally left blank
This page intentionally left blank
25.[nni'BCiE:l[lElliiraFBiilf[i?'
?u;
ince taking drama classes in high school, I had been taught that small was better, and that sets and even proper stages were unnecessary. Probably because I'd been told that austerity was "good for me," I found myself rebelling and longing to work with large orchestras and lavish sets. I also had reason to doubt the word of my teachers—for years, I had endured the inhumane taunting that was concomitant with contact sports on the false promise that it would be "fun." I was soon convinced of the sociopathic tendency of all those involved. So I turned to musical theatre. But musicals—especially of the Broadway ilk—were deemed to be hopelessly bourgeois by the cognoscenti. It was claimed that they celebrated the status quo. The fact that Finiaris Rainbow was every bit as left wing as anything Dario Fo has ever come up with did not register. "They Have to Be Carefully Taught" (from South Pacific) may have been a lecture on racism that Martin Luther King would have been proud of, but because it played to audiences in suits and jewels, it just wasn't cool. (After all, they're not the ones you have to convince that racism is bad—it's the Black kids in the ghettos that need to hear that message, right?) In my opinion, one of the greatest protest songs of all time was "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" When I left high school and went in to community theatre, I would hear the argument, "What shall we do this year, The Sound of Music or My Fair Lady? Well, we did The Sound of Music last year, so I gues? we'll do My Fair Lady this year. We can do The Sound of Music again field: year. What's that you say? Pippintl No, we*re not into experimenttfflieatre." Warhorses in search of a w&r. The only places that would do anything hew were tilicf>ffiterriate" theatres. But they were more interested in Ranging tKe:1*orld than in changing their socks. So you had *p0ftdlp|^ theatre ttlii flayed avantgarde works in front of fifty conceits* aad %>mmejr^yp theatre that played old hat proven works bfefore tMilsSttiils, arid noi^ittg m^jbetween. You'd bring them an oripakl musical aunt tiie^d lodk at you as though you were someho^r feeing irre^nsitley aiiil possibly even immoinl, Ip Canada, ^mainstream* meant ^foreign,* a&d Oitmdian me|int *Mteimi$e** In any other society it would be the other way arottnd> but it wasrft the first thing Canada ever got backwards, and it probably worft be the last. As I donned my snorjcel and diving mask and began to delve into the plethora of Canadian ^serious" theatrical criticism, I found books that were
(jCI JKO
175
INHMIY NORTH
|]g
so isolationist that one felt a need to explain what a "Tony Award" was. The very idea of "showbiz" rankled them; theirs was vital, serious work, incubated in "laboratories." They didn't pander to middle-class sensibilities. They were there to inform and, better yet, disturb. And one of the best ways to disturb an audience was by making them climb over wooden benches and sit for two hours with their incisors dug into their kneecaps. Things have changed since then. Canadian theatre—influenced, of course, by its alternate roots—has moved into the mainstream. Writers like Norm Foster have made a good living writing popular comedies like The Melville Boys with a Canadian setting and a Canadian feel. And Norm has also entered into the musical theatre, collaborating with people like Leslie Arden. The alternate theatre is still there, testing out new ideas. Those that work are picked up by the mainstream, and those that don't are set aside as we move on to something new. Nothing remains inert. That's as it should be. Increasingly, Canadians are now able to see the entire spectrum of theatre—comedy, drama, experimental, musical comedy, musical drama—in their own voice. All of this suggests that Canadian musical theatre has arrived at a benchmark of sorts, if not outright maturity. Those who watch the pages of the New York Times as their barometer on the world won't notice the difference yet. Outside perceptions are usually decades behind. Many years ago, while travelling through the United States, I came across a man who was surprised to learn that we had television up in Canada. When I explained that Canada had the world's first satellite television network, he spontaneously combusted. Realizing that we have arrived at some sort of staging post requires that we take stock. There have been several such points along the way. Sunshine Town suggested that we could write our own musicals, while Anne of Green Gables proved it, and set a standard. The Lehman Engel workshops produced a generation of trained writers. Billy Bishop Goes to War proved that the alternate theatres had something valid to add to the mix. But the canon was still limited, as were the options. Many were still not up to speed with the new realities, and the "Broadway gawkers" were still focusing on the neighbour's backyard and not their own. On the other hand, some critics argued that Canadian audiences were not interested in "pizzazz," when the truth was that they just didn't trust Canadian artists and producers to deliver it. After Billy Bishop, Canadians began to feel more confident, and "Canada Limited" showed signs of being relegated. Perhaps as opportunities for greatness present themselves, we won't step back.
A funny thing happens when you view things at a distance. Shows that once seemed very groundbreaking are now hopelessly dated, while other shows leap out, and you wonder how they arrived so fully formed without any previous history to build on. Mr. Scrooge is seldom mentioned in Canadian theatre textbooks, and yet it has received many stock and amateur productions in many countries over the years, in spite of never having had a cast recording. Anne of Green Gables shows no sign of stopping, and the early works of Mavor Moore come off as extremely polished. In its early years, Canadian musical theatre consisted mostly of wholesome family entertainment at Charlottetown and of revue in Toronto. Its true that, for a time, we excelled at small-scale revues. But anybody in the entertainment business knows that you have to keep taking the audience s temperature. Cabaret died out in the late 1980s, or maybe we just outgrew it. In any case, rather than mourn its passing, some people have moved on to the next plateau. Then, from the 1980s, musicals began to have more serious ambitions. As with most things, the first steps faltered.
flcilwo
117
karhtickwedssathyacongragulationspooya ric Nicol was right. We all want to have a show run on Broadway. After m all, it's the Mecca for musical theatre, isn't it? Like the song says, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. (Of course, the number of Broadway hits that have tanked in London and other places proves that statement to be a crock, but it made a great song.) So, with Darwinian logic, it follows that only the best in Canadian theatre makes it to New York, and only the best of world theatre survives on Broadway, right? Well... New York and London have always been suspicious of imports (except from each other). When a Norwegian rock opera called Which Witch? flopped (having previously tried out at Expo '86 in Vancouver), the London critics treated it as if Norway itself were to blame, and made jokes about the Norwegians being the only country to score nil points in the Eurovision Song Contest. In the theatre, xenophobia still rules. Mention Canadian theatre to many New Yorkers, and they don't think of The House of Martin Guerre. They may not even think of Anne of Green Gables. But they might mention Rockabye Hamlet, with a wry smile. It began life as Hamlet: The Musical on CBC Radio's The Entertainers, reportedly written in only three weeks and aired on December 1,1973, with Cal Dodd as Hamlet and Nancy White as Ophelia. The composerlyricist was thirty-year-old Cliff Jones, a TV-variety script writer specializing in children's shows. Jones held an MA in psychology, and had studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto, and, like Marek Norman and David Warrack, studied arranging with Gordon Delamont. He entered show business relatively late, at the age of twenty-four. For a year before Kronborg, he had been writing satirical songs for a series called Inside from the Outside. Hamlet opened under its new title, Kronborg 1582 (changed after Jones and his wife visited Kronborg Castle in Elsinore) at the Charlottetown Festival in the summer of 1974. Directed by Alan Lund, it starred Cal Dodd as Hamlet and Roma Hearn as Gertrude. Variety wrote that "this Hamlet is something special. Lacking dialogue, it rolls with ease from ballads to boogie-woogie, blues, country and western and campy musical style and yet maintains the basic tragic plotline right to the bloody finale."1 The Bronfman family's Champlain Productions bought on option on the show, with a view to taking it to Broadway. At the end of that summer, Jones' wife Eve was hunting antiques with Barb MeAndrew, wife of Jack MeAndrew, general director of the
e
Bwiwlom
118
Confederation Centre, and Toshiko Adilman, wife of Toronto Star columnist Sid Adilman. Sid was busy interviewing actress Colleen Dewhurst, who had a summer home on the island. When they all met up later, it turned out that Dewhurst was a fan of the show, and she introduced Cliff to her agent Clifford Stevens. Soon Stevens brought in producer Lester Osterman, who had brought A Moon for the Misbegotten to Broadway and took over the option from the Bronfmans. The following year, Kronborg returned to the Charlottetown stage, with Brent Carver as Hamlet, Beverley D'Angelo as Ophelia and Cleone Duncan as Gertrude, then mounted a regional tour to Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Hamilton. Here things began to unravel. It just didn't play as well on the major urban stages, and critics were not kind.The Stars Urjo Kareda said,"Kronborg 1582 trivializes Hamlet, turning a famous play into a series of jukebox solos... its Hamlet substitute is bland and sa£e"Starweek's music critic William Littler said, "We'll pause a moment now to give time for the ghost of Will Shakespeare to roll over." Hampered in his ability to rewrite the show by the fact that much of the music was on tape, and with no budget to make changes, Jones felt helpless. A proposed pre-Broadway tour to Washington and Boston fell through, and Osterman decided it was time to bring in the big guns. Alan Lund was replaced by Broadway veteran Gower Champion, who, following the disappointing fate of his last show Mack andMabel^ was desperate for a hit. The title was changed to Rockabye Hamlet aticl only three of the cast—including D'Angelo, a U,Sl citizen—were retained. According to Blanche Lund, Champion offered Alan the position of associate director, which he turned down* In Blanche's eyes, Champion "stole" her husband's show. "I wasn't disappointed that I wasn't going to Newark with it/* says Brent Carver. "I just accepted it.., It was an extraordinary experience, and quite an event, I thinly within the history of musical theatre in Canada." (Of course, he did get another crack at the Big Apple* fifteen years later when he won a Tony Award for his performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman.} Larry Marshall, who had played Simon Zealots in the film version of Jesus Christ Superstar and whose theatre credits included Porgy and Bess and Leonard Bernstein's Mass, played Hamlet. Also in the cast
ClifFJones and Gower Champion at rehearsals for Rockabye Hamlet at Radio City Music Hall, 1975. Courtesy ofCliffJones.
BCTlHO
119
SiiiYNim
180
was future rock star Meat Loaf, who played a priest. "It was the most horrifying experience of my entire life," he says. "About three weeks into rehearsal, I tried to get out, and after a little meeting with the producers, they called in Gower Champion, who said, 'How dare you want to leave a Gower Champion show?' They wouldn't let me out, and since I was under control, I had to stay until the whole thing gave way."2 And give way it did. Rockabye Hamlet opened on February 17,1976, at the Minskoff Theatre. A strange blend of gothic melodrama and very high camp, it began with the lyric "Why did he have to die?/Didn't you hear him laugh?/Didn't you hear him cry?" The critics were out for blood. Clive Barnes in the New York Times proclaimed Jones "a second-rate musician with a third-rate mind."3 It closed after only seven performances, losing $1.3 million. That "thoroughly devastated me,"4 Jones told the Canadian Press in 1980. CBC Radio produced a mammoth eight-hour post-mortem documentary, A Bite of the Big Apple, examining the show's Broadway failure. Producer Malka Cohen told the Globe and Mail that the show that flopped on Broadway was inferior to the Canadian production. "The transformation of the show for Broadway removed all its heart and warmth."5 Un-bowed, Jones re-wrote the show again, and it was a hit at the Odyssey Theatre in Santa Monica in November 1981 under the title Somethings Rockin in Denmark. "It was supposed to run only a month, there," Jones told me, "but played for a year and won twelve Dramalogue awards."The Los Angeles Times wrote, "It's got energy. It's got talent. It's got a sense of humour—sometimes... For all its good points, this pop opera takeoff on Hamlet... falls more frequently slightly to the left or right of the mark than on it... Best of all, you don't walk away bored.6 In Toronto, director Andrew MacBean staged a version in 1984 in which Rosencrantz and Gildenstern (whom Jones described as a "gay Mutt and Jeff") were split into three people: Rosencrantz and Gild and Stern. With song titles like the country and western twanger, "He Got It in the Ear," Jones seemed to be playing it for laughs, but the audience was never quite sure. Barnes conceded, "The audience seemed to like the show. But perhaps they wouldn't have liked Hamlet'' Although Rockabye Hamlet is celebrated—if that is the correct term— as one of Broadway's greatest flops, I do believe I may have some insight into where Jones was coming from. Perhaps he thought that if Tim Rice could get away with King Herod singing "Prove to me that you're no fool/Walk across my swimming pool," then Jones could have, "Get thee to a nunnery/A nunny little nunnery" with a chorus of dancing nuns, and Gertrude strangling herself with a mic cord. But Rice's irreverence had
a point to it. He and Andrew Lloyd Webber were doing a modern take on the Passion, and posing tough questions. Jones was just "messing with the bard," with no clear sense of purpose. Two of Jones s "several magnificent songs" (according to the liner notes by Bert Fink) were featured on a Varese Sarabande CD entitled Shakespeare on Broadway. "If My Morning Begins" and "The Last Blues." Jones followed up Kronborg with Hey, Marilyn!^ presented on CBC Radio in 1975 with Beverley D'Angelo as Marilyn Monroe. Once again, the opening number posed the question, "Why did she have to die?" Osterman also held an option on this show, but Jones, having been burned once, let it lapse. The late Peter Coe staged it ("abysmally," says Jones) in a $130,000 production at the Citadel in Edmonton in January 1980. D'Angelo, who by that time had appeared in the film version of Hair, turned down the part, which was taken by twenty-year-old newcomer Lenore Zann. Again, there were a couple of very good numbers—"Summer Friend" would make an excellent cabaret torch song—and Alan Lund included "I Never Met a Man I Didn't Like" in his revue Singin and Dancin Tonight. Although several New York producers* including David Merrick, were said to have nibbled, none bit. The show ha$ never been revived, although some of its songs were interpolated into Th%M&nlyn Tapes by Marilyn Bowering and staged at the Neptune Ih&atte in 200S> with Zann agam paying the title role. The Halifax HeraUv?$ot£i *Zatm g£ves a gutsy periSbrmance, moving easily from suntiy tp&iikfii to the r^r de$pmtiw?i) of an ageing, lonely woman."7 Since then, he's written sevfej^t&ore shows, indudin^ For the Lorn of Howard, a musical about Hq^pfti Httghes that was OpMoned jby London panto-king Paul Blfiofpbipit pcver pr^todeA He also replaced l)avid Warrack as<xfa^^sasorrykarthicklwedssathyaforabaybabyChadottetows based karthickwedssathyatheyaregiven ISboi. Aftolher ababyu musical was Al$%m$&> the Last Empress pi^teed at CJharlottetown in 1988, He wrote special material for the late Sheri Lewis and Lat&lxJtop and has been experiencing much success with a productioi|iii AustmIia*Today» Cliff is a high school drama and English teacher, but is still very active in the world of
Cliff Jones, librettist, composer and lyricist, remains dedicated to musical theatre. "I live to write." Courtesy of Cliffjones.
flcilwo
181
BHNIYROHTII
|Q9
KM
musical theatre. He currently is in the process of writing a new musical, "Fade Back In," for the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Citadel, one of North Americas largest producing theatres was led by its founder, the late Joseph "Broadway Joe" Shoctor, and his dream was to take a show to Broadway. In fact, he produced four shows on the Great White Way, all with brief runs: Hamlet (not a musical) starring Nicol Williamson and Francesca Annis; and Billy j a rock musical of Billy Buddwith music by "The Archies" lead singer Ron Dante in what Lehman Engel describes as "a catastrophe of a single performance,"8 both 1969; Mister Lincoln starring Roy Dotrice and A Life, both in 1980 (and both transfers from the Citadel). There were many other attempts, most using shows by established American writers. Charles "Annie' Strouse and David Rogers' Flowersfor Algernon, from the novel by Daniel Keyes, ran for a month at Her Majesty's in London, starring Michael Crawford. It lasted seventeen performances at Broadway's Helen Hayes Theatre in 1980 as Charlie and Algernon. Jule Styne's Pieces of Eight with lyrics by Susan Birkenhead, and book by Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble (based on Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson) opened in Edmonton on November 27, 1985. It starred George Hearn and was directed by Joe Layton, who told the Canadian Press: "The odds are down, the creative excitement [in New York] is no more... We would normally have gone to Boston or Washington, but we decided we wanted to be away from everybody."That was their one good move, because the show stayed standing still. Duddy was at least based on a Canadian source—The Apprenticeship ofDuddy Kravitz. The original author Mordecai Richler wrote the book with songs by Americans Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who had never had a musical staged before (although they did work on La CageAux Folles before the producer replaced them with Jerry Herman). At an inaugural press conference held at the Prince Edward Hotel in Toronto, a straightfaced Richler, seated with Lieber, Stoller, Shoctor, producer Sam Gesser and director Brian Macdonald, remarked "I just want to say at this point what an honour it is to be working with these people." Within a matter of weeks, everybody but him and Gesser would be off the project. After the show's Edmonton premiere in April 1984, Richler told the Star s Sid Adilman, "I'm just protecting my book. I wanted to make sure it was not sentimentalized or changed, and doing the book also brings me an added share of the royalties. I'm not going to pretend that wasn't a factor."9 The main problem ofDuddy seems to have been that its central character makes "Pal Joey" Evans look like Mahatma Gandhi. Duddy's a schemer
who doesn't care who he steps on to get ahead. Composer Stoller told Adilman, "You hate him, you pity him. His temper is the same as minor villains and scoundrels we all know and you like him despite all that." You hope. Sam Gesser had been working on this show since 1978, when Richler sold him the rights for Sl.The first composer he approached was Montreal native Gait MacDermot, who turned him down because he was already committed to another show, The Human Comedy, for Joseph Papp. Joey Miller also had a go at it. Robin Phillips announced it for the 1980 season at Stratford, but then pulled out. Ted Kotcheff, director of the original film, was going to do it with choreography by Winnipeg native Paddy Stone, who had staged the musical numbers for the film Victor/ Victoria. (It would not have been Kotcheff's first musical—he directed Lionel Bart's Maggie May in the West End in the early sixties.) But then Kotcheff became busy with film work, and the final—so they thought— team was brought together. "Brian Macdonald's strength," according to cast member Vinetta Strombergs, "was definitely his staging and that he gave all actors the freedom to create full-blooded characterizations. The ensemble was not just wallpaper. The big numbers truly created atmosphere and different environments—St. Urbain Street life, the resort life, the St. Andrew's Ball and the conservative high life in Westmount." Shoctor insisted that the Edmonton opening was not a tryout. "My view, from years of experience," he told Adilman, "is that a show is either ready on opening night or not." But it was not ready, and he had scheduled only one preview. Cuts and rewrites continued.
Ray Conologue, critic for the Globe and Mail, wrote that "the bowdlerization of the novel was done by author Mordecai Richler himself, which just goes to show that the sentimental conventions of the old-time American musical are so strong that they have you beat from tib^:itet. If the composers had tried to find a musical language that stated the ndvel, maybe things would have beene &fiefent_4 Wfeeres & Rttddy that sings 'Nellie put your belly close to mine; wiggle yftir b\uif|wl4 invites a hapless missionary to hand out NewTesttme^fe it Fletdiet-High, where the Jewish kids will be sure to beat Jiiin to^ i pwlp? Wheie^ tfcis faellpn? He's sure not perched hallway nji a staircase singing about indenting^ toothpaste and other such boons to imtiifeid* Give us a break/The Edmonton Journal^ Liz Nichols mott, ^The tension between the oiltwal convention of a Jewish Montefeat milieu and the driving ambitioA of one Buddy Kravitz has been strangled by the conventions of musical theatre." Brian Brennan of the Calgary Herald ^mA that the writers "have emasculated the humour, diluted the emotional impact and cheapened the literary value of
flCTji
183
iRiflDMY NORTH
184
the original work." Jim Betts, who had worked with Richler on a musical ofJacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang and would eventually be brought in to write an extra song, said, "The show in Edmonton didn't deserve to be savaged by the national critics in what was supposed to be an out-oftown tryout." (So much for Shoctor's "years of experience.") "The two best numbers were showstoppers," explains Strombergs, "because of Brian Macdonald's brilliant staging more than the quality of the songs. 'More Potatoes'was a fabulously frenzied number that perfectly captured the essence of Jewish resort life with everyone demanding more from their waiters. This was Buddy's first day on the job. Plates were flying, waiters were pirouetting while delivering food and the guests were revealing their characters. Audiences held their breath and stifled the laughs unable or unwilling to interrupt until the end of the number and then just erupted. It stopped the show every night. The other piece of brilliance was 'On Your Toes' in which the crippled Boy Wonder tap-danced with crutches along with all his gangster henchmen. This was 20 years before the fabulous 'old ladies with walkers'number in The Producers and it had just the right tone of hilarious yet black humour, as well as superb dancing." But it wasn't over yet. Reports began to filter out that the show might continue without some members of its creative team. Some cities began to back out of the tour, including Vancouver, Regina and Saskatoon. Meanwhile Lieber and Stoller complained of a lack of communication. "We're prepared to write if we get a director with a strong point of view," Lieber told Sid Adilman. New Yorker Irwin Siders tried to bring in composer Larry Grossman (Snoopy!!!, Goodtime, Charlie), a one-time musical director for the Muppet Show, and director Richard Maltby Jr. "I even went to Edmonton to see it," says Maltby. "But I didn't see how to fix it." (Years later, Maltby would direct the Broadway revue Smokey Joe's Cafe, based on Lieber and Stoller's back catalogue.) Macdonald was now unavailable due to his commitments at Stratford, according to Gesser. Lieber told Sid Adilman, "Four major plot songs were cut before rehearsals, but three songs we felt were relatively irrelevant were left in... There's a difference between cutting and shaping and hysterically crying that there is no time!" Although no cast recording was made of the Lieber and Stoller score, one song—"Humphry Bogart" was recorded by Susannah Mars on her CD Take Me To The World. In the end, Gesser parted company with Siders and brought in Paddy Stone (he had been Ted KotchefF's original choice as choreographer) to direct and choreograph. "When Paddy Stone replaced Brian as director," says Strombergs, "he totally demoralized the company on his first
day by re-rehearsing those two numbers instead of attacking the ones that didn't work. He did not endear himself with the company, nor did he find any solutions for problem areas." Jim Betts wrote a new song for Duddy to sing at the top of the second act, "Not Enough." And it was, in fact, not enough. Following its May 1984 opening at the National Arts Centre, the rest of the tour, including stops in Toronto and Montreal, were scrapped. "If the show was good," Gesser told Sid Adilman, "there would be no financial problems," suggesting losses in the neighbourhood of $1.2 million. "The conclusion I've reached is that there is nobody in Canada with the talent or time to make it work. That's horrible to say, but it's true." Or could it be that it wasn't a workable idea in the first place? After all, Broadway director Richard Maltby couldn't save it either. "There seemed to be a general feeling," says Strombergs, "that Lieber and Stoller did not understand how to write appropriate songs to advance plot or reveal character. It's not that they were bad songs, but the material was more suited to revue than musical theatre. I don't think we got a real musical style that suited the show or established a specific period or atmosphere, and the lyrics didn't help... Given the subject matter, and the tone of the book, I think we probably needed a much more inventive interpretation for the stage—more Sweeney Toddthan Guys and Dolls. We were kind of trapped in a screenplay with songs." A year later, the cast gathered for a wake in Toronto's Garbo restaurant. Richler, Macdonald, Lonny Price (who played Duddy) and Gesser (who personally lost half a million dollars) were invited. Lieber and Stoller were not. The story doesn't end there* The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kmvitz eventually resurfaced in 1987 in a production in Philadelphia by Stewart F. Lane. Directed by Austin Peiidleto^ with book by Ppndffietott and Richler, lyrics by David Spencer and''ijciuisi^y Alan Menken (Little Shop of Horrors), it also starred Price* This ^imon cwiif^alfy made its way back to Montreal (in Yidclish), and a jsrvfeed w^0B is still aiming for Broadway. Unfortunately, M^i^PW Rictlferirorft fegfeit—he passed away on July 3,2001. Lonny Price had the imsfwtune to star it* the next Canad&an "road kill" as welL—Dumnte, a musical bas^d on the life of Jimmy Dtirante I| wms conceited by firstrtime producer Mickey FyiM* with book by Car nadians Frank Peppiatt and John Aylesworth, the Spring Thaw veterans who made a fortune by creating the TV series Mm Haw* If Joe Shoctor seemed reluctant to consider Duddy's Edmonton run a "tryout," Fylan made what had to be one of the most bizarre decisions
flcilwo
185
BuDiYNod
HE
in theatrical history—he declared Durantes entire Toronto run to be "previews, "with the opening in Vancouver. (A bit like a New York tryout for a Boston opening.) The Toronto critics were having none of it, and came anyway. After all, they claimed, Fylan was charging full price. The reviews were mixed, but the show was far from bad. (Even Sir Cameron Mackintosh, the world's pre-eminent theatrical producer, felt it showed promise.) Its tour continued to San Francisco, where disaster struck. That is to say, a natural disaster—an earthquake knocked a hole in the theatre's ceiling, forcing closure. They knew a bad omen when they saw one, and the show was brought to a halt. A "Canadian" musical did triumph on Broadway, albeit without its original book, music or lyrics. Magician Doug Henning and producer Ivan Reitman tried out Spellbound in 1972 at an Ottawa coffee house called Le Hibou. At the time, the show consisted of Doug, his assistant Mars and musician John Mills-Cockell on synthesizers. "He was always developing new numbers," remembers Mills-Cockell, "and had a particular interest in 'close-up magic.' Of course, he called them 'illusions.' His favourite word was 'wonder,' and he inspired everyone who saw his work or talked to him with that quality."Then the show was rewritten (by filmmaker David Cronenberg) and given a storyline. When it opened at the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto in 1973, it co-starred actress Jennifer Dale. The producers of Godspell saw the show there, and took Henning (but not Dale or Cronenberg) to New York, where a new book by Bob Randall and score by Stephen Schwartz were written. Schwartz remembers "being impressed by Doug's low-key street-kid character, in such contrast to the grandiosity of most professional magicians up to that time. It was that character that we tried to capture in The Magic Show' The Magic Show ran for four and a half years—even surviving Henning's departure. In 1980, it came home in a manner of speaking when the show, with a new script by Jerry Ross, was filmed before a live audience at the CNE's Queen Elizabeth Theatre, directed by Norman Campbell. "It involves magic," says Campbell. "It's very well integrated. It forwards the plot just the way a song in a musical forwards the plot. For example, he makes his girlfriend disappear when he meets a new girl by making her levitate, float in the air and disappear. The magic isn't just a bunch of tricks. It's a story about a magician who does these funny things. For that reason, we wanted the magic to be perceived as authentic. We performed it in front of a live audience, and we didn't cut cameras once the magic starts." Although intended for cinemas, The Magic Show remained on the shelf for three years before being shown (in truncated form, without "Lion Tamer," its most important song) on CBC-TV. It is now available on DVD.
To date, Canada's most successful theatrical export has been Guy Laliberte's Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, with permanent shows running in Las Vegas and at Disney World in Florida. Laliberte is estimated to have a personal fortune of $1.2 billion. His most recent opus KA cost a staggering $165 million and plays in a specially built theatre at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. Conceived by acclaimed director Robert LePage, it is, according to Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones, "a serious, unemotional, hard-to-follow, intensely experimental piece that lands somewhere among opera, performance art and film."10 (If you thought Broadway was expensive, the cheapest seats for KA are $99.) In 1938, Irish playwright John Coulter said of emerging Canadian dramatists, "They want the big spectacular success. Their eye is on the big money and the big name of success on Broadway or in London's West End. They have not yet learned the paradoxical truth that the most effective way to keep an eye on Broadway is to keep on looking attentively at the life passing under your own nose in your own hometown."11
ICIji
181
21. IE VIRTUOSITY OF OPERO WITH THE VITALITY OF BUDNHY' n April 1983 I was invited to the Banff Centre to witness the world premiere of a new piece of music theatre by English composer Stephen Oliver (Nicholas Nickleby) called Sasha, based on a play, Artistes and Admirers by Alexander Ostrovsky. This was presented by the Music Theatre Studio Ensemble, which had been established two years previously by artistic director Michael Bawtree. (This is not to be confused with the summer musical theatre program, which operated from 1964— when it opened with Billy Solly's Made in the Mountains—until 1985, although in its later years, Bawtree was also in charge of that.) I was presented with a press kit that stated emphatically that "Sasha is not an opera, nor is it an American musical."Thus, I was baptised into the world of "Music Theatre," which I was told was not to be confused with "musical theatre." (Just as "the cinema" is not to be confused with "the movies," I suppose.) Bawtree, who admits that this term "has been bewildering people for a long time,"1 defines music theatre as "the New Singing Theatre," as opposed to what he calls "the theatre of the musical," i.e., Broadway. But that still didn't satisfy me, as my definition of musical theatre includes Gilbert 8c Sullivan, Offenbach, Bizet and Weill, and a generous dollop of Puccini as well. Associate director Stephen MacNeff then suggested that Music Theatre referred to "any kind of lyric stage activity that has music and where the dramatic component is as important as the musical component." Just like Oklahoma!? I must confess that I approached this with extreme prejudice. My kneejerk reaction was that, while no precise definition seemed to suffice, Music Theatre appeared to my senses to be opera. Modern opera, perhaps, but opera, nonetheless. My view, at the time, was that the musical theatre was the twentieth century's opera, and that other forms were simply shows that had failed to grab the public's imagination, but that were being propped up by an artistic elite. (The fact that they used a different vocabulary did nothing to dispel this notion.) After all, the great operas of Bizet and Puccini were popular works in their time, in the same way that Les Miserables is today. I soon learned, however, that this was all semantics. It was not musical theatre that they were distancing themselves from so much as the crass tendency of some Broadway productions. I came to appreciate that the MUTSE program at Banff was an important step toward the next level—taking musical theatre seriously, and not treating it as "fluff."
i
BHHY NORTH
188
Michael Bawtree explained that "some performers [in the program] came from an opera background, but came from it because they were deeply dissatisfied about their work in the routine of opera. We wanted all performers to come with musicality and some musical literacy, and this meant that many came from a conservatory background because that was the only place they had been able to go to pursue the musical side of their theatre interests. And then some musical theatre people came to us because they wanted more than the commercial drudgery and low artistic aspirations of much musical theatre work." The program began as a six-week experiment in 1980—with the active support of (among others) Lehman Engel. "He came and gave a lecture," Bawtree says, "and very much took in what we were planning, and made many suggestions... He was extremely interested in the wordsand-music nexus: how it works, and how you teach it." He adds, "He was, after all, a bona fide conductor who conducted works of Hindemith, Kprt Weill,etc." One of the early participants was actor Kevin Hicks, a member of the cast of Sasha. "I think it really was a terrific introduction into the Canadian theatre world," says Hick%rThe Heritage Fund in Alberta was still at its peak, so ... the Centre spared no expense to bring in SOME really terrific teachers, on a short-»te^iv|^is/; Bawtree writes, "The integrated tmttog j^gram at Btop^was, I believe, unique in its interIo*Mjft^"of eoiftposerl and write*! with designers and performers. But the prime distoguyiiiig fe^tor^;x>f the Banff program lay not so much in &1l^ktog methods as labour placing of contemporary Music Theatre,!^ pirticidiurly new and dngm^work, at the heart of its activity;^2 Kevin remembers 4 parfdad|i^*fectiw cowsse caEed LAB, "The in-: stractors wo^^^it^ ih^:«iiufll groups* inayN fmir or five people per, with a mixture of com^$ei%/writers/attOfS/sirigei^»;I and then give us about six hours to complete a %how* Approximately fifteen minutes of music theatre, sometimes with lights, set and costume, and of course music and text, to present to anyone who wanted to come check it out.
Colin Graham directing Sasha at The Banff Centre, 1983. Courtesy of the PaulD. Fleck Library and Archives at The Banff Centre.
Benin
189
fiMDiVNOM
190
And there was always some theme, for example, one week we got a page of the phone book, and could only use words from that for the whole show. One week it was a line from a poem...You get the idea....That was generally a thrill, really gets your heart pumping to be suddenly designated 'the composer' with absolutely no experience, and have six hours to create your masterwork." Some of the students were pop singers, some were opera singers, some were actors and some were dancers. They were all brought together to learn the balance of their craft, so that actors may learn to sing and singers to act. MacNeif explained to me in 1983, "The bottom line of our program is training, and at the same time training people to take a kind of refreshed attitude toward the work they do, so that when they go back out into the business, they can get work in some of the more exciting things that are going on." The program also included a number of writers, composers, designers and directors who worked together to commission new works for the ensemble. In its first eighteen months, they produced seventeen works, ranging from small one-act pieces to a full-scale work such as Sasha. "I tend to think of it as a fairly global movement," MacNeff continued. "There are a number of people all over the world who are working in such a way, and taking a particular kind of attitude or philosophy, which says that this is a new way of looking at music. I think one of the nice things about doing Sasha in Banff is that it helps to include ourselves, The Banff Centre, as participants and Canada as a whole in part of an international network of activity." Given this background, I expected to hear an avant-garde, atonal piece in a melody-free zone, but Sasha had a richly romantic score that would not have been out of place on a West End or Broadway stage. (In fact, Stephen Oliver's next project was a rock-opera with Tim Rice called BlondeL] "It would be wrong to think that MUTSE was anti-commercial," says Bawtree. "What we were not keen on was that Broadway tradition of making so many artistic decisions based either on money or on the whims of the star, whom the producers thought had to be appeased for the sake of the show." Sasha had a labyrinthine plot, exacerbated by the need to provide individual roles for each of the ensemble's eighteen participants. When I commented on the difficulty of taking it all in, the conductor Stuart Bedford remarked that one didn't expect to take in all of the Ring Cycle in one go. Therein I found the culture gap between the world of opera and of the musical. In the theatre, the audience must be able to take in the essential elements of the plot and the lyrics in one pass. If they
get a second chance, that's a bonus. (I believe that this is also true of the music.) Lyricist Tom Jones (The Fantasticks) says, "Partly in rebellion against the long established (and too easily anticipated) [Rodgers and Hammerstein] format, there is a desire to make musicals less simple and more challenging, not only in their songs, but in their stories and characters. I personally think this is a good thing. If the musical is ever to 'grow up' and become more than just a happy-go-lucky reassuring pop massage, it must be able to take on stories or characters that are more complex. And it must be able to bring them to life in song forms that are more flexible than the old thirty-two bar AABA. There must be room for recitative, for long-line and diffuse musical elements. Having said that, I hasten to add that these complexities must not replace the popular song form, but be an addition to it... Blocks of music built around one basic, simple, solid song with a memorable melody and a clear lyric."3 Banff's Music Theatre program was the first of its kind in the Western world. They sought to find a new, perhaps distinctly Canadian, approach to music theatre and to explore the possibilities of the field. This would come through a long period of experimentation and a study of what had been accomplished previously. As Bawtree says, they were "working to combine the virtuosity of opera with the vitality of Broadway." However, it would be a slow process of evolution. "I think 'evolve' is the right term to use," MacNeff told me in 1983, "because evolve suggests that therf is time involved. I think the element of time is one of the most important. One can't expect things to be major world successes, whatever they might be, overnight. When we started up here, we had a lot of things to figure out and a lot of problems to solve. I can't say what we'll be doing five or ten years from now, and even then, I woxildrft give any guarantees.**Which was just as well—six years later, the program was discontinued. Michael Bawtree's other "baby* had been COMUS Music Theatre, founded in 1975, following an earlier experiment at the IStratford Festival, In its first decade, COMUS presented some tlMrty-seveti new works under Bawtree and succeeding artistic directors Biffie Bridgemtn and Stephen MacNeff, but was forced to close in 1988 diie to financial diffioillies. Wayne Strongman^ Tapestry Singers morphed into Tapestry Music Theatre (and later Tapestry New Opera) and employed some of COMUS* former personnel, thereby helping to fill the void.
[CTlHO
191
MHHII 1 1 IEN YORK find that when I discuss Canadian theatre with my New York colleague Old Nick, he tends to judge a play's importance by whether or not it has transferred to one of the Big Apple's stages. There is a system. Just as the Chinese emperors had taste testers (slaves whose job it was to test the food for poison before it reached the royal palate), the rest of the world functions as an "out-of-town" taste tester—or rather, "tryout" for New York. Naturally, only the very finest theatre passes muster with the tough Broadway audience, so the importance of other "regional" centres is measured by how many of their productions pass this test. Likewise, the ability of other cities to develop talent pools is judged by New York's appetite to poach them. The world is a vast cultural smorgasbord laid on for their amusement. Needless to say, I do not subscribe to this theory. (Neither do a lot of the New Yorkers who I know, who travel outside the city to see good shows that will never come to them.) To me, a real theatre capital plays with confidence to its own audience. But New York and London remain—in economic terms, at least—the major theatrical markets, and Canadian artists, for reasons of prestige, still harbour the desire to conquer them. And while no Canadian musical has truly succeeded in doing this, several Canadian artists have had an impact. For a while, the producers of Camelot seriously considered the nonsinging Don Harron, who had already starred in Look Back in Anger on Broadway, for the role of Lancelot, but he suggested instead that they consider Robert Goulet (who had been born in the U.S. to Canadian parents). Goulet at first protested that he was tied up with a weekly TV series, Showtime, but his producer encouraged him to make the trip to New York. He arrived, having lost his luggage, and auditioned for director Moss Hart wearing only a tee shirt and blue jeans. He was offered a starting salary of $750 a week. The world premiere of Camelot took place in 1960 at Toronto's O'Keefe Centre. For Robert Goulet, stardom beckoned. In fact, it is Canadian performers who have had the greatest success on Broadway. Goulet, Len Cariou, Brent Carver and Victor Garber have all won Tony Awards. Carver took his first Broadway bow with Kiss of the Spider Woman, then returned for Parade, both for director Harold Prince, but he remains based in Canada. Garber moved to New York after he made the movie of Godspellm 1972, then played Anthony
i
BHIY NORTH
109 luu
in Sweeney Todd opposite former Manitoba Theatre Centre artistic director Len Cariou, who also starred in Sondheims A Little Night Music. Having already played Jesus, Garber later played the Devil in Damn Yankees and John Wilkes Booth in Assassins. To the general public, he is best known for his parts in the movie Titanic and the TV series Alias. One Canadian director has made a significant impression on Broadway. Des McAnuff, whose early career was nurtured at Toronto Free Theatre in the 1970s, directed Big River and Tommy as well as a revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and a touring production of Chess. Although he was born in Princeton, Illinois, (to a Canadian father), Des grew up in Guelph, Ontario, later moving to Scarborough. At the age of seventeen, he, along with 800 other hopefuls, auditioned for the Toronto production of Hair. He was one of fifty to be short-listed, but he didn't get in. So he wrote his own rock njusical called Urbania, three hours long with a cast of fifty, and staged it at his high school, Woburn Collegiate. Then—incredibly, for a teenager—he transferred it for a two-month run at the Poor Alex theatre. (How he fit fifty people onto the Poor Aloe's tiny stage has never been satisfactorily explained.) While attending the theatre program at Ryerson Pofytechnic, he wrote the play that estaWkhed him as the darling of Toronto's alternate theatre: Leave It to Beaver is D$®d* Ihen hfe wrote the mtisic for and starred in an adaptation of Micliael Qndl0atfe% The G^lka^d Works #fBilly the Kid at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. •*$«;& in die early 1970s when things were exploding," he told Martin' Ki^tmitti in 198S^we all assumed Toronto was going to get bett^t^td Bete; But what we didrft r^lize was it was in its heyday then;111 fsfew York's l^ndaryjoe Papp produced Leave it to Beaver ^ f3^^at,t|ie PtlWfc'li^lfe* Then, in 1i9j^S^^i^ff W$B offered a choice between the Stratford Festival and becomingartistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse in California. He chose the latter* and it is from there that lie mounted his assault on Broadway, beginning in 1984 with Big River, a musical version of Huckleberry Finn, with music by country singer Roger Miller
Des McAnuff is a two-time Tony Awardwinning director. A dual citizen of the Canada and the United States, he has written, composed and directed for theatre and film companies around the world. In the Fall of 2006, Des McAnuff will be returning to Canada to assume, along with colleagues Marti Marden and Don Shipley, Artistic Directorship at the Stratford Festival—a new leadership model created by Director General Antonio Cimolino. Courtesy of Scott Klein.
HCTTM
1QQ luu
Louise Pitre, a native of Ontario, is an awardwinning singer and actress. Her portrayal of the legendary Edith Piaf brought her international fame in 1992. After wowing audiences in Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, she made her Broadway debut when Mamma Mia! opened at New York's Winter Garden Theatre in 2001. Courtesy of Noble Caplan Abrams.
iRdiYNora
194
and book by Texan playwright William Hauptman. McAnuff won the Tony for best director of a musical. A decade or so later, he was back with Tommy, the rock opera. More recently, Louise Pitre, who originated the role of Fantine in the Toronto production of Les Miserables, (and who went on to perform the part in French in both Montreal and Paris), went to New York with the Mirvish production of Mama Mia\ These successes—and there are many more—prove that Canada breeds musical theatre talent. But Broadway can be merciless, even to the gifted. Don Francks had a particularly unlucky streak in the mid '60s. First, he was cast as the lead in one of the most notorious flops of the post-war period. Kelly opened February 6, 1965. The following day, Francks was out of a job. Three years later, he was cast as Woody opposite Petula Clark in Francis Ford Coppola's film version ofFinians Rainbow. Although under-rated as a film, it was, at the time, hopelessly unfashionable. So he decided to live in a tepee near Vancouver. Today he is a well-known actor in Toronto. While Ray Jessel and Marian Grudeff enjoyed a modest success with Baker Street, the only Canadian composer to have a major impact was Gait MacDermot with Hair. But although he had some success with Two Gentlemen of Verona, which opened December 1,1971, at the St. James Theatre and played 627 performances, he then endured two horrific flops within a month of each other. Dude, with lyrics by Hairs Gerome Ragni, and Via Gallactica directed by Sir Peter Hall and with a libretto by Marys Christopher Gore, didn't last three weeks between them. (Via Gallactica was originally to be titled Up!, until they realized that the marquee of the Uris Theatre might then read "L^>/Uris.") Ted Allan, author of Lies My Father Told Me (and an uncredited contributor to Oh! What a Lovely War) wrote the book for Chu-Chen, with music by Man of La Manchds Mitch Leigh. The story concerned an ancient community of Jews in China. It closed in its Philadelphia tryout in 1966, but was revived in 1988 at the Jewish Repertory Theatre, from where it transferred to Broadway and survived 44 performances at the Ritz. In Canada, back in the fifties, he had written the book for a musical (with score by Lucio Agostini and lyrics by W.M.S. Russell) called
Willie the Squouse, about a character who is half-squirrel, half-mouse and lives in between a poor family and their wealthy neighbours. As a children's book, the story won the London Times literary award. Allan later wrote the screenplay for the film Bethune—the Making of a Hero, starring Donald Sutherland. When asked, during the McCarthy hearings whether or not he was a Communist, Allan replied, "We aren't allowed to tell." One of the few times that Broadway has ever embraced a Canadian theme was in a show written entirely by Americans about a Francophone Ottawa family in the 1920s. The Happy Time, based on a novel by Robert Fontaine, had book by N. Richard Nash (110 in the Shade) and songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago). Robert Goulet won the Best Actor Tony in the show, which opened January 18,1968 (following a Los Angeles tryout) at the Broadway Theater and lasted 286 performances. It was directed by Gower Champion, who would later tackle Rockabye Hamlet, and featured film projections designed by Christopher Chapman, who had created the f&mAPlace to Stand for the Ontario pavilion at Expo '67. The success of Canadians in New York (and London) is of course a source of pride. But it is also a subject of concern. Like any business, if Toronto is to become a viable centre for theatre in its own right, we can t afford a brain drain.
act two
195
29. NICE TRIES DID MISSED OPPORTUNITIES "here have been a number of musicals in Canada which, although they may not have been great (and in some cases, the flaws ran very deep), there was nevertheless talent on display, or the germ of a good idea which, if nurtured, may have led to something stronger. Jack—A Flash Fantasy was an early seventies television special, directed and choreographed by Robert Iscove. He had choreographed Jesus Christ Superstar on screen and would stage a successful Broadway revival of Peter Pan starring Sandy Duncan, in addition to directing a number of non-musical films and the recent 2004 Los Angeles stage extravaganza, The Ten Commandments, starring Val Kilmer. Jack starred Victor Garber and Gilda Radner as the Jack and Jill of Hearts. Music and lyrics were by Peter Mann, a brilliant vocal arranger who had played in a number of musical groups with Garber in the 1960s, (including the Sugar Shoppe who had even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show) and whose father David then owned the Bayview Playhouse. He would go on to arrange and produce albums for the a cappella group, The Nylons. The music was varied and tuneful, the highlight being "Magic Morning," a "Corner of the Sky"—like ballad sung by Garber at the top of the show. Unfortunately, what little story the show had was largely incoherent. (Something about a cow...) Imagine a musical set in Montreal's Outremont district, about a love affair between a Jewish man and a French-Canadian woman, set in a delicatessen called Wolinsky's against the backdrop of Quebec's 1980 referendum on independence. Add Canada's most internationally successful musical theatre composer. Sounds just like the sort of Canadianto-the-bones show I've been talking about, doesn't it? But this show's premiere production did not take place in Montreal or Toronto, but in New York. When Mike Gutwillig finished his first draft of The Special, he sent it to Thomas Meehan, author of the book for Annie (and, more recently, The Producers). He had never written anything for the theatre before, and Meehan gave him a crash course. It was another four years before he found the right composer, fellow Montrealer Gait MacDermot, who was fascinated by the musical possibilities of the ethnic mix. The Special received its first—and so far only—stage production at Jewish Repertory Theatre in Greenwich Village in 1985. The Christian Science Monitor said, "In its odd and cheerful way, The Special manages
t
BUDI! NORTH
196
simultaneously to celebrate a Montreal legend [Wolinsky's], inter-faith marriage, and Quebec's decision to remain part of Canada. Aided by the charm of Gait MacDermot s score, the new musical at the Jewish Repertory Theatre tells a love story in the Abies Irish Rose tradition." For such a project, it s interesting that Gutwillig would turn to one of Broadway's few non-Jewish composers, but Gait MacDermot is not easy to categorize. The one-time church choirmaster made his name with that most anarchic of musicals, Hair. Yet, he was no "age of Aquarius" "down-to-there-hair" type. "I'm freedom oriented," he told the Toronto Telegram in 1970, "but I don't wear weird clothes... because it takes a lot of work to live that life."1 The formative influence in MacDermot's musical life was the time he spent in Capetown in the early 1950s, when his father was Canada's High Commissioner to South Africa. Impressed by the township music he was hearing, he took a degree in music from Capetown University. While there, he wrote what would later be his first hit, the "African Waltz." After returning to Montreal, his first break was My Fur Lady, the phenomenally successful McGiU University revue, after which he teamed up with Fur's Donald MacSween to score a production of The Tempest After a brief time in London, he moved to New York in 1963, and has lived on Staten Island ever since. In 1967,Jbe flfet Actors Gerome Ragni and James Rado, and Hair was conceived. His only 'b^^BlC||dway hit was Tktio (Sij^nen of Verona, although his The Hum^^^^l^^k critically wdtt-r^^^P^ "It was strange," says GHt^^g,?M^ittef^$ w^W^^f^ra t^ see the show in New Yorkwanted badly to stage it inCft^^^'du^r met et resistance. One concern v«^^ we were stirring up the referendum issue. Another, especially from-l^^^^i^^^^is ^ha^^Mcte ene^uraging mixed marriages."Theg^ife^^^^^I ^p^ftat Qimdians find me a bit too $($3$^y, and probably too spiritual-theo spiritual-the veryte^fhings thatattracted galt to the project." MacDermot»rt*ftsdaatc^dtr^the. possiblity of mixing Jewish and French-Canadian,but in fact the music is pureMacJ^tticrt*• Their hope now Is to make it into afilm*The script and score have been extensively rewritten, omitting ^owndbted references to the referendum—last heard they were still hoping—and dreaming.
Gait MacDermot was born and raised in Montreal. He is best known for the music he wrote for Hair and his Tony Awardwinning score for The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Courtesy of Gait MacDermot.
flC197
197
3D. "SlIIIDflY IN THE PflRK KITH EMILY" he Wonder of it All's pedigree was impressive—the book was by Don Harron, the music by Norman Campbell, the lyrics by Elaine Campbell and the subject was one of Canada's most respected painters. "Every time I left Canada in those days [the 1960s]," recalled Don Harron, "I would take some book with me, some piece of Canada... I took a book called Klee Wyck, and I started to read about Emily Carr. I said, Are there any more books?'And I got more. Finally, I wrote my impressions of her life as a treatment for a musical."The title is a quote from Emilys journal, "It is surging through my whole being, the wonder of it all, like a great river rushing on dark and turbulent, and irresistibly carrying me away on its wild swirl like a helpless little bundle of wreckage."1 There is an analogy to be made between the story of Emily Carr and of the Canadian musical theatre. Growing up in an English enclave on Vancouver Island in the 1870s, Emily was surrounded by an imported culture. Artists preferred to paint neat, cultivated English-style landscapes and were ignorant—or blinded to—the grandeur that surrounded them. Norman Campbell explains, "I was in Hollywood just passing through and Don Harron was working as an actor. I met in his dressing room and he talked about this Emily Carr... And before we knew it, we were involved with ideas about the musical, which we were directing toward the Charlottetown Festival. But we got diverted along the way, and it went on the back burner for many, many years." Like their Anne of Green Gables sixteen years earlier, it was originally produced for CBC Television in 1971 with Catherine McKinnon (Harron's wife) as Emily, and with a supporting cast that included Irene Byatt, Cynthia Dale, August Schellenberg and Michael Burgess, who would later play Jean Valjean in Les Miserables in Toronto. This time, Elaine Campbell would provide all of the lyrics. The Wonder Of It All was a much more ambitious piece than Anne, with far greater emotional depth. In fact, most of the songs are used to establish the characters' emotional state, as opposed to forwarding the plot. The television production by Norman Campbell was recorded on videotape, using a chroma-key process to superimpose the actors onto various backgrounds, avoiding the expense of filming on location. But the effect was not entirely convincing, and merely hinted at the greater possibilities implicit in the material. It would take another decade before director Peter Mannering (who had been an assistant stage manager on
T
BHIV NORTH
198
Timber!! thirty years earlier) would bring the show to life on the stage of the Newcombe Theatre in Victoria, just a few hundred metres from the house where Carr was born. Mannering had presented an earlier straight play, Emily Carr: A Stage Biography with Pictures by Herman Voeden at the Bastion Theatre in 1966 with Margaret Martin in the title role. He incorporated many of the same staging concepts into the musical, and brought back Martin to play "Emily Big." "Well, right away it seemed to fit," says Norman Campbell. "Victoria is the perfect place for the show to open, in the same sense as Anne of Green Gables plays in Prince Edward Island, where the story is set." Working with Don Harron, Mannering adapted the script for the stage, adding direct quotations from Carr's writings. "The only problem we had was that there wasn't enough real history in the book," says producer Maureen Milgram of Four Seasons Musical Theatre. They talked to people in Victoria who actually knew Emily. "We wanted people to see the Emily they remembered." Mannering flew back to meet with Harron, but the rewrites he returned with didn't go as far as he would have liked. Norman and Elaine also wrote some new songs, including a second act opener at an art show: "I Know What I Like, and I Don't Like That!" Milgram says, "Getting it on stage was not easy for a small company like Four Seasons. We got fantastic support from the Province of British Columbia, and marvellous support from the Provincial Museum because of course it fit into all thek mandates. Tourism in the province wanted to see some major event happen here in the summertime—the same as the Charlottetown Festival/* The set, designed by Willie Hesltip, consisted of a thrustwithestag built with rough timbers resembling a long house, with stairsairs upup either side leading to Emily's attic. Two rear-*pfaction screens were used to show Emily s paintings. The Vancouver Sun wrote that, ^Elaine Campbelfs lyrics,.. very cleanly etch the peaks of Emily's joys* ecstasies and heartbreaks in lively pointed phrasing. Particularly memorable is Emily's melodic advice to her pupils: 1 Think A Iking and Draw a Line Around It' [Emily Carr's own words], and the poignant When the Heartbreak is Qyer/ a searing tearjerker.. * ItVa genuinely indigenous piece of theatre about a woman who had little time for the city that will soon learn to low this show.* "The irony," Don Harron told me in 1982? "is that the audience that sustains The Wonder Of It All in Victoria are not Victorians. It's people from Seattle, people from out of town, people from out of province,
The Wonder of It All, based on the life of Emily Carr, had its first stage production at the Newcombe Theatre in Victoria in 1982. Shown here are (1-r): Margaret Martin as Emily Big, Pia Wyatt as Emily Small and Jill Gait as Emily Middle. Courtesy of Maureen Milgram Forest.
flci
100 IGJ
out of the country. We're just slowly getting Victorians around to seeing their own story. In other words, they're treating Emily still the way Emily was treated then. They ignore her." "It's probably Canada's most under-rated musical," Milgram told me. "My belief is that its potential is great. It's got to be rediscovered. I still think that Don has to do some rewriting on the book itself, and Don is definitely aware of that." But sadly, after three seasons as a semi-professional production, it accumulated a deficit of $80,000 and Four Seasons Musical Theatre were unable to keep funding it, in spite of a healthy box office. Milgram hoped that the Stratford Festival would take it on. "When you look at the dollars that went in to lolanthe... I don't know why they can't. I don't think that The Wonder Of It All is a risk for a Canadian theatre." My business partner Roy Cameron in the mid-1980s had co-starred with Don in a production of Mass Appeal that Hee-Haw creator Frank Peppiatt had backed. With Peppiatt's support, we bravely came up with a plan to produce The Wonder of it All at the Elgin Theatre in 1990, on a proposed budget of two million dollars. (When asked, "How are you going to raise the money?" we would feign indignation, as if to say, "That's like asking an old woman her age!") Rather than a realistic period design, I envisioned a set and costumes that would be patterned on the cartoons with which Carr illustrated her journals. Somebody dubbed it "Sunday in the Park with Emily." When I described my concept to Martha Henry, then artistic director of the Grand Theatre, she smiled and said, "Perhaps you should direct it," which was, I believe, her way of saying that I should leave the artistic decisions to whomever does direct it. But there were problems. A recent Carr biography had suggested that she may have been sexually abused by her father. Harron wanted to use this, but Campbell thought it was "sick." Others suggested she may have been a lesbian. (Don had concluded that she was not one.) "How do you plan to deal with that?" Ray Conologue asked me. "We don't," I replied. This was the pitch we made to what we thought would be potential investors:
llORDRIIY NOW
200
"To her Victorian peers, Emily Carr was a funny old lady who could be seen wheeling her babyless baby carriage, accompanied by her ever-present monkey 'Woo' and a half-dozen Belgian Gryphons. This didn't phase her. While she would eventually become famous for her impressionistic depictions of totem poles and of the British Columbia forests, she was much more than just an artist—she was a folk hero. Vancouver Island in the nineteenth century was a colonial outpost, a little bit of England,' where the native environment was
regarded as a savage element to be tamed and 'civilized/ Out of this was born a resolutely independent woman, a good-humoured rebel and an eccentric genius. She burned to express a higher, deeper sense of nature, to explore 'the wonder of it all/ as she put it. Through her books Klee Wyck, Growing Pains and The House of All Sorts, Emily Carr used her sly wit to attack the hypocrisy of the world around her. Through the success of her writing and painting, she would triumph over adversity and win a place in the hearts and minds of her country." Sadly, we didn't win the hearts, minds or chequebooks of theatrical "angels." In spite of its considerable assets, Emily Carr was not Anne Shirley, and some might argue that her life calls for a somewhat less sentimental treatment, although, for a wholesome old-fashioned family musical, it still manages to cock an occasional snook at the stuffy establishment (as does Anne). It seems as if Campbell and Harron were looking for a good subject for a musical—and a follow-up to Anne of Green Gables—rather than for the best way to tell the story of Emily Carr. Some find parts of it to be very twee—especially the scenes of Emily's childhood. But The Wonder Of it A// rises to its full, considerable stature in its title song. In fact, I consider this song to be one of the finest moments in all of Canadian musical theatre. For me, as a British Columbian, the music captures the majesty of what Carr was painting in a distinctly West Coast way.
flcilwo
201
31. "Mil IHE STORE": tamE us n BUSINESS ""he late Reid Shelton, who originated the role of Daddy Warbucks in Annie on Broadway, once told me that, when the show opened for its pre-Broadway tryout at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, DC, "the scenery was not painted." Reasoning that it would cost $100,000 to finish the job, Kennedy Center boss Roger Stevens wanted to see if the show would be a hit before spending the money. "He came back stage at intermission, our opening night in Washington, and said paint the scenery'"That, in Shelton's mind, was "minding the store." It was my first lesson in showbiz economics, one at odds with some of the thinking that would dominate Toronto's commercial theatre in the 1990s. When I arrived in Toronto in 1983, the city was in transition. Dinner theatre was (with the exception of Stage West, who used imported stars) in terminal decline, but a commercial theatre revolution was in the offing. In December 1981, the Ontario Government, through its Ontario Heritage Foundation, bought the Thomas Lamb-designed Elgin Theatre, one of North Americas last remaining "stacked" vaudeville houses (meaning there were two theatres, one on top of the other). Opened in 1913 as Marcus Loewe's Downtown, the upstairs Winter Garden Theatre had been dark since 1927. Their plan was to bring in a private sector partner to renovate and operate the building as a commercial theatre specializing in musicals. There was even talk of financial incentives for the development of new works. At the time, the Canada Council also operated a Performing Arts Venture Capital Fund, so the future for commercial theatre looked rosy. After a competition that included Ed Mirvish and Peter Peroff (then owner of the Bayview Playhouse), Garth Drabinsky was signed to operate the theatres, in partnership with Concert Productions International, but it all fell apart, leaving the theatre vacant. Having earlier tried to buy the theatre outright from Famous Players, Drabinsky wrote in his autobiography, "The province, in its unrelenting demand for changes and upgrades, revealed its true agenda—it wanted a functionless historical monument, rather than a functioning theatre for a sensibly sized investment."1 I arranged for a tour of the undeveloped site, accompanied by Norman and Elaine Campbell. As we walked across the Elgin stage, I suggested that this would be a great place to transfer Stratford's Gilbert and Sullivan shows, but Norman shook his head. "No room." Vaudeville stages were designed for flat scenery that flew, and had little depth or wing space. As might be expected, with this being a heritage building,
T
SUDIY NORTH
202
its owners were more concerned with preserving its architectural and historical features than with creating a viable performing space. British producer Cameron Mackintosh declared, "I'm afraid the Elgin has ruled itself out of being the house for most musicals. For some reason, the people who are doing the wonderful redevelopment are not extending the stage... It's stupid to spend all this money on the Elgin and not put in a stage which can take the top international productions, operas and ballets."2 There were other plans mooted for new theatres, including one for a Cineplex Odeon in the new CBC Broadcast Centre. But in the meantime, the Elgin building was already there, and Toronto producer s minds were ablaze with ideas of what to do with it. Marlene Smith, a Rosedale doctor's wife who had been producing revues since the early 1970s, had set her sights on it. Don Rubin, founder of Canadian Theatre Review, once called Smith "an entrepreneur who feels that Canadian theatre can and should pay its own way."Tina Vanderheyden, a publicist for the O'Keefe Centre (later the Hummingbird Centre), had an inside track with the Shubert Organization for the rights to Cats. It was Star critic Gina Mallet who brought them together. Mallet, had been working with Smith on a plan to re-open the Danforth Music Hall as a home for Canadian musicals (an idea dear to Marlene's heart, and one that would resurface in various forms over the years)* They ittanaged to secure a "four walls" lease oa the Elgin, and set about raising over two million dollars, with the help of broadcasting mogul Alan Slaight Because Smith had produced on a small scale over the previous fifteen years, she knew the local talent pool intimately Cats opened on March 14,1985 and ran for two years with an entirely Canadian cast (0nly the creative team was imported)* Then it toured across Canad% Ifet&mtog to Toronto for a second nine-month run at Massey Hall. It was the largest undertaking of its kind in Canadian theatrical history. It meant that a group of singers and dancers were able to contemplate home ownership for the first time. It also meant that there was now a pool of very happy investors.
The Elgin Theatre, with the restored Winter Garden Theatre on the upper level and the lavish interior of the Elgin auditorium, is owned by the Ontario Heritage Trust. Courtesy of the Ontario Heritage Trust.
flcil
203
The ticket envelope for Little Shop of Horrors, Toronto, 1985. Courtesy of the author.
BROHY NORTH
204
This was not the first Toronto production of a commercial musical to use a Canadian cast— Godspell at the Bayview Playhouse had a cast of future stars, including Victor Garber (who would do the movie), Martin Short, Andrea Martin and Gilda Radner, with musical direction by Paul Shaffer. (Their group sales manager was none other than Marlene Smith.) In another part of town, former Tarragon production manager Lawrence N. Dykun had his eye on the Crest Theatre, with ambitions similar to Smiths. Dykun had always been frustrated by Tarragons inability to capitalize on their hits (he had managed successfully to transfer a production of Eighteen Wheels), so he set up a partnership with director Michael Ayoub, staging Oh Calcutta! in a dinner theatre. He followed this up with Pump Boys and Dinettes directed by Patrick Rose. Now, he held the keys to the Crest, a theatre with a hallowed if chequered name in _ Canadian theatrical folklore. When the Crest Theatre Foundation collapsed financially in 1966, the building reverted to use as a cinema, only rarely housing live productions (the last being The Me Nobody Knows in the early seventies, for which Marlene Smith was once again group sales manager). While Lawrence Dykun controlled the theatre, Marlene Smith held the rights to Little Shop of Horrors, the show he wanted to open with. Soon they got together and Dykun set about getting the place in shape, building a thrust stage (in attempt to rectify the "shoebox" feel) and refurbishing the auditorium. When Little Shop opened on April 25, 1985—only six weeks after Cats—the reviews were marvellous. The Star called it a "monster hit" while the Globe and Mai/said it was "wonderful." But somehow, Smith and Dykun hadn't quite overcome the curse of the Crest, and it lasted only three months. Still, Cats had proven that there was an audience for musicals in Toronto, the talent to perform (if not yet to write and direct) them, and money to be made. When the suggestion of bringing in Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera cropped up, it was feeding time at the zoo. Ed Mirvish suggested he would build a temporary theatre for Phantomywtiiie Smith announced Les Mis for the Elgin. Neither would be proven correct.
In the meantime, the pool was invaded by its biggest fish. Garth Drabinsky, whose Cineplex Corporation had recently swallowed the Canadian Odeon chain, still wanted to be a player, so much so that he grabbed the freehold on the north half of the Imperial Six cinemas while its occupant, rival Famous Players wasn't looking. He then managed to get a court injunction preventing Famous from operating in the half of the building that they still controlled. Two years later, Famous finally caved in and sold the remaining half to Cineplex Odeon for an estimated ten million dollars. (One of the conditions of the sale was that Drabinsky apologize for "some over-zealous statements" he'd made.) Then he recruited Edgar Dobie from Canadian Stage to manage his new Live Entertainment division. Drabinsky had already tried his hand at producing on Broadway. The Lee Adams-Charles Strouse A Broadway Musical, a satire about a brash, tasteless Broadway producer, lasted one catastrophic night at the Lunt-Fontainne in 1978. He had not ingratiated himself to others in the Toronto theatre community. "He was always obnoxious from day one,"3 Smith told the Toronto Stars John Coulbourn. "He's sick with ambition. Who needs it?" Then he announced plans to restore the Imperial to its 1920s vaudeville glory, reverting to its original name, the Pantages. He made it clear he had Phantom of the Opera in mind, adding that as a publicly-traded company, he would not risk shareholder's money on new productions. (This promise would come back to haunt him a decide later.) With some help from his friend Bill Freedman, he secured the rights. He maintained that he was determined that most of the cast would be Canadian, although the casting pool "becomes diluted when many productions are competing for the same performers. Musicil theatre is still relatively new in Catiacfeu,. thf truth is that there IDTeift that many well-trained and experiqi&gd tripfe^hreat performers^^ijii'who can act, sing and dance at equsd 'fcv&|:&f git^ness/^ Of c^ttee, it was new to him, and—unlii^^Maifcpe^Siiu^^lie was ri0t;iiitimately acquainted with the talent poolt^o^hy^ai^ $f auditio^*iSihith and the Mirvishes always used predomi^tly Canadian talent, and no critic or foreign-producing partnejp?i&^^ ever, to my Knowledge, complained that their standards wwrldfer than Dj^^ky^ DrabinskyV:J^atom opened September 20,1989: starring Co Wilkinson, Aft|^ Lloyd Webber,s original choice,as th0 Phanteift* (The corps de TbaMetJilso incited fettire Hollywood stair Neve Campbell.) Within a few raontks, Garth was pusht€
flCTH
205
BMD1Y NORTH
206
partner Myron Gottlieb. Eventually, the Canadian production would account for 20% of Phantoms worldwide gross (up to 1995). Ironically, the last one out of the starting gate had been in business the longest. Department store magnate "Honest Ed"Mirvish has owned the Royal Alexandra Theatre since 1962, but for most of the time, it was a receiving house for touring shows with the odd premiere, such as the 1981s' Say Hello to Harvey, a Mirvish-backed show starring Donald O'Connor with a score by Britain's Leslie Bricusse, based on Mary Chase's comedy classic about a six-foot pooka. (It went nowhere.) In the mid-1980s, his art dealer son David took over the business and began producing in-house, often in partnership with regional theatres. "It's not a business, really," says Mirvish. "It's more like a disease."5 Their production ofLes Miserables, with an all-Canadian cast, opened in 1989 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. While Ed had dabbled in Broadway with Eric Nicol's 1967 flop, A Minor Adjustment, it was after his purchase of the Old Vic in 1983 that their scope became more international. In London they would present Into the Woods at the Phoenix, Peggy Sue Got Married at the Shaftesbury and Two Pianos, Four Hands at the Comedy. In New York, their productions have included Two Pianos, Buddy and Mama Mia. The Mirvishes had a relationship with Cameron Mackintosh dating back to the 1970s and a tour of Side By Side By Sondheim that had come to the Royal Alex. Although Smith announced in March 1987 that she had obtained the rights to Les Miserables, she conceded that they had "not actually signed a contract."6 The Elgin's stage had not become any larger, and Cameron Mackintosh told me that he regarded the Mirvishes as true men of the theatre. He did not so regard Drabinsky. This attitude was similarly reflected by the press. Ray Conologue of the Globe and Mail wrote, "People who advocate a commercial theatre for Toronto are of two varieties. There are the boosters who mean the new Broadway, with its coarse shows and big bucks. And there are those who advocate a commercial theatre on the model of the old Broadway, where artists receive recognition for their work and develop a large, loving and knowledgeable audience. It is the second kind of commercial theatre that the Mirvishes, however hesitantly, are committed to."7 It's interesting to note that, after more than a decade, it is the Mirvishes who have survived. Meanwhile, Marlene Smith won the concession to operate the Elgin/ Winter Garden complex, but no blockbuster to open it with. There was much speculation as to what she would do. I proposed The Wonder of it All, Harron and Campbell's musical based on the life of painter
Emily Carr. But there were other ideas—Guy Sprung, artistic director of Canadian Stage held the rights to a Margaret Atwood story called The Festival of Missed Crass, about a group of children who are forced to live underground after a world cataclysm. This had been adapted as a musical by opera composer Raymond Pannell, with book by Ms. Atwood, called Forbidden Christmas. Although intended for Canadian Stage, there was speculation that the show might open the Winter Garden, with Primedia Productions filming it for television. Alas, due in part to creative differences between the authors and Canadian Stage, it never opened anything anywhere. Somebody else wanted to do Frankenstein: The Man Who Became God by Walter Learning and Alden Nowlan. In the end, Marlene chose The Wizard of Oz for the Elgin and Side By Side By Sondheim starring Davis Gaines for the Winter Garden. But she had greater ambitions. In 1984, she had announced plans for "Canada's first and only original musical theatre"8 to be financed in part by a "no-show" ball. Her proposed venue at that time was the Adelaide Court Theatre, a former courthouse dating from the 1850s. "Name one well—known [Canadian] musical besides Anne of Green Gables" she announced in a press release. "Point made. Canada doesn't have musical theatre... The problem isn't talent—we've got droves of fine directors, actors, singers, designers and technicians.The problem is money... What Toronto needs is a place where Canadian writers can try out their musicals, a place to give these shows workshops... Sure, Charlottetown stajrted it all in Canada, but I never think about it. I consider Anne of Green Gables a fluke at this point," Alas, the Adelaide Court became a nightclub. Three years later, Smith returned to the same idea, using the Crest. "If we don't get funding, we won't go ahead," she told the Sfar*$ Robert Crew. "But everybody is enthusiastic about it. We were hoping for late Spring, but now I don't think we're going to open until the falL*9 She toped to begin with Joey Miller's Playground, but the Crest soon became the Regent Cinema, and Marlene found herself with her hands foil with the running of the Elgin/Winter Garden. "Okay.. * so toy dream is still a dre^mf she told me recently. "No home for musical theatre is in sight,»» Where's Alan Lund when we need him?** Stephen MacKernan, a young businessman and would-be composer* took out a fourteen-year lease on the l^QO-seat Danforth Music Hall (built in 1919 by the Allen circuit) and renamed it the New Century He planned to stage his own opus, Lottery Madness* First though, he carried out about $200,000 in renovations, then transferred a hit production of Nunsense from the Teller's Cage.
BCTWO
207
The Danforth Music Hall on Danforth Avenue in Toronto, known today as The Music Hall. Courtesy of the author.
RRoeDMY IDRTH
208
MacKernan had little theatrical experience. He had presented an earlier version of Lottery Madness, called That's the Ticket and had updated The Medea for John Neville at the Neptune in Halifax. For this venture, he teamed up with a New York company, M Square Entertainment, with a plan to bring in "Broadway style" musicals. "I look upon theatre as a business, as a money-making venture. I apply basic business practices and no one else is doing that in this market." But his "basic business practices" were flawed; he had not raised enough money to see the show to opening night, and the cast—the majority of whom came from New York—were let go. "The producer did not say two words to us," actor Avery Saltzman told Robert Crew of the Star. "It's a shame, but that's showbiz." That wasn't the end for the New Century, though. MacKernan brought in a successful run of Sleuth starring Patrick MacNee and Garaint Wyn Davies, as well as a stage version of On the Buses and A Rosefor Mr. Tango starring Victor Young. But, like the Crest and the Bayview Playhouse, its location worked against it. More recently it has reverted to being a cinema, with occasional live shows, and has reverted back to the name of The Music Hall. But Toronto's commercial theatre really fumbled the ball with BMovie, a farce about would-be movie producers written by and starring Tom Wood that, when I saw it, was so funny it left my brain starved of oxygen. It originated at the Phoenix Theatre in Edmonton, and was presented in Spring 1987 by the Shaw Festival at TWP Theatre for eight weeks. It closed, not for lack of audience support, but because the Shaw Festival couldn't spare the personnel to keep it running. But the city's commercial producers were caught napping. Although David Mirvish nibbled, nobody emerged with any workable plan to keep this unqualified hit afloat. Marlene Smith assumed—wrongly—that the Shaw Festival had it under control. Even the creators were shy of the devil they didn't know, preferring the cosy security of subsidized theatre. For years, the standard excuse has been that there is no suitable, intimate theatre in the downtown core to which to transfer such a show. In that case, why was the Adelaide Court allowed to close? But
when Laurence Follows and Jeffrey Latimer were planning to do an open-ended run of Forever Plaid, they managed to convert the disused Embassy Cinema into the unfortunately named New Yorker Theatre, and it has remained a viable, if cramped home for small musicals ever since. When another producer in the late 1980s wanted to do the gospel hit Mama Let Me Sing, they found the La Plaza Theatre (now the Opera House) on Queen Street East ready and waiting. Both of these theatres are in the core. (Some say that certain theatres such as the Bayview and the Crest failed because of a shortage of parking spaces, but in New York and London, no sane person drives to the theatre; possibly it could be said that the proprietors failed to publicize ways to reach the theatres by public transport.) In terms of economics, producers in New York and London actually shy away from small theatres for musicals; they only work if the customer who is turned away on Saturday night can be persuaded to come back on Monday. But while producers were falling all over each other to produce the blockbusters, they didn't notice a home-grown hit—probably because they didn't read about it in Variety. Eventually, talent agent Ron Francis took B-Movie to Boston, but by that time it had lost its momentum and it failed. A partner, Roy Cameron and I attempted to remedy this situation by rather pretentiously setting ourselves up as "theatrical transfer consultants." In theory, we would scout the non-profit theatres for shows with commercial potential. When we found one, we would write a report on its viability for transfer, and act as matchmakers with theatre owners and producers. Unfortunately, Toronto was in a recession, and the show we would dearly like to have tr^a^ferred—Alan Stratton's Bag Ba&igf—was not doing business on its horiie totf atThettre Passe Mui^ilfe^^^oon
realized that we were simpl^^d^^er^^lhbut money, In 1985, Classical Cabaret*$ Ruth Morawetz predicted, "Sooner or later,
we'll be doing our ownmusicals here. We've got the singers,now al we need are composers who cant qaiiqtiM^with the audience. "10' .
ficifi
209
32. DEFYI N G GROVIIY ; THE llN-Mut OF Mumlm belief is that Toronto's commercial theatre will have reached its maturity when we are able to transfer an original show from a regional theatre into a core venue for an indefinite, open-ended run. In 1985,1 tried to put this theory into practice. The woman I shared this adventure with was a complex piece of work. I first met "Ms. X" in May 1984 through a mutual friend. I was looking for an agent, and she was working for one. She told me she had been "married three times, divorced once, and none of them are dead." It's not that she was dishonest, she just didn't always dot her "I"s and cross her "T"s, so to speak. She possessed that kind of aura that said that anything was possible. She was always organizing something. At this time, she was promoting a plan for a Serpentarian Aquarium for Toronto's waterfront. She seemed to be moving in the right circles. She had a maternal quality that was, at first, very comforting. She could make a very good impression when she wanted too, and she was a great "schmoozer." She had been an actress of some note in Canada in the late 1950s and had left for New York when she married an American diplomat. At one point, on a few hours notice, she had been required to renounce her Canadian citizenship in order to join her family at the Embassy in London. This meant that after divorcing him, she now had to fight with immigration authorities for the right to return to her native country. That's the "crow's route" version of the story, omitting many convoluted details. The stories she told left one incredulous, however, during our yearlong attempt at becoming theatrical entrepreneurs, I saw enough to make me believe most of what she told me. I had recently moved to Toronto from Vancouver, where I had been a freelance entertainment critic. I had expected that I would be a big fish in a small pond, and that I would therefore rise quickly to the top. (That a fish doing just that was not a good sign had not yet occurred to me.) I had written one full-scale musical, but I felt that I needed to come up with something that could be done on a small stage, with a small cast and just a few musicians. Following a commission from CBC Radio for a musical called Closed Session that was never produced, I began developing an intimate show called The Grand Finale, about an actor facing the audition of his life—for heaven. I wrote the first twelve pages of dialogue, and sent it to producers across the country.
My
IUWW'NlllilN
210
y
My sister Marilyn remembered an article that had appeared in a local newspaper profiling Canadian-born actor James Doohan, Star Trek's "Scotty." In my childhood, I had never missed a Star Trek episode. (In fact, I was such a fan that I once tried to make my ears grow pointed.) It seems that Doohan had unsuccessfully tried to get the American rights to Billy Bishop Goes To War. If he's looking for a tour deforce, she reasoned, why not send him The Grand Finale^ I obtained his address through the ACTRA union, and sent it off. I also sent an excerpt from the script to Marlene Smith's office, and the reply was right up my alley. They liked what they read, and would meet with me after the furore of Cats died down. At the same time, producer Larry Dykun took out his lease on the Crest Theatre. Part of his plan was to use the profits from his commercial shows to subsidize new writers. That he was particularly interested in musicals seemed promising. Richard Ouzounian had a maverick reputation. During his four years at the Manitoba Theatre Centre, he turned a $250,000 deficit into a $95,000 surplus. He had been a mentor of mine. When he did his Macbeth—A Rock Opera at UBC, I then did my Macdeath—-A Musical Vaudeville in high school. He was also one of the first directors to express an interest in my work. He was already familiar with my work on The Grand Finale. At one point, he suggested that he would try to get me a commission from the CBC to finish its first draft. He even told me not to wait until it was finished before bringing it in to him; he wanted to see its progress in stages* However, each time I made an appointment, it was inevitably cancelled at the last minute. His sudden resignation from Toronto's CentreStage, allegedly due to a budget over-ran, had received a lot of publicity, and, thinking that he was now free, Ms, X and I decided to bring The Grand Finale to him. "At the time, I wasn't in a position to produce it, as I was leaving CentreStage," says Richard, f
flci1
BROMY NORTH
919 urn
most macho handshake. I didn't sleep that night. I was psyching myself up for a meeting that could mean God knows what. When it came to the night, we arrived at the Prince Hotel a couple of hours early. When James checked in, he arrived with an executive from Paramount who was accompanying him on a promotional tour for Star Trek videos. "Would you like to join us in the sushi bar?" he asked. Not being a yuppie sophisticate, I turned to my friend and whispered "But I'm a teetotaller..." You haven't lived until you've sat in a restaurant with Jimmy Doohan in full voice (after a few drinks) doing his Hermione Gingold impersonation. We talked for hours about many things, including his memories of the Second World War as a reconnaissance pilot in the Royal Canadian Army, where he once flew a slalom course between telephone poles. He and Ms. X reminisced about the early days of Canadian television. He had starred in Flight Into Danger, the Arthur Hailey drama that led to the Airport movies. (I didn't know it at the time, but he was also heard in The Investigator, Reuben Ship's legendary CBC Radio satire on McCarthyism. Ironically, he played the man who welcomes "McCarthy" into heaven.) Finally, after the Paramount man went to his room, we got down to brass tacks. He later told CKO Radio, "To me, The Grand Finale is such a terrific play. It's a character I would love to create."1 He was looking for a way to break out of the trap of typecasting, and we set out to plan our next course of action. My first choice as director was Norman Campbell, for a number of reasons. The Actor in the show was a part of the first generation of Canadian theatre, and so was Norman, although he had not worked on stage since he directed The Mikado at the Stratford Festival some twenty-five years earlier. (In fact, like this book, The Grand Finale came out of my interest in our Canadian theatrical heritage, and was my homage to the generation that had preceded me.) We soon got together with pianist David Warrack and made a rough tape of the music, with me singing. (Norman later told Ms. X that he loved my singing. I was flattered until he told me that what he loved was the suspense of hearing me "reaching for the impossible note.") He still wasn't committing himself, and he was concerned about meeting with Richard when his enthusiasm was only at "eighty percent, not a hundred." He arrived at Richard's CentreStage office, meeting him for the very first time. He joked that if Richard was late, he didn't want to work with him. In any case, he wasn't late, and they paved the way for a first reading. I spent the next two months doing rewrites and getting scores written out. By the beginning of June, we had our first crisis; Ms. X had checked
herself into St. Michaels hospital out of sheer exhaustion. Richard was in Vancouver in preproduction for another show.Through Normans wife Elaine, we had managed to secure St. Lawrence Hall for a read-through. The only question was: Would anybody be there? Norman and Elaine spent their summers in Prince Edward Island, so it was important to catch them before they left. Finally, Richard made it back in time, and played the Actor himself, with Philip Eckman as the Director and Kate Hennig and Terry Barna as his abandoned children. In the audience were two cast members we'd met from a touring production of Brighton Beach Memoirs— future Hollywood star Patrick Dempsey and his future wife Rocky Parker. Richard gave an over-the-top performance that had everyone in stitches. Norman described the show as "very moving." Our favoured tryout city was Vancouver, which was home town to Norman, Jimmy and me, and an adopted home to Richard. (At one point in the reading, Jimmy spoke the line "I was born in Vancouver General Hospital." He stopped, looked up from his script and said, "And I was, too!") I began sending letters to various theatres and producers in that town, stressing the big names who had attached themselves to our show. However, Vancouver's number one venue for musicals returned the script, which they had held onto for a year, saying "Unfortunately we no longer have anyone on staff who is available to read incoming scripts." Believing that it was possible that they w^re unaware of the big name talent now attached to the show, I sent a IKW ime tQ them, accompanied\^:m letter bringing them up to date. Tli^jfpif i^^medto me by ak e?^|pp^^).D explaining again that "the reader w currently have on staff has not had the time to read your script, as we have a backlog from last year." Accompanying the script was a bill jjj£ JO^^^^^p^a^^il^^ES. Cheers! How are things in Toronto? Ol^^^&ft^^fWS^ At around this time,Little Sbop of Harrors opened to enthusiasticreviews. We sent a script to Dykun,and he was keen to have our%b0W fo
Richard Ouzounian (right) and Norman Campbell during a Grand Finale workshop at the St. Lawrence Hall, Toronto. Courtesy of the author.
low Little S&of into theCrest, although whether hewoi^ act as prodii ef of merely liipdte'd "^^i:^^^^^t&'^^^^^^ili^ (Jiffljpo^h^ii ,'$ctt0>|§p the Crest's stage duiia^s heyday.) A couple of weeks late in-the-Dell, we held the fir$t ifert^gin^jimmy. Richard read the of the Director. A number of producep^^er^to^ited. Smith and Dykun both declined. The audience included noted film director Harvey Hart,
BCTJHO
9]Q 610
James Doohan (right) with author, Mel Atkey during The Grand Finale workshop, Theatre-inthe-Dell, 1985. Photo by Marilyn Atkey. Courtesy of the author.
fiHDivlora
214
Ms.X's mentor since her early TV days. David Warrack provided piano accompaniment. After the reading, Jimmy regaled us with a selection of Irish folk songs and behind the scenes tales of life on the Star Ship Enterprise. That night we went to see Little Shop. We had extra comps for Richard and Pamela, but they didn't make it. We stayed and met with the cast, then Jimmy took us out for pasta afterwards. He asked if we had a producer lined up yet. I told him we'd hoped that Richard would do it. We met with Richard the following Monday in a downtown bar. He apologized for his absence, but said he was uncertain about his role. He wanted to be involved, but felt that Norman might be more capable of handling a star. He had, after all, directed everyone from Mary Tyler Moore to Groucho Marx. However, it was clear that Richard wanted to direct rather than produce, and since Norman was still showing reluctance, we decided to make Richard the director. He wanted to approach Edmonton s Citadel Theatre, where he was supposed to direct a show in the next season. Richard felt that the next step was to make a demo of the score. We went into the studio with David Warrack and a couple of singers who were appearing in Lies and Legends, Richard's current stage production—Moira Walley (whom I knew from Vancouver's Mussoc) and Kevin Hicks, a graduate of the Banff Centre's Music Theatre Studio Ensemble. We next had lunch with Shel Piercy, an old Vancouver colleague, who wanted to help bring the show into Vancouver for June 1986, in time for Expo. Marilyn was in Vancouver when she read in the newspaper that Jimmy had announced at a Kansas City Star Trek convention that he would "produce and star in a play about an ageing actor."2 This story had gone on the wire services. But by early August, the Citadel had declined the show, although they said the script was well received. It had, at some point, been offered to every regional theatre in Canada, and a few abroad. (It was short-listed by the Sydney Theatre Company, but passed over because of their rather admirable policy of putting Australian writers first.) Ms. X decided that she and a new man in her life could produce the show themselves. She had served as an assistant to producer Lore Noto
(The Fantasticks) on a Broadway musical version of The Yearling some twenty-five years earlier. She felt sure she knew what she was doing. Just what her friend's involvement would be was never really made clear. She seemed to be resolved in this matter, even though she had known him all of two or three weeks. They set up house in a split level flat on Yonge Street, and this became our base of operations. Toward the end of August, we held another reading at Theatre-inthe-Dell, with Gerry Salsberg (one of the cast of Little Shop we'd met, and an avowed Trekkie) as the Director, and Jimmy as the Actor. After the reading, when Gerry s wife asked him if he "got the part," he would reply, "I don't know, but I got an autographed picture. And look what else I got—some fridge magnets that say'Beam me up, Scotty'!" Richard was expected to be there, but he had auditions that day for another show which he forgot to tell us about. Jimmy came forward with an offer of $5,500 seed money, in exchange for a five percent participation in the royalties earned by my company, Friendlysong Productions. We accepted. We also decided that it was time to get some media exposure. We hoped that this would help us to attract the missing elements. Ms. X arranged for Jimmy to be interviewed on Global TV News. They talked to him for eight minutes about The Grand Finale and for two minutes about Star Trek. Then, he and I were both interviewed on CKO, an all-news radio station that broadcast across the country. That night, we tuned in to Global News. Only the two minutes about Star Trek were broadcast. The Toronto Sun ran an item in Sylvia Train's column, and the show was mentioned in a profile of Richard in the Star. With all this publicity came rumours. At a theatrical first night, one producer announced to me that his source in Hollywood told him that our plans were all bogus, and that James Doohan had never been involved in anything called The Grand Finale."Well, Jimmy's agent was furious, and wanted to put an immediate stop to that one. When I questioned this producer on the source, he said, "What is this, an inquisition?"! nodded.
In September, Jimmy invited me down to Ithaca, New York^in order to give me the $5,500. He was making a promotional appearance there, and my friend and I were chauffeured in a limousine and given the royal treatment. What I didrft realize was that things back home were reaching meltdown. Ms. X's friend, it turned out, was a manic-depressive with paranoid tendencies. All the excitement had triggered a manic high. That Sunday, he learned of the death of a former colleague, which prompted him to
flcijwo
215
climb out on the roof of his apartment yelling, "I've got to get together with death!" He had been off his lithium for a week and a half. Ms. X decided she had to get him to the hospital, but having no cash on hand, she called the police and ambulance. By the time they arrived, he had straightened up. Upon my return to Toronto, I found an urgent message from her. I called immediately and found her distraught and unable to talk. She told me to call Richard, which I did, getting him out of bed. "Poor Mel," he told Ms. X later, "I'm not very good when I'm half asleep." Richard explained to me, as best he could, what was going on. The following morning, Ms. X's friend again threatened again to jump off the roof. The building superintendent called the police, and they finally took him to the hospital. A few days later, when they wouldn't let him out, he tried to escape. Every security guard in the place went after him. Needless to say, the wedding was off. In the midst of all this, we were supposed to be thinking about holding a backer's audition. It was like a mad circus! I was still working furiously to find a new producer. Eventually, I received a letter from Marlene Smith's office apologizing for the fact that she had not been able to meet with me, but she had enjoyed my telephone conversations and wished me lots of luck. She hoped she hadn't let me down "too too much," but felt that, among Toronto's forty theatres, there was no appropriate venue. How close did Marlene come to producing it? When she returned the script, I found some anonymous marginal notes in pencil that are quite revealing: "I think Act 2 could be really neat. Director really is GOD—Runs a rehearsal featuring famous theatrical personalities (GHOSTS). Could be quite funny—especially if FARROW [the Actor]'s nononsense' personality is developed... Assumes people know all the [personalities] he mentions—doesn't make sense if they don't. [We learn that the Actor is auditioning for heaven when the Director names Ralph Richardson and Tyrone Guthrie as members of his company] Where does it go from here? It reads well as it is—if it's 'fattened up'will lose its pace."
BwiwNom
216
Richard suggested we approach Tina Vanderheyden, Marlene's partner on Cats, but she was expecting a baby. Finally, and reluctantly, we decided to form a company and produce it ourselves. Thus Friendlysong Theatrical Ventures Limited was created
to act as general partner in a proposed private placement of fourteen units of $25,000 each. It was estimated that the show would break even after six weeks at the Crest with only an average 54% house. The profits would be split 50/50 between the limited partners (the investors) and the general partner. We sent out an Offering Memorandum to some fifty potential angels. These included Marlene's backers from Cats, a list of which was obtained from Ontario Securities Commission filings. Richard had recommended names of some people he knew. A newspaper article implied that Honest Ed Mirvish had nibbled, but as far as I know, Ms. X had merely spoken in very general terms to his lawyer, who said that they occasionally put money in other people's shows. No backer's audition was ever held. Instead, I produced a short tape with excerpts from the readings, a few songs, and Richard explaining how the show would work. I reasoned that investors could then consider the package at their leisure. In fact, I was not prepared to face them until we were on a more secure footing. Ms. X's title was to be associate producer, but she no longer held any real power. Nobody was named as producer, as I felt it would not comfort investors to know that the lunatic—that is, me—was running the asylum. Little Shop of Horrors turned out to be Toronto's best kept secret. In spite of its rave reviews, few people saw it. Just as Marlene Smith was considering closing the show, Dykun boosted the advertising. Business did pick up, but it was too little, too late, and Little Shop closed after a three-month run. All of this left Dykun understandably skittish about his whole venture, and the Crest soon closed its doors. Richard's confidence was visibly shaken. He was now convinced that Ms. X was not competent, and that I should not be doing the producer's job. He asked that he be paid a retainer. "Otherwise, you and 'MfcX* could stab me in the back," he said^My father pit up the $2,000 advance.What we had at that point was a star who mayor ma^tliot be bankable, Richards track record at the Manitoba Tiieatre Centre, afektivdy inexpensive show, and a simple "high concept." However, there was no pjeoof that Jimmy s drawing power extended beyond Ofe&t Trek (w^ft the president of the local Star Trek fan club said this), aitd we did not have a pnxliieer.
I soon learned, through the media, that Richard had been appointed artistic directdir
flcilwo
217
The entrance to the Neptune Theatre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Photo by Scott Munn. Courtesy of the Neptune Theatre Foundation.
BROflomlora
91Q 6lO
Gateway Theatre. I flew out in December and had a meeting with their general manager, Rick Shick. He loved the show, and would try to persuade his board to buy it at a flat fee for a summer run. Next, I arranged a meeting with Larry Lillo, newly appointed artistic director of the Grand Theatre in London, Ontario, and an old friend of Richard's from Vancouver. LiUo had mixed feelings about the script, and confessed to being tone deaf, but he was willing to consider it if Richard could convince him that he could make it work. I went to Canadian film maker Norman Jewison for advice. Although he couldn't get directly involved, he said "I feel for you, but there's nothing I can tell you that you havent already tried." Then his associate, Bonnie Palef, gave me a lesson in campaigning. "You don't just submit the show to the artistic director. You campaign the entire board." She suggested that I get in touch with the theatre's patrons, Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. (Cronyn wrote back saying that he had no influence over programming, and besides, when it comes to musicals, "I don't know a sharp from a flat.") Next, I had the London Free Press run a feature on Jimmy. I sent copies to each member of the board of directors. I then similarly campaigned the board of Neptune. Soon Richard was off to Halifax, and we never had another meeting. The board of Richmond Gateway Theatre were unwilling to commit money. Ultimately, the show had been offered to eighteen Canadian regional theatres. Each had their own reasons for saying no. When the six months of Richard's option expired in the Spring of 1986, the project was effectively dead. Five years later, I left Toronto for London, England.
33. WflNflDi IMPERATIVE"
M
y business partnership with Roy Cameron came to an end in 1991 when we went to see a production that he felt was so bad he didn't want to be in the same business anymore. At that point, I had nothing to tie me to Toronto, and in September I left for London. Why would somebody so passionately committed to Canadian musical theatre choose to leave? There are several reasons—you can take your pick of which you want to believe: 1. I wanted to go to a place that had a more established theatrical infrastructure. 2. I did not want to be forced into a melting pot. (When a Canadian goes to New York, he is not allowed to remain Canadian.) 3. I found that my sense of Canadian identity actually became clearer when I moved away. For example, I can now instantly recognize a Canadian (vs. American) accent. 4. I wanted to learn my craft. 5. I was angry that when a friend was nominated for a Dora, I was denied a vote because in spite of my being on the board of the Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance (a TTA member organization), I did not meet the Alliance's rather pedantic criteria as a member of the theatrical community. In his memoirs, Norman Jewison says, "Artists need to feel that their work is appreciated. They need approval,; When the encouragement to produce their best work doestft adst 10 their own country; they gd somewhere else..."1 But not every Canadian who moves to Britain does s& with this in mind. I had given my demo tape to a ehorec^praphei: Jfgtti Toronto who had been based in London for many^ears,-^BotIt all scrtinds so... Canadian" he sneered, adding "Yoil^atft ci*etl€ rhymes by simply Jteopping consonants." (I cheeked* and:l hadn% m Norman Campbell suggested I "drop a heavy consontnt on his ibot/*) To add inswit to injury* a nameless Toronto theatre colnptiiy refused to consider a script of mine on the grounds that it was %ot Canadian." Not that it wasn't "Canadian enough/ but that it was not Canadian at all, in spite of the fact that it was set entirely in Vancouver. The Royal Commission on Canadian Cultural Identity had evidently deliberated
flCJji
910
Ll Id
BHHY NORTH
220
and withdrawn my maple leaf lapel pin. (All too often, Canada's regional theatres are all "mandate" and little "vision.") But Canadian theatre was surviving—sometimes even prospering— without me. All the major producers were paying lip service—at least—to the notion of developing new shows, although Toronto critics dismissed out of hand any notion that the city's several new venues might ever be alive with the sound of Canadian music. Having been toppled from the throne of Cineplex Odeon, Garth Drabinsky, together with partner Myron Gottlieb, acquired their Live Entertainment (Livent) division. Freed—for the moment—from the constraints of a publicly quoted company, Drabinsky latched onto a show that Phantom director Harold Prince had already been developing. Kiss of the Spider Woman had been workshopped at the State University of New York at Syracuse, where an un-invited Frank Ritch crept in and assassinated it with a poisonous review in the New York Times. But Spider Woman refused to die, and with Livent's support, a new production was launched in Toronto at the Bluma Appel Theatre in the summer of 1992. However, despite Drabinsky's involvement, this really cannot in any way be considered a Canadian production. Terrance McNally adapted Manuel Puig's novel about a gay window dresser and a revolutionary imprisoned together in an unnamed Latin American country, while lyricist Fred Ebb and composer John Kander (who did Cabaret, also directed by Prince) provided the score. Only Brent Carver, who replaced the originally cast Richard "John-Boy'"Ihomas as Molina, the window dresser, was Canadian—and that's one fewer than Prince cast in Sweeney Toddon Broadway (Len Cariou as Sweeney, Victor Garber as Anthony). Still, the entire company were engaged under Canadian Equity contracts, even when the show transferred to London's Shaftesbury Theatre, where Plays and Players reported that "the evening belongs to Brent Carver. As Molina, the Canadian actor, slight and blonde, gives a committed performance, treading the line between camp and passion with unerring taste."The show won the Evening Standard Award for Best Musical, and when the entire cast transferred to Broadway, Carver's role was taken in London by Jeff Hyslop, with a mostly British supporting cast. Carver ultimately won a Best Actor in a Musical Tony, and the show shared an award with Tommys Pete Townsend for Best Score. Perhaps the greatest single vote of confidence in Toronto's theatrical potential was not a show at all, but a building. As early as 1981, Ed Mirvish had told the Empire Club that "Toronto is ready for another theatre. Such a theatre would also add importance to our city as a world
theatre entertainment centre. Of course, a multi-level parking lot on this same land would always make more money, provide less aggravation, get less criticism and require a minimum of staff. On the other hand, it does not require much talent to run a parking lot, and it does nothing for my ego."2 The $22 million Princess of Wales Theatre was touted as the first entirely new privately financed theatre in North America for thirty years. Decorated with murals by American abstract artist Frank Stella, the new theatre has the intimacy and economy of space of older theatres, rather than what I call the "Frank Lloyd Webber" school of architecture, with the "let s keep the audience at a safe distance" ethos of the Hummingbird Centre (formerly the O'Keefe Centre). Just a few doors from the Royal Alex on King Street West, this was in the heart of Toronto's old theatre district. The original Princess Theatre (1889) and Ambrose J. Small's Grand Opera House had once stood nearby. Now, instead of Henry Irving, Sarah Bernhardt and Ellen Terry, they opened with Miss Saigon, followed over the next decade by Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
Some producers and writers began to take the first bold steps toward creating a Canadian mega-fiitisik^L In London,passengers inbc^^from Paris on the high-speed Eurostar train are foiled to disembark at a station called Waterloo. That pifctty well sums up the British attitude toward all things Napoleonic. Which did not bode well for the future of Canada's first mega-musical. It was easy for detractors to assume that Marlene Smith was hitching onto a Le$ij^&^i& b?mdwagony havii^g l
The Princess of Wales Theatre on King Street in Toronto. Photo by Robert Brockhouse. Courtesy ofMirvish Productions
Belli
99] GUI
Marlene Smith, theatrical producer, still believes in Canadian musical theatre, having produced 54 shows, many of which were musicals. She is still very much involved, "Long live musical theatre." Courtesy of Marlene Smith.
BHDWRY NORTH
h 222
Then, in 1987, they met up again in London and developed it further, approaching Marlene Smith the following year. At first, she demurred, having just sat through War and Peace at the Shaw Festival, but Williams and Sabiston persuaded her that Napoleon was a love story. Thus began a long process of workshops and rewrites. At one point, director Robin Phillips was involved (with author Timothy Findley acting as dramaturge), and Brent Carver did a two-week workshop at the Elgin, culminating in two public performances. In 1993, director John Wood, former director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre was engaged by Marlene Smith, and the audition process in Toronto and London began. The entire cast were Canadian, save for the two leads— Jerome Praedon as Napoleon was French, and Aline Mowat as Josephine was from London. David Ekmekjian of brokerage firm Sanwa McCarthy Securities was given the job of raising the show's $4.5 million budget, the largest in Canadian theatrical history, at a time when the economy was in recession. Investors would enjoy a 50% tax deferment. Sabiston and Williams also acted as co-producers. "There was never any contractual obligation for us to raise a specific amount that would constitute our 'share' of the capital," explains Sabiston. "The understanding was that we wanted to see the show produced and that we'd all do the best we could to make it happen. From our end, what began as friends telling friends grew into a grassroots movement of considerable size. The subject matter seemed to appeal to people right up front and that meant it was never really difficult to get potential backers out to a presentation. Those presentations Tim and I did ourselves at the piano and consisted largely of playing the material (sometimes in its entirety, at others presenting excerpts and telling the story). We were often blessed with a favourable response." Amazingly, they managed to get some recording artists to cover songs from the score. Dan Hill released a single of "On That First Night," while Danish singer and actor Stig Rossen and German actor Uwe Kroeger (who appeared in the London production) later released versions of "Sweet Victory Divine." Previews began at the Elgin Theatre on March 9,1994, the 198th anniversary of the marriage of Napoleon and Josephine, and on March 23,
the show had its official first night. The Globe and Mail reported, "While Napoleon has a lot going for it, starting with first-rate music and performances—it just isn't in the same league as Show Boat, Crazy for You, Miss Saigon and The Phantom of the Opera when it comes to staging pizzazz and technological whizbangery." The show needed to average 60% houses to cover its weekly "nut" (running cost) of $285,000, including 25 musicians. Newspaper ads began to say that tickets were available only until May 29, but the producers initially claimed that was just a ploy to promote sales. Then, on May 14, the notices went up: Napoleon would close on May 29, three months earlier than contracted, even though the original cast recording reached #8 in HMV's best-seller chart. They had already terminated John Wood s contract, and began shopping for somebody new to shepherd it toward what they thought would be an autumn transfer to London, following Kiss of the Spider Woman into the Shaftesbury. But it would take much longer than that. Over the next half decade, work continued on the book and score, while Marlene Smith abdicated her producer role in favour of her son Geoffrey, who teamed up with London producer Duncan C. Weldon. Opera director Francesca Zambella, described by London's Evening Standard as the "world's busiest female director^3 was brought in to stage the spectacle, which opened October 21,2000, at the Shaftesbury Theatre, (Among the ensemble was Heather Davies, daughter of Beowulf composer Victor Davies.) There would be no wlmbangery shortage here* The reviews were overwhelmingly hostile. The Mm! on Sunday called it "gilded garbage."The Express thought it **so bad? it*s a collector's item," while the Sunday Times deemed it ^beyond rescue* "The Spectator $ Sheridan Morley, of all London's critics the one most favourable to musicals, called it "the most lavish, Itocurious, loopy extravaganza since Ivor Novello dropped dead during his King% RJh&f$ady*+* soon» it*U be the Christmas spectacular at Disneyland Paris* where if they've got any sense, theyll do it on ice with hundreds of dancing dwarfs/1 (As it turned out, Williams' next job was arranging music for Disney's theme parks.) It is due to be presented in Klagenfart, Austria in 2006 in a German translation by Michael Kunze.
Program cover for Napoleon. The show had its official first night at the Elgin Theatre on March 23,1994. Courtesy of the author.
Her mo
99Q uuU
BROHY NORTH
224
While Napoleon was not a subject I would have chosen—nobody can beat Abel Gance's 1927 silent classic—I don't believe it deserved such vitriol. Surely, it was flawed; Sabiston needs to learn to write lyrics that fit firmly on the notes, avoiding lines like "the last EmperO/?,"but compared to other London turkeys—Out of the B/ue, a musical about the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, comes to mind—this certainly was not "garbage." It boiled down to one question—do you buy Napoleon and Josephine as a romantic love story, rather than the marriage of convenience it almost certainly was? Clearly, they didn't. Montreal has also made some tentative steps toward the creation of original musicals. Lyricist Luc Plamondon has written several rock operas, mostly with European composers (Richard Cocciante for Notre Dame du Paris, Michel Berger for Starmania/Tycoon) which have enjoyed some measure of success in Paris. A London production of Notre Dame du Paris, with English lyrics by Will Jennings, was not well received. In 1998, another entirely indigenous piece called simply /by Montreal writer Marc Drouin, was dismissed by the Gazettes Pat Donnelly as "bloated and passe, reeking of too much money (at least $1 million) spent badly. The script is self-indulgent, the music bland, the mix is just plain odd."4 Following the success of Les Miserables, Canadian-born director John Caird approached David Mirvish with Jane Eyre (not to be confused with the earlier show done at the Charlottetown Festival), by American pop songwriter Paul Gordon that had already been workshopped in Wichita, Kansas. As it worked out, Mirvish's $6 million show premiered just a few days before Livent's $11 million behemoth Ragtime in December 1996. The press made much of the so-called bitter rivalry between the two producers, but most of the acrimony appeared to be on the Livent side. When the Mirvishes applied for planning permission to build the Princess of Wales Theatre, Drabinsky filed an intervention on the grounds that there were insufficient parking spaces. When the Mirvishes beat out Livent for the rights to Rent, Drabinsky retaliated by pre-empting a very desirable forty-week booking period at the Elgin Theatre, forcing them into a shorter twenty-week run at the Royal Alex. The shows seemed to define the contrast between the two producers. Ragtime was brash, flashy and—like its stars and stripes logo, one must say, All-American (although roughly a third of the cast were actually Canadian)—while Jane Eyre was gentle, literate and lyrical. Sadly, it was also short-lived. The Globe and Mail derided Gordons score as "woefully underwritten, never detailed enough in composition nor orchestration to reveal much emotion, never powerful enough to soar and, worst crime
of all in a populist musical, it contains no memorable tunes." (The latter point is certainly not true, as the original cast recording reveals—"Brave Enough for Love" sticks in the mind.) The Sun called it "just another Jane Doe," but Variety found it "a great musical-in-the-making: deeply literate, not always easy, and ultimately very moving." But the numbers didn't add up, and David Mirvish reluctantly dropped his option to take the show to New York. After a tryout at La Jolla Playhouse, the show eventually reached Broadway, co-directed by Scott Schwartz (Stephen Schwartz's son), but closed after a few months. Speaking of numbers that didn t add up—the final annual report for Livent, by now a publicly traded company once again, appeared to be a candidate for the Governor General's Award for Fiction. After handing control of the company to Hollywood mogul Michael Ovitz and financier Roy Furman, Drabinsky was suspended in August 1998 when the new management discovered "aggressive accounting" in the company's books. The Ontario Securities Commission ordered an investigation. Somebody hadn't learned Reid Shelton's lesson about "minding the store." The Toronto production of Phantom of the Opera closed on October 31,1999, after 4,179 performances. There were concerns that Livent's demise would endanger Toronto's position as the English-speaking world's third theatre centre. But although they were responsible for some 25% of North America's live theatre takings, most of the company's business was focused south of thjf border, and the vast majority of the artists employed (even in small roles) were American. Besides, as Drabinsky himself admits in his memoirs, Toronto's position as a theatre centre predated Livent. Ultimately, most of the assets were taken over by U.S. media giant Clear Channel. (With delicknis irony they leased the Pantages—now renamed the Canon in a sponsorship deal—-to the Mirvishes.) What Toronto did lose was the "buzz" of excitement that Drabinsky created. That it may have been the wrong "buzz"—the Emperor's new clothes—is another matter. Livent encouraged a lot of talk about Toronto as a theatre centre, when, In fact, their creative decisions were being made in New York. For this Drabinsky is unrepentant. "Do [his critics] know how many Canadian actors Fve employed?" he wrote in his 1995 autobiography, Closer to the Sim. "Do they know, or care, how many other jobs IVe brought to the Canadian theatre, how many musicians, costumers, stage hands, and on and on I have employed over the years?" What he does not say is that even American touring companies have to employ Canadian stagehands and musicians. To him, the cultural nationalists were "beneatH contempt."5
ACT TWO
225
BRORDNHY RORTH
OOP 660
In the mid-1990s, Canadian musical theatre reached another staging post on its road to maturity. Although the Boublil/Schonberg Martin Guerre grabbed more headlines in its beleaguered London run, Leslie Arden's House of Martin Guerre preceded it by several years. Inspired by the true story of a soldier who returns from war a different man—literally—it was first workshopped under the direction of Duncan Mclntosh by the now-defunct Theatre Plus in the Jane Mallett Theatre, where it won a Dora Award for best new musical in 1993. Arden told me, "If the process happens correctly—which almost never happens in Canada— you have a workshop where you make sure the story is being told properly, but it's a small, inexpensive workshop. Then you slowly add more elements so that you have a long process of development. You don t just go straight to some big production workshop where it's just too expensive. And there are too many people and the story's not told properly and it's not working, but it's too late because you've already spent $40,000 on it and you've got to get it up. I think Martin Guerre did well because it accidentally went through the proper process... I was commissioned to write it, but it was way too fast—something like nine months to write the whole thing. But then Theatre Plus ran out of money, so I had another year to fix. Then they ran out of money again, and something that should be done with twenty-six people and an orchestra ended up going up with seventeen people, too little rehearsal time and a keyboard off in the wings, so of course it didn't work, but it was a good workshop. I got to see what was working and what wasn't." From there, it was picked up for development (in a rare show of support for Canadian talent) by Livent. "They were getting flack from the press about not ever doing anything Canadian," says Arden. (Drabinsky loathed what he called the "shopworn, leftover cultural nationalism"6 of Toronto's alternate theatres.) They had chosen six shows to workshop. Five were by American writers, including Marvin Hamlisch's The Sweet Smell of Success and The Seussical by the Ragtime team of Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flarity. "They told me before they started the workshop that they weren't the slightest bit interested in me or my show," says Arden. "We had a meet and greet on the first day—the place was filled—and I was introduced as 'The Canadian Imperative!'"They gave it a two-week workshop, after which they picked up a one year option, but ultimately Arden and Livent could not agree on the show's direction. It was then picked up for another workshop at the Goodman Theatre (in Chicago), where she was urged to bring in another writer, Anna Theresa Cascio, to tighten the book. Then it was presented in the summer of 1996, directed by David Petrarca. "We had six weeks of rehearsal with
nine previews, with a rehearsal chunk in the middle of the previews." USA Today called Arden "a major talent who is still developing a distinctive voice." Variety said Martin Guerre was "so fresh, so resoundingly complete and rewarding, that there is talk her first major show may yet land on Broadway "The Chicago Sun-Times praised its "tautly beautiful and emotionally fiery score."The Tribune deemed it "funny, moving and enlightening. "It won a Jefferson Award for Best Musical Production. Now it was ready to come home. This version returned to Toronto's Canadian Stage in October 1997 in a $1.5 million production, again directed by Petrarca. "It was finally right," says Arden. Karen Bell wrote in Performing Arts in Canada, "As a play, Martin Guerre succeeds on several levels—it is a compelling love story filled with yearning and romantic ideals; it is a historical piece, replete with exotic medieval detail; it is also a simple allegory for the difficulty of finding one's way in a swiftly changing world."7 The Toronto Suns John Colbourne wrote, "As a stage play, it tells us more than it shows us, both in terms of character development and the romance at the heart of the story... In 1993, Arden s work was hailed for its promise, and it has lost none of that promise in the intervening time. What it has lost is a charming simplicity that made it stand out from the pack."8 Other reviews were more positive; the Star praised "Arden's beautifully crafted score." Without a major commercial success, how does Leslie Arden support herself? "Over the years, I've taught, vocal coached, music directed, directed, accompanied and performed—not necessarily just to stay solvent, but because I believe that all these other activities makes one a better writer." As of this writing^ Arden has commissions from CanStage, the National Arts Centre, The Bushnell In Connecticut, as Wfll as film scores and choral works. "Ewa though* at this point in my;£a$*fpfHont need to teach or perform or direct to piy the^BUb, I iatei|<| td keep doing so, if only to be arouiidfi^tagi hreatMfig human Being! from time to time. A writer can become d^bilitatmgly isolated if htVuQt careful, and this rarely makes a good writer/; With a cast of 26 and a t^flve-piece oidbestm* M&fiin Gygom was a very big show for a Cant^uoi regional theatre—and to enfcpaiaging sign. If only a Canadian cdmnBt^ifeial producer had ttM^ferred it. Did they fomble th&bafra^n? Actress Julain Molnar, who played the ing role of Bertrande* told l$OW*s Glenn Sutni, ^1 thi^feW^r/f^ Guerre gave the community some confidence in terms of whSat Was possible and what we could do."9 MartinGuerre heralded what I believe to be one of the most positive trends since the establishment of the Charlottetown
lei we
22?
BHOHDHRY NORTH
228
Festival. Canadian Stage later commissioned three more new Canadian musicals, all of which were serious attempts to move the genre forward. In 1998, the Mirvishes also took their first tentative step toward producing an original Canadian musical. They chose the Gooderham & Worts building in the historic Distillery District of Toronto (an area known earlier as Corktown where Irish immigrants settled in the 1830s) to announce their $3 million production of The Needfire in March 1998. According to director/choreographer Kelly Robinson, "The producer's brief was, 'Kelly, we have a lot of really talented Celtic performers in this country. What do you think we can do with them?' "10 Playwright Tom Lackey was engaged to come up with a loose story of self-discovery for the character of John Michael, played by Denny Doherty, one-time lead singer of the Mamas and the Papas. The title, The Needfire, refers to the mother of all hearths in Celtic tradition, and thereby to the keeping of the flame. "I don't tell a story as such," Doherty told the Globe andMaih Deidre Kelly. "My association is with an old poet who represents that whole Celtic attitude of hobbits and trolls and other things that haunt my existence."11 "[John Michael] has the responsibility of having to remember the past, of having a tradition, of having a horde of a community's life stored up inside him, and knowing that he has to transmit, but how?"12 says Lackey. The Needfire drew on dancers, singers and musicians from Atlantic Canada and the Ottawa Valley. Robinson told the Stars Mitch Potter that "what you saw Dan Stacey do in the rehearsal hall today is as Canadian as it gets, dance that is utterly Ottawa Valley, yet it has other overtones from the streets of New York to the streets of Dublin."13 This was distinctly Canadian Celtic, telling stories of those who left potato famine and Highland Clearances behind for a life in the new world, only to settle in some of the most impoverished parts of the country, brought home by Murray MacLachlan's "No Change in Me," sung by Doherty. With a company of sixty, The Needfire began previews at the Princess of Wales on June 12,1998, and opened on June 16. "Needfire rocks with irresistible energy," said the Globe and Mail. "A sure-footed Canadian triumph," said the Ottawa Citizen. "The only choice is to flee or joyfully surrender," said Macleans. A compilation CD of songs from the show—including Rick Fox's specially written opening, "A Year Goes Past "was released. But although it had a slight storyline, Needfire was not a book musical in the true sense. Neither did it ignite the kind of phenomenon that Riverdance did. After its scheduled closing of July 12, the show was revived the
following year at the Royal Alex, and the Mirvishes tried to put together a national tour, but according to Rick Fox, "the logistics of touring a show with some 70-odd performers proved daunting." The dancers put away their kilts, and it was left to composer Charles Cozens to take another stab at merging the traditions of Canadian Celtic with the Broadway musical, with Swingstep. Swingstep was originally presented at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton in June 1999, with a book by Ted Swindley and directed by Chase Senge, and featuring award-winning step-dancer Stephanie Cadman. It transferred to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Then, playwright Ted Dykstra (Two Pianos, Four Hands) was brought in to write a new book with lyrics by Steven MayofF. It opened October 12,1999, at Toronto's Ford Centre. "It didn't work out and the show was panned by the critics," says Cozens. The Toronto Suns John Colbourne thought, "there is not a single moment of honest emotion in this entire 150 minute script—a fault which one's ear will quickly tell you is the result of the writing, not the direction or acting. Western Union wouldn't deliver some of these lines."It ran for three months. So the producers decided to try again, with a new creative team. Michael McLellan wrote a new script, and Anne Allan, a Scot who was about to take over the Charlottetown Festival, came on board as director/choreographer. This time, Cozens wrote his own lyrics. The new version opened in 2000 at the Elgin Theatre. "The show was re-reviewed to critical acclaim," says Cozens. But although it was nominated for a Dora for outstanding new musical, it closed after four weeks. In the summer of 1999, a very high camp spoof called The Drowsy Chaperone opened at the 181~$&at George IgnatiefF Theatre as a part of the Toronto Fringe Festival* One night John Karastamatis, director of communications for Mirvi^|^r<^i3ictio^ waited in line fo^iie'df the half dozen sold-out performaii^es^f^QWag ffcn to bN^jp^ffa producer. With Mirvish backing andmiM%etiof $12Q,0dG»he Ix^Qfidthe thirteenhander into Theatre Passe M^^M^^^^iit^^^e^ iif^^qpanded version (the original was only 4f ra&tttes lopg) on No¥€jp8fe?r 24 for a limited engagement, which once^g^i^^ky sold out. then lite lavi picked it up, expanding it c$$t further for a mil at A& Wintlr 0arden in 2001. Th$ book was by Toronto Second City ^rti^ vte^or,Bd[?;; Martin-and-fi|i|^ker Don McKellar (M^mn Gm^^w^^d'vi McKellar on music^i lit titft: House during his umvOTtfy diy$),; with music by Greg Morrison and lyrics by Li$a Lambert who also played the title role. In 2003^ it was optioned by producers Roy Miller and Paul Mack, who presented a showcase of it at the National Alliance for
flCIIi
229
BBDDDNIIV NORTH
230
Musical Theatre's Festival of New Musicals in New York in 2004. (Among the cast was Broadway veteran Christine Ebersole.) Another ambitious work making the rounds was Robert George Asseltine's Frankenstein—Do You Dream?, presented in a concert version in November 2003 with a full orchestra at Hamilton Place, and starring Michael Burgess as Dr. Frankenstein and Theodore Baerg as his creation. The Hamilton Spectator declared it a "monster hit," saying "What Asseltine has done in Frankenstein—Do You Dream? is take the essence of [Mary] Shelley's story and transform it into soaring love ballads, dramatic contrapuntal duets and stirring dramatic choruses, creating a whole world of provocative drama."14 In their Berkeley Street second stage, CanStage presented Outrageous, based on the Canadian film of the same name, which in turn was based on a short story by Margaret Gibson about the friendship between a schizophrenic woman and a female impersonator. The book and lyrics were by Brad Fraser, author of Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, and the music was by Joey Miller. Fraser had been developing this project for a decade. The critical reaction was mixed; Variety's Robert Crew said it was "unfocused and wildly unbalanced,"15 while NOW complained that "Fraser crowds the book with so many plot points, half-developed characters and aborted ideas that we're left with a loud, confusing mess of a show."16 But Eye found it "funny, camp and really gay."17 At the Bluma Appel Theatre, CanStage presented Larry s Party, based on the late Carol Shields' 1997 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the life lessons of a Winnipeg designer of mazes celebrating his fiftieth birthday and coming to terms with the people in his life—including two exwives and a son. It starred Brent Carver, was directed by Robin Phillips, and had a book and lyrics by Richard Ouzounian and music by Marek Norman. On paper, it looked like a dream team. Norman and Ouzounian had the inspiration for adapting the novel at the same time, coincidentally, as CanStage's Martin Bragg was considering commissioning a stage version. Shields immediately agreed to the musicalization. While rehearsing Emily at the Charlottetown Festival, Ouzounian sketched out the lyric for "Little Lost Lives,"a haunting, melancholy disclosure of a young widow's sense of the passage of time, sung in the show by Marek's wife, Barbara Barsky, who played Larry's girlfriend Charlotte. The show broke CanStage's box office records before moving to the National Arts Centre and the Manitoba Theatre Centre. The critical reaction was mixed. Everybody praised Carver's performance, but NOWs
Glenn Sumi reckoned that "the key problem is that Ouzounian and Norman haven't figured out how to spotlight a figure who sees himself in the shadows." However, Time Magazines Carl Mollen called it "not a gala banquet but more of a quiet savoury meal at home... The score is at its best at the opening and in the second act. The work starts strong with a song by Larry, Tieces of My Life/which provides not only a dramatic motive for the play, but also a musical figure that recurs throughout the work... Early in the novel, Larry muses that 'language may not yet have evolved to the point where it represents the world fully/ He might have added that music can take up where language leaves off, which is ultimately the justification for writing a musical."18 Richard and Marek hope some day to have another crack at it. In 2000, CanStage hosted Burning Passions Theatre's production of Fireweeds: Women of the Yukon, an intimate musical by Cathy Elliott. Eyes Joanne Huffa called it "an ass-kickin,' tear-jerkin/ history-tellin satisfying episodic musical... Fireweeds succeeds where many other musicals fail—in the songs."19 NOfV's Jon Kaplan was less enthusiastic about the show, although he praised Julain Molnar, "Always warm and engaging, Molnar imbues the wan material with soul."20 More recently, CanStage has presented Pelagie, with book and lyrics by Vincent de Tourdonnet and music by Allen Cole, based on Antonine Moillet's 1979 novel about an Acadian family's return to Nova Scotia following their 1755 expulsion by the British army. "We wanted to tell a story of epic proportion that would be a part of Canadian history,"21 composer Cole told the Stars Richard Ouzounian. Librettist Vincent de Tourdonnet, who was born in BC but is of French ancestry, met Acadian author Antonine Maillet while in Montreal working on a musical about Joan of Arc in 1996. Maillet's 1979 novel, Pelagie-la-Charette, told the story of one family's journey froffl Louisiana to their home in Nova Scotia* (When she became the first nonFrench citizen to win the Krk Cfeitcourt> she exclaimed^ fll have avenged my ancestors.") De Tourdonnet teamed up with Allen Cole, with whom he had already written a smaller $h0w called Strange Medicine. Cole's previous works also include Zb£Hflftow Veil with book by Glen Caims and lyrics by James Fagaii iFtif, and AnytMng*Jfaat M$ve$, with book by Ann-Marie Ma£doiiald? both staged at the Factory Theatre* Cole describe^ his score as "so not Broadway** He maintained earlier, "There's an original voice to Canadian musicals*.* It's somewhere between the Broadway musical and the more European influence."22 CanStage artistic producer Martin Bragg told Ouzounian, "I think it's one of the most important shows in the history of Canadian theatre."
HCTJKQ
231
With a cast of eighteen plus seven musicians, it was also a significant risk. Acknowledging the process that has occurred during the past decade, Cole told Eye magazine, "CanStage is really quite a musical theatre machine right now/'23 Pelagic received its world premiere at the Bluma Appel Theatre on April 8, 2004. Ray Conologue of the Globe and Mail praised its "high soaring melodies" and said, "there wasn't a dry eye in the house." But Richard Ouzounian of the Star said it was "earnest and worthy, but disappointingly lacking in magic." In 2003, Tarragon Theatre got in on the act with Little Mercys First Murder, a "musical noire," which took its inspiration from the 1940s crime photographs of Weegee (a pseudonym for Usher (later Arthur) Fellig, a famous crime photographer of the 1940s). The book and lyrics were by Morwyn Brebner and the music by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli, who had provided an incidental score for The Madras House at the Shaw Festival a couple of years earlier. Eye Weekly's Conrad McCallum wrote that Turvey and Sportelli "deliver a score that lives up to the whirlwind plot and its zany characters."24 It was nominated for ten Doras, of which it won seven, including Best Musical. Whether these shows indicate an ongoing and serious commitment by CanStage to indigenous Canadian musical theatre remains to be seen, but the omens appear to be promising. In January 2005, Jim Betts was appointed artistic director of ScriptLab in Toronto for a three-year period, with a mandate to develop new Canadian musicals.
BIOHIOITH
9Q9 uGu
Ill Elm mo lid: THE him SCREOM OF HIECIVILIZED SET ccording to Voltaire, "Anything too stupid to be said is sung." (But he also said, "a witty saying proves nothing.") It's a cliche bandied about by disc jockeys to say that music is the "soundtrack of your life," but we do tend to associate music with the turning points in our experience. Lovers have theme songs. Epiphanies are accompanied by Beethoven's Rfth Symphony (and impending doom by the FBI theme). There is something instinctive about the link between music and drama. Ian Bradley, a lecturer in Theology at St. Andrews University in Scotland writes, "Musicals have a powerful representative role. They manifestly express for many people emotions and feelings which are otherwise inchoate or bottled up. This is why songs from shows are increasingly being requested at funerals and weddings."1 John Gray says that Canadian musicals should be written in a form that comes out of this country, and that the more we are in touch with "that stage, those actors," the more we are in touch with the form, which he maintains is to be found in the towns and villages. "You have to extrapolate more sophisticated versions of those." In order to understand how musical theatre fits in to our culture, let s strip away the culturally relative conventions, and examine the very b^sic reasons why we sing—and, in turn, why a character would burst into song on stage. The noted Indian classical musician Hazrat Inayat Khan says that "the human body was made in tone and rhythm."2 The effectiveness of popular music demonstrates that within us is an unconscious desire to sing—an urge that most of us are (perhaps thanldfeJfy) too inhibited to follow through 'l^tfl* Musical theatre is more than just aform,-Jt is, ill efec^ a language with vocabulary and gramiiiai;(One thing' tkat dtwtt£& fascinated me about the film Close Encounj^r^ ®fthe TMni Kind was ;jj|te notion that music could be a language.) A major jpait g>(learaing^^; to discover a Canadian form that is evocalli^fc^ understanding of what I call the psychology of breaMllg illtd;|^g.
A
Musics says witit;W<>l^' c^tffc^ttatfs why film, scores' ai£ so .dSectivi^ BeriiaKi ^i^^^^^^-^^^A mmj of Alfred; Hitchcock's ffito^^i^ derstood the power of uteesolwl chords to build tensioti He could decide whether a character moved gracefully or Stumbled, just through his music. Still, because in so-called real Bfe we shy away from singing our emotions, musicals must be tackled in a delicate way.
ACT TWO
233
IHOBDRHYIOHTH
234
Tom Stoppard's play Doggs Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth has some interesting lessons for musical theatre. It concerns an underground theatre presenting Shakespeare in Prague under Communist rule, in which the more subversive elements had to be delivered cryptically. In its opening scenes, the audience are introduced to this code, and given the key to understand the rest of the play. Similarly in a musical, the audience are taught, in the opening number, the "cribs" through which to understand how the show will work, and what to expect. In some cases, rewriting an opening number can change how an audience receives an entire show. Every book musical has to confront afresh the problem of making the audience accept that a character will break into song. The poet W. H. Auden said that "No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing."3 Yet, some of the best show songs involve people thinking things through before they make a decision—"Soliloquy" from Carousel, or "Reviewing the Situation" from Oliver! Mavor Moore argues that people sing, not only when they are emotionally charged, but "they also do it to while away the time (marching, in a car, at rhythmical work—Anvil Chorus/e.g.—to summon memory, to 'whistle in the dark' and to put babies to sleep)." But let's differentiate between presentational pieces—i.e., where the character is literally supposed to be singing a pre-existing song—and integrated songs that express character and advance plot. In John Gray's Rock and Roll, there are songs that are played and sung by the fictional rock band "The Monarchs," as well as character numbers that are accompanied by pit musicians. It is often said that in the integrated post-Oklahoma! musicals, the songs advance the plot. In fact, this is seldom really true. They may develop character, for example, the soliloquy in Carousel shows Billy resolving to carry out a robbery in order to support his unborn child, but it does not show the robbery itself. Songs are often about persuasion—in Anne of Green Gables, Matthew uses "Humble Pie" to persuade Anne to apologize to Rachel Lynde, and in "Gee, I'm Glad I'm No One Else But Me" Anne is (perhaps unconsciously) selling Matthew on herself. Songs in musicals can very effectively reveal the inner workings of a character's mind; they are less effective at revealing data, or the actual mechanics of action. I have argued, not without some resistance, that a musical is potentially more real than a straight drama. My defence was that a non-musical (assuming there is no narrator) is, by its nature, objective in the sense that the audience acts as a third person, witnessing the scene. But add music and lyrics and we are hearing not only what the character is
saying, but also what he/she is thinking privately, emotions that are not necessarily expressed in the text (or even the subtext). I also accepted that music is a presentational device for communicating with the audience and is not literal. In most cases, we are not expected to imagine that one character is really singing to the other, any more than that they are literally standing on a stage. The same principle applies to lyrics—we don t imagine that this character is really making up clever rhymes on the spot. (This is one of the reasons why rhymes must be accurate, no matter how poor the character s command of the language may be, in the same sense that a scene must be well-structured, even if the character is directionless.) Rhyming is like symmetry. It's when something is asymmetrical that our attention is called. Objectivity is, in drama, overrated. Have you ever set up a stationary video camera in a room full of strangers, then watched the tape? Without prior knowledge of the subjects, it is pretty uninvolving. Theatre provides a number of remedies to this, all of which are less "realistic" but more "real." One is the soliloquy. Another, closely related, is the song. Canadian songwriting since the early 1960s has been based around the singer-songwriter, an ethos that, at first glance, seems hard to base a musical theatre tradition around. But what is a singer-songwriter but a character moved to express emotion through singing? The difference is that when Gordon Lightfoot sings "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," he is relating a story after the fact. In a musical drama, it would be in first person plural, present tense. The characters would exist in the moment and have a subtext to play. In 1991, in conjunction with actor and director Roy Cameron, I developed this theory to the point that I proposed a summer workshop to Theatre Ontario entitled "The Psychology of Breaking Into Song." (Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, this was not a million miles away from the LAB game that Kevin Hicks described in the chapter "The Virtuosity of Opera with the Vitality of Broadway.") For various reasons, the workshop was never presented, but the following is an excerpt from our brief outline: The purpose of "The Psydiology of Breaking into Song" is to help the advanced musical theatre performer to understand how music fits into his/her character. Musicals present a subjective reality which will be explored through three basic steps: Discovery, Testing and Pattern Setting. We will draw on the actor's own experience to provide an arsenal of methods in order to constantly explore the parallels to one's own life. The course will include text explorations,
(jdlffl)
235
playing scenes for opposite emotions, game playing, clown work, and especially focusing on sense memory and emotional recall.4
BUDiY IRRTK
23G
I may just have invented the concept of "musical comedy psychobabble," but it all comes down to being truthful. The Grand Finale experience made me realize that everything I ever needed to know about dramatic writing I learned from watching Star Trek. At one point in the series, Jimmy Doohan (as Scotty) operated the transporter control in his usual way, but a new director asked him to do something different. Jimmy explained to him that he "canna do it, sir"—that wasn't how the transporter worked. "What difference does it make?" said the director. "It's only make-believe." But that's just the point—if you want the audience to believe something, you have to understand and accept the "internal logic" yourself. Perhaps its no coincidence that one of the most successful directors of film musicals, Robert Wise (West Side Story, The Sound of Music) had a background in science fiction (The Day The Earth Stood Stilt). Once you have established and accepted this "reality," then—as with spoken language—vocabulary is added. If your character is a miner from Northern Ontario, what musical language would he "speak"? Canada's most developed musical expression comes in the form of the folkderived singer-songwriter tradition of Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and others. But in these, it is the thoughts of the artists being expressed, not of characters. How do we find a distinct and workable musical drama that reflects our own world view and doesn't sound like a poor imitation of Broadway and London? By listening to our own voices, those that are buried deep within us and struggling to get out. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, but to rediscover for ourselves how the wheel was invented (and one that's adapted to our own terrain). Once we accept that the concept of breaking into song is both real and natural, then we have to examine the logistics of making it work on stage. There is nothing worse than having the audience roll their eyes and think, "oh no, not another song..." When Sir Trevor Nunn directed Oklahoma! at London's Royal National Theatre, for the first two weeks of rehearsals, the actors didn't sing, but spoke the lyrics as if they were dialogue, allowing them to explore all the nuances of the words before adding music. I decided to ask several leading Canadian musical theatre writers and directors how they approach this problem. Charles Cozens, composer of Swing Step says, "A song should be prefaced by a series of thoughts and statements (and possibly actions) which set up an emotional foundation."Ideally, there should be such an expectation of music that the audience would feel cheated if no song came.
Joey Miller explains, "The first thing I do as a lyricist is look at the scene and the characters in it and see where the scene is heading, i.e. who has earned the right to sing and whose emotions are stronger. I find ending a scene with a song far more effective, but then again I question if there should be any rules at all. Each situation is different. Sometimes it may be just as effective if one scene ends with a song but is really the beginning of the next scene, a transition that moves the story along. I do know that my character's emotions are too large to be spoken and must be sung." Greg Peterson, head of the Music Theatre Performance program at Sheridan College says, "When the emotions/desires cannot be contained by mere dialogue, the character will express those emotions through song. When a song simply cannot contain the emotional heights that a character needs to express, he/she then expresses that emotion through dance." (In Leonard Bernstein's one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti, this principal is applied in reverse, to devastating effect; all dialogue is sung until the end of the final scene, in which the protagonists are so emotionally drained that they resort to speaking.) Cozens continues, "If we define a song as a lyrical message encrypted in a musical fashion, the purpose of that song then is to enhance and develop what has already been germinated in the emotional foundation. And, in the case of a story-driven song, the lyrical message becomes one with character and plot development." Mavor Moore adds that "speech and song are neither opposite nor the only two means of verbal communication. Consider the shout, the growl, the laugh, grunt, the moan, the whine, the sob. (Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 was once described as 'one long magnificently orchestrated sob'). In song, words and music supposedly unite, but there are songs where the words don't matter and songs where the music is little more than a mnemonic, fixing the words in the mind by rhythm and a melodic phrase. Songs have been written using the single word 'ah!' and rap doesn't even require a melody. Then there's a wealth of gradation between words and vocal music, including various kinds of poetry (the French usually sing it) and sung speech. I know of no more emotionally
Mavor Moore at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, May 17,1968. He was the general director for the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts, Toronto's Centennial Project. Initiated in 1967, the Centre opened in 1970. Courtesy of the Clara Thomas Archives, York University, Toronto Telegram Photograph Collection, ASCNeg, #111.
ICTji
237
intense line in the theatre than the dying Lear's 1 pray you, undo this button.'To musicalize it would be to kill its devastating simplicity." One of the hardest things for a lyricist to do is to write lyrics that sound conversational (as opposed to poetic). To do this, the phrasing and metre of the music and lyrics must exactly match. It is the cornerstone of modern musical theatre writing, because it helps the audience to accept the reality of a character singing. Some people have suggested that I may have achieved this in a song from my musical Perfect Timing: And I like your hair Someone give you all those clothes? Those are quite a pair Like the ones my mother sews They're not really bad They're just sort of quaint and bizarre5
IIOIOMIYIIOIITI
238
Cozens says, "The exact point in a story where a song should start is where or when a writer/composer creates in the mind of the spectator a need for an explanation, or similarly, when the spectator asks for an explanation." He cites, as an example, the scene in The King and /which precedes the song "I Have Dreamed"—"This little bit of dialogue creates a wonderful emotional foundation. It creates a need for emotional satisfaction. It demands the following explanation. When Lun Tha 'pictures it a million times,' the spectator subconsciously asks, 1 wonder what Lun Tha is seeing,' As the lyric unfolds, we experience with Lun Tha what he is seeing in his imagination and feeling in his mind—his deepest love for Tuptim. As the song unfolds, Tuptim is swept up in his desire. She sings to him, and it ends with them singing together as one. Clearly, the emotional foundation (preface), the need for an explanation (link between the preface and song) and emotional release (song) are perhaps the three most important considerations when one tries to find that magical starting point for song." Joey Miller continues, "When I write the lyrics first, I choose the emotional "thoughts and feelings' going through that character's mind and heart at the moment. The lyrics might not have the same impact on paper without the music, but its emotional intent [has] to be strong and powerful. The moment must ring true. When a character 'bursts into song,'it is really a moment of truth. It can be *a big lie'in that character's mind, but the moment must be truthful for the audience. We should be able to see through the lie. Music will help to create that irony... The trick is clarity. Never confuse the audience."
Jim Betts, another Lehman Engel pupil, achieved his greatest success by breaking the mould. "My approach changes depending on the particular show that I'm writing," he says. "In a traditional kind of show like The Shooting of Dan McGrew, I probably wrote songs in the Frank Loesser 'sing when you cant speak any more' vein... But in a show like Co/ours in the Storm, there are virtually no songs that operate in a traditional musical theatre way. Most of the songs are mood pieces based on actual paintings. Except in one case, songs aren't sung to the other characters. I actually think of Colours as a 'play with songs/ and I set out to do something unconventional. Ironically, it is my most successful and most produced show." It all comes down to what John Gray says about "that space, that theatre, that stage, those actors."! remember the English composer Vivian Ellis saying to learn the rules, then forget them. The more we are in touch with the immediate circumstances of our drama, the more distinct it will be.
Jim Betts is currently the artistic director of ScriptLab, a Toronto theatre company dedicated to the development of both new and "vintage" Canadian musicals. Courtesy of Jim Betts.
Rerun
239
3S.lmtaitaisliES[EtelisE":
35. "WITH GLOWING HEARTS WE SEE THE RISE": THE CANADIAN IDENTITY
.O. Hogtown. Toronto the Good. New York as if it had been built by the Swiss. These are some of the names our commercial capital has been called, and none of them were compliments. One thing I admire about New York is that it knows what it is, and isn't shy about proclaiming itself to the world. Vibrancy comes from confidence—to be willing to go for it, to aim for the big brass ring. Toronto has the ingredients—it just needs to be shaken and stirred. But it is shocking that Toronto, an international centre for theatre, film, television and music, has no apparent musical identity to speak of. Is the Canadian songbird really a parrot? The percentage of Torontonians who are of foreign birth is twice that of New York. Is it possible that one of the world's most cosmopolitan cities really is that bland? Of course not. But artists have to sell their wares. Producers and financiers shake their heads at anything they think wont sell "down south."Toronto has taken the path of least resistance and set itself up as an "out-of-town tryout" city for Broadway, even though Broadway has been in decline for years. Therefore, many of the shows that play there—even by Canadian writers—are geared to New York audiences rather than our own. For good or ill, the form that a musical takes is influenced by the business circumstances under which it has been incubated. During the golden age of Broadway, a producer would option a book or a play, then hire a writer to adapt a libretto, then audition several composer/lyricist teams to write the score. (Cy Colemans score for Gypsy was one of several turned down in favour of Jule Styne's.) Thus, the producer shaped the form in at least two ways—Broadway was dominated by adaptations, which are easier to market commercially, and shows were generally written by separate writers, composers and lyricists. Livent excepted, this has seldom been the case in Canada. Writers have usually brought their ready-made works to a producer on spec. Thus, a higher percentage of Canadian musicals have had single authors such as Leslie Arden, Mavor Moore, Jim Betts or John Gray. Whether this is a strength or a weakness depends on the individual. It's always hard for an author to be objective, but then I believe that a show like Noel Coward's Bittersweet has a quality that only a single writer's vision could bring. (Why is it okay for a playwright to direct his own play, but not for a composer-lyricist
T
6HIVliIH
240
to do his own book? When I said this to John Sparks, who runs the Los Angeles Lehman Engel Workshop, he said, "Sure. Everybody's allowed to commit suicide.") What gives music a national identity? Dr. Aniruddh Patel of the Neuroscience Institute in San Diego says that music follows the rhythms and pitch of speech. "The music differs in just the same way as the languages," he says. "Composers, like every other person in their culture, learn the patterns of their language and it's latent in their minds, so when they compose, they have those patterns to draw on."11 believe that this is especially applicable to musical theatre, where music and lyrics imitate the rhythms of speech to a greater degree than in contemporary popular music. There is still a notion that to wax romantic about our largest city is somehow ridiculous. This is, after all, a city with so little sense of posterity and aesthetics that it came within a hair's breadth of bulldozing old Fort York in order to build the Gardiner Expressway. Many Canadians love to go on about how awful Toronto is, even although a number of surveys have found it to be one of the least awful cities on the planet. But the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the rural English all hate London, and that never stopped the nightingales from singing in Berkeley Square. Unlike Vancouver, Toronto has little scenic splendour, but neither has New York. "I loved Toronto even before Toronto became great," says actor James Doohan. Author Richard Gwynn writes, "Toronto, although many Canadians, being Canadians, would rather not admit it, is the urban miracle of North America. It is at one and the same time dynamic and competitive and yet is civilized and sophisticated."2 Surely there must be drama in that! I believe that Canadians woilid 4p well to learn and harness tfcte value of the icon. What is a Canadimi^-ife^il? The obvious oi^'tfa^/
as they ring their bells. There's music and rhythrn in that But, shockingly, current tourism promotiori^ aim$d at rfAe;ll^i%fdM market have made scant reference to Toronto's tEeape^ sci^S^dfing instead on the CN Tower and the Rogers Centre. A jlagM tells the viewer, "You and
(joy^j
241
moufflYionH
242
I were meant to fly." Perhaps their copywriters should spend less time inhaling helium and actually tell visitors what there is to do there. Cities like Toronto are unique in North America in their civility and orderliness. Gwynn says, "Canadian cities today are confederations of communities rather than urban agglomerations. There is nothing like them—really—in the United States... To be nice urban North Americans is almost a contradiction in terms, since North American cities are shaped, and constantly being reshaped, by a relentless, ruthless imperative."3 Yet how can a city be "great" and not be a nice place to live? But cities don't write songs, people do. It doesn't matter how creative the artists are, if the impresarios, the financiers and the audiences wont look at something until they've read about it in the New York Times. (I know, because only after my musical A Little Princess got a good writeup in the Times did anybody in Canada take any interest.) Ironically, the result is that indigenous work remains in this "alternate" ghetto of the "counter-culture," and seldom catches the public's imagination. John Grays work is often held up as an example of "indigenous" Canadian musical theatre. But is it? Billy Bishop is English Music Hall cum Berlin Cabaret. Rock and Roll is rockabilly. Don Messers Jubilee is ScotsIrish. It is no more—or less—Canadian in form than Anne of Green Gables. On the other hand, Anne may follow the Hammerstein model, but its attitude is certainly not New York. Whereas great Broadway songwriters were overwhelmingly Jewish—Cole Porter and Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones being the exceptions—Canada, like Britain, leaned more toward Anglo-Saxon musical traditions, including those of English choral music. (Whereas English church music uses choirs and four-part harmony, Jewish liturgical music is written for a solo cantor.) There is also a strong Celtic and English folk music tradition. "I think Norman [Campbell]'s work and mine bear some relationship because of their periods," says Mavor Moore. "Norman and I shared a common background—although I grew up in Toronto and he grew up in Vancouver—common sort-of musical influences of the period which definitely were both British and American. I saw American musicals [in Toronto], he saw them done at Theatre Under the Stars. We both were early Gilbert and Sullivan fans and of the Viennese school and of Offenbach, and the Viennese school in early America, which was Victor Herbert... [Anne] simply does not have the hard edge that Broadway absolutely requires. It's gentle, it's flowing. There is, for instance, in all of Anne of Green Gables, scarcely anything in a minor key." Some people assume that if a musical uses a chorus and an orchestra, then its form is American, but that practice didn't start with Broadway
and it wont end there. Then again, I'm more interested in content than in form. What makes a musical definably Canadian? I am wary of this question, for it suggests a kind of political correctness, a sort of cultural fascism. I only know when a show rings true (or when it does not). Atlantic Canada has retained its Celtic-once-removed heritage, kept alive by the likes of the Rankin Family and Rita MacNeil. Halifax composer Scott MacMillans oratorio, A Celtic Mass for the Sea, has an very theatrical sound to it. Vancouver projects a funky, folky feel, influenced by its physical environment and channelled through everyone from Ann Mortifee to Pied Pear and the West Side Feet Warmers. But Toronto remains harder to define, despite the best efforts of the late Hagood Hardy and Moe Koffman, and of Rob McConnell. Most Canadians live in cities, yet how do you sound urban without sounding like New York? When I think of Toronto, I think of jazz. Of Moe Koffman, Guido Basso and Rob McConnell. My very first collaborator, the late Mark Telford used to claim that there was such a thing as a CBC sound. He could never quite put his finger on it, but I think that it may have been the Boss Brass. In contrast, the National Film Board educational shorts that I grew up on, for which a shoestring budget would have been lavish, were usually accompanied by nothing but a harp or guitar and a flute. Canadian music since the 1960s has largely been a world of singersongwriters. Nevertheless, the folk balladeer has a long tradition of storytelling. George Ryga and Ann Mortifee used this in The Ecstasy ofRitaJoe, but without the songs actually coming out of the characters' mouths. There is an earlier example of a song that has become a standard without the public becoming aware of its Canadian origins. In 1939, a 23-year-old Toronto woman named Ruth Lowe lost her husband following what was supposed to be a routine operation. She wits so distraught that she told her sktef^Ffl new smile again,** Afc$ i^tfiarsis, she wrote a song by that tide that was first pe|fdrmedby; the Percy Faith Orchestra on a CBC radk>:*s6fies called Ji$«& byPaitJ$»K recording of this performance was then passed on to-a --memlbefcrf the Tommy Dorsey band, whose young vocafilt Frank Sinatra recordM it the following year. It was Sinatras first -big hit»and captured the felings pf many women who feared for their^husbands who were then at waif The song was recently interpolated into tite maskal S%$ing$£$f* Although beaver actually wrote any stage musicals, there is one composer with whom every one in Canadian musical theatre ^should become familiar. The late Robert Famon was a former member oFIhe Happy Gang, and vocal arranger for Percy Faith. (The nearest Farnon came to musical theatre was co-orchestrating the Broadway production of Sigmund
DCTjl
243
BROHYIORTH
244
Romberg s The Girl in Pink Tights with Don Walker.) Although he was long based in Britain, he wrote many compositions on Canadian themes (including Canadian Impressions) and works for Oscar Peterson, among others. His 1948 instrumental hit, "Jumping Bean," is a standard. Tony Bennett once said, "The people of Canada should build a statue to Robert Farnon for his unparalleled and magnificent contribution to music this century."4 His admirers included Andre Previn, Henry Mancini and John Williams. He was given the Order of Canada in 1997, and although for the last 46 years of his life he lived on Guernsey, he remained intensely proud of his Canadian heritage. The music that defines a city is not usually contemporary. It comes out of the city's heritage. Toronto was so deeply buried in the vaults of the British Empire that it didn't begin to develop its cultural identity until recent times. (And New York and London have come up with relatively little in recent years that truly identifies them.) In 1980, David Warrack produced a hugely successful revue called Toronto^ Toronto by Charles Weir and Mark Shekter that tried to capture the city in song, poking fun at the dispossessed old Jews of Spadina and the snobs of the Bay Street Racquet Club. It even tried a jazzy, smoky paean to "Night Time Toronto."My belief, having lived in that city from 1983-91, is that its unique identity is there, under the surface. It's so familiar that we don't recognize it. (Perhaps the theme from the TV series King of Kensington is about as close as we've come to a distinctively Toronto song.) So why hasn't this distinctive identity emerged and prospered? Simple. It hasn't been allowed to. Of course, if Toronto's core is to be the Broadway of Canada, then it must borrow—or rather, steal—sounds from the rest of the country. After all, there was no "corn as high as an elephants eye"in midtown Manhattan. So bring on the Maritime reels and the folky jazz. Imagine Ann Mortifee accompanied by a Cape Breton fiddler and the Boss Brass. That's the sort of intriguing experiment Charles Cozens tried with Swingstep, the simple story of a New York jazz musician, burned out, coming to Cape Breton Island to rediscover his roots. (Think The Shipping News with tunes.) Celtic music is fused with big band—not so strange when you consider that Don Messer was unsuccessfully headhunted by Glen Miller. So, Canadians aren't really as dull and boring as Europeans think they are, eh? They're really exciting people, but there's a conspiracy to keep all this heroism hush-hush? Well, it can seem that way sometimes. All you need to do is look at some of the true stories that have /20/been told. The late Tom Kneebone (a New Zealand native) spent the last fifteen years of his life creating small-scale touring shows that celebrated the lives
of little-known Canadians. "It's the lesser known people that Fve touched on that resonate," he said. When I met him in the Toronto offices of Smile Theatre on October 29, 2003, less than three weeks before his untimely death, he told me of one of his recent cherished projects. "Have you ever heard of Lt. Col. Joseph Whiteside Boyle?" I shook my head. His eyes glowered as if to say "shame on you!" Then, in his inimitable style, he launched into a monologue that was a performance in itself. "He's the Lawrence of Arabia of this country! He was a confederation child. I found out about him one day when I was in a graveyard in Woodstock, Ontario. I saw this huge gravestone there and I looked at it. It said, *Lt. Col. Joseph Whiteside Boyle, King of the Klondike, Saviour of Romania! I went, 'Wha-atPF He ran away to sea when he was sixteen years old, and didnt come back for three years, but when he came back, he owned the clipper. I loved the man immediately. Married, two kids. When the Klondike burst, he was promoting bare knuckle boxing for the Sydney Slasher. Went to the Klondike. He was singing on the streets with a banjo, trying to make money. Within three months, he was one of the richest men in the world* Went to the Canadian government who would have nothing to do with Mm. They were terrified of MJ% because he knew that gold had to be What did he dl? He went to the Rdthschilds and got the moneyI Wodd War I broke out Went to England, 1917, and the Americans had just joined A$ war* He wai Mred by the Americans to go to Russia to sctttout their railway problems because the revolution happened, blah^blah-bMi* He sin^e-hi^Sedlyp^on the Tsar's train, which he stole-^got out of thexKfentilin the Romanian archives, the iL^mi^^j^wehii^ thirty biffion dollars worth of gold Went back to;Jp»ffltctott^koGw that if we lost Romania we lost the war. He then ...to have an affilkwtfe Marie of Romania* I haw tetters from her saying their hearts wtre to be buried together. It was the love of all time. Blah-blah-blah—goes back to England and dies* It took forty years to have his body reinterred and brought back here with foil military honours."
The Light in Winnie's Window: The War Bride Musical toured from January 18 to February 19,1995: ^f Day in Niagara: A Night at the Oban toured from November 15 to December 15,1993. Courtesy of the Smile Theatre Company.
flCIJffl
245
He pauses for breath. "Now, how do I write these shows? Do I have the budget to stage the First World War, the Russian Revolution? I don t think so. It has to come from one voice." Smile Theatre's shows are modest, to say the least, but their ideas are enormous. They tour to senior citizens homes and community centres with a minimum of fuss. But the ethos is intriguing. Kneebone, the immigrant, scratched the surface of the Canadian national character and found a vein of gold. If there is a common thread among Canadian musicals, it may be that they tend to be about mavericks, struggling against the grain to be heard over louder voices. Now, the next generation, if they do their homework, will have an opportunity to study Spring Thaw, Anne of Green Gables, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Paper Wheat, Michael Bawtree's Banff experiments and numerous other things, fusing them together. Or perhaps they will do something totally unexpected.
fiMDiYNora246
1 Hem iHiiWY: IDE Omni Cm RECORDING ne of the challenges of writing a book about the development of musical theatre in Canada is the fact that few of even the most important early musicals have been commercially recorded. They might as well have been written in disappearing ink. I knew that Mavor Moore's Sunshine Town was one of the seminal works, yet no cast album was ever made, and—consequently, I believe—it has only been professionally revived once (at the Charlottetown Festival) and by people who were involved in the original. It has had limited influence on subsequent work, but not because it is not good. In fact, it is very good. But the fact is that nobody is going to discover it by rifling through the show music section at the local Sam the Record Man (which was how I discovered Beowulf). \Jn\\keAnyone Can Whistle and The Baker's Wife, it is not readily available (although some songs were covered by other artists and released as 78s, and Mavor Moore's daughter Charlotte has recorded one song from that show, "Just the Same" on her CD Friends of Mine.} One has to go to a great deal of trouble to seek it out. Yet, just as one could hardly consider writing a book about Broadway without knowing the music of Oklahoma!, it was unthinkable to proceed without seeing or hearing Sunshine Town in some form. I hoped t|iat Mavor would have his own recording. He didn't. I then hoped that one would exist with his papers in the York University library. I discovered they had a recording of a CBC radio version, but Mavor warned me, "The earlier one-hour radio version, written as such, and with a narrator, is not the same show; numbers were delated or rewritten, and several added—among them highlights. III a word, it would be seriously misleading to study the stage show by stu
O
(jCIjWO
247
BHRHYIOHTH
248
advocate of cast albums. "Getting a show up and running is a huge thing," he says. "If it is successful and continues on a long life with its cast recording present, that's great... But for a show like Larry's Party, which will have a limited run of nine or ten weeks in three different venues across Canada, it is imperative to have a cast recording as a document to keep it alive... Its quite stupid that it wasn't done—Who will now be able to play the songs from Larrys Party, fall in love with them as they sit around their house with a glass of wine and say, 'yeah, we should do that show!'? I guess it's a Canadian thing. We can all say it's about resources, etc., but don't you think those performers would be happy to prolong their performances?" Ironically, while Broadway cast albums are becoming elusive, it's only in the past decade that major cast recordings of Canadian musicals have become common. Possibly the first Canadian cast recording was My Fur Lady [MRS-LPM-5], recorded by McGill Recording Service in 1957. In 1967, the Composers Authors and Publishers Association of Canada, together with the Canadian Association of Broadcasters released Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical Comedies [TRC 1031]. Unfortunately, these were in pop-jazz arrangements that sound like they were intended as background music at the local supermarket. The London cast of Anne of Green Gables was recorded in 1969, but it took another fifteen years for there to be a recording of the Charlottetown Festival cast [ACDM 1225]. A number of small shows have been recorded independently, and sold largely in the theatre foyer. These include Jubalay [JP-9QQ1], A Bistro Car [RER 9069], Bi/fy Bishop Goes to War [GD 7372], and The Ecstasy of Rita Joe [UA-LA 126-F]. (The/z/^zlay recording was financed by fifteen backers who invested $500 each.) Billy Bishop also has a more recent recording made live at the Grand Theatre, London, Ontario. (According to Eric Peterson, a studio recording was also made, but never released.) The first Canadian cast recording to be made by a major label was Napoleon, released by EMI. The Mirvishes undertook their own recording of Jane Eyre, and EMI released a compilation CD of music from Needfire. Swingstep also independently released a cast album. Cliff Jones made his own album of songs from Kronborg 1582/Rockabye Hamlet in pop arrangements by various artists, including Cal Dodd, Salome Bey and the Irish Rovers. Unusually, the CBC released an album of the radio musical Mandragola featuring Don Francks. Of course, there are other ways for shows to be preserved. Although no cast recording exists of Larry's Party, the script has been published, and a few artists have recorded individual songs. Several of The Dumbells
scripts were also published. Spring Thaw scripts and songs are preserved with the Mavor Moore papers at York University Library. Other Canadian musicals available in published or recorded form are listed in Appendix A.
Her in
249
FINAL: ANYTHING WORTH DONGS IS WORTH DOING BADLY few years ago, a London broadsheet ran a two-page feature by a noted music critic announcing that all of the great melodies had now been written. Since there were only a finite number of possible variations on the twelve-tone scale, he calculated that we had indeed reached the limit. This was, of course, good news. Why? Because it meant that, on that day, no countries had been invaded, no famines or disasters occurred, no world leaders had died. There had been no scandals that might otherwise have pre-empted those two pages. In short, it was a slow news day. Against this backdrop of "damned if you don't, and damned even harder if you do" criticism, the job of the creative artist can be thankless. There must be something on fire inside of us commanding us to create. So, we want to take chances, but to make informed choices when we do. Legend has it that, one day in the Middle Ages, three young explorers set out from Portsmouth in ships. As they were only interested in discovering uncharted new worlds, they felt there was no need to bring maps with them. A few days later, they returned beaming triumphantly. One had 'discovered' the Isle of Wight, while another had been greeted enthusiastically by the hitherto obscure natives of S ark, and the third had stumbled across an entirely new land called France. Studying the work that has gone before you does not have to mean that you play it safe. In fact, it's the only reliable way you can find out what hasn't been tried before. There are no formulas. People like Lehman Engel kept telling us that—while still stressing the "principles" that may or may not save us from falling flat on our faces. Yet, anyone who has faced a backer's audition stares into the eyes of people who yearn to be told that you have discovered the secrets of success. Why else would they give you their money? To live vicariously through you, and imagine they are part of the creative process? Yeah, right. To see their $5,000 investment yield a million percent return, allowing them to buy Pitcairn Island outright, evicting all of Fletcher Christian's offspring, while "Guantanamerra!,"the Fidel Castro musical storms the barricades from Capetown to Reykjavik? You bet. On the one hand, successful commercial producers are mavericks. They do not make committee decisions. That's why scripts that win talent competitions rarely go on to commercial success. (Actor Kim Criswell once told me, "Honey, I've never won a talent contest in my life!") There was no consensus that Les Miserable! had what it takes—just the
A
BHRflYlOIITH
250
unshakeable belief of Cameron Mackintosh. (I once asked lyricist Herbert Kretzmer if Les Miserables would have made it through the Vivian Ellis Prize. He thought for a moment. "Yes," he said, "if they had presented 'Master of the House/"The point is, he had to think about it.) On the other hand, all writers have experienced the frustration of sending their work out to a hundred managements only to have it returned unread, and then hear the same producers solemnly announce that they have scoured the universe but found no new Andrew Lloyd Webbers in the making. "If I send scripts or demos to Canadian directors or producers, they don't even make it to their desks." says Leslie Arden, one of Canada's most successful musical theatre writers. "I did a demo of a show I wanted to flog and see if I could get somebody to commission two years ago. I did a treatment and a demo of the first seven minutes of the show and it was a really top-notch demo. I sent it around, and a week later I got a letter from Stephen Sondheim and Cameron Mackintosh and Susan Shulman and all the really big people. They contacted me immediately. I didn t hear a thing from any of the Canadians I sent it to." The less inspired impresarios study trends and try to distill the "Next Big Thing," like alchemists trying to make gold out of lead. The fact that this has never in the history of human endeavour worked does not phase them. The alternative, looking at untried ideas by untried writers, is just too scary. There is an assumption that, in the commercial theatre, all good shqws ultimately succeed while bad shows ultimately whither and die. That may (or may not) have been true during the Golden Age of Broadway, when the "fabulous invalid" was in fact pretty robust. But when it is weak, with no infrastructure and no confidence, a show nev^r has a chance to find out if it's good or not. Just a£ we will never know whether a tree falling in an unpopulated wood makes a sound, we can never Know how many unproduced and undiscovered m&gbrpieees theft have been. Hit shows are never born ftidy^nmde^ they are nurtpredt 0f course, now that Broadway has become so expensive and risky that few new shows open there, it might be an opportunity for Toronto to sfilft the centre of gravity north. Market size is almost irrelevant if you can attract discerning visitors. Garth Drabins^ claimed that the Canadian production of Phantom of on a market of twenty-million people within a 250-mile ra^pfixif Toronto. As New York had the World Trade Center attack, Tof^nto has had its own calamity. In 2002, it was struck by a SARS epidemic that provoked the UN's health body to warn people to stay away This caused a knock-on effect that was still being felt as of this writing, and it s difficult to predict
[liillll
251
fiWIWlORIH
252
what, if anything, its lasting impact will be. In the shadow of this, muchtouted productions of The Producers and Hairspray were forced to close early. Doing The Producers without stars clearly didn't work—personally, I think Martin Short and Maury Chaykin might have been an intriguing pairing—but I also think that, following the Livent debacle, it's possible that Toronto audiences did not find a musical comedy about a producer cooking the books to be terribly amusing. But that doesn't, I believe, fatally harm the city's long-term prospects any more than the demise of Livent does. The audience is still there, and so are the theatres. The Royal Alex, the Princess of Wales, the Elgin, the Winter Garden, the Canon (ex-Pantages) are all still there and they need product to fill them. Unlike the dinner theatres and cabarets, they are unlikely to become carpet warehouses. At the moment, there is a shortage of new producers—a problem shared with London and New York. The Mirvishes are very nearly the only game in town. In the meantime, they have formed an investment syndicate as a vehicle for financing shows—their own as well as others. The Mirvishes presented the world premiere of the musical Lord of the Rings at the Princess of Wales, so perhaps the mega-musical isn't dead yet. The Mirvishes very cannily negotiated a clause that guaranteed there would be no New York production for at least eighteen months after the Toronto opening. Broadway's "golden age" was from the 1940s until the 1960s, a time when professional theatre in Canada was still in its playpen. While New York has inexorably declined, Toronto has shot up. It still has a long way to go, but its trajectory is enticing. For it to fulfil this promise, it stands to reason that it should not be shackled to what may be a sinking ship. Of course, it's not just Toronto—as regional theatres in the U.S. and Canada gained in stature, the importance and prestige of Broadway—especially for non-musicals—shrank. This is not to say that the Big Apple is rotting—but that other cities, Toronto included, are catching up. G.K. Chesterton, the English novelist, once said that anything worth doing was worth doing badly. In other words, we need to have the freedom to fail. But Canadians suffer from the Canadian Disease—the answer to everything is "no." John Gray argues against resources being spent on large-scale musicals. "If you write in the American form, you're writing a musical that, even in Canada, is going to cost a million dollars to produce. Where are you going to get it on? Who's going to do your sixteen-character musical with your orchestra pit?... The only way you can do it is Broadway. And you think that New York writers and producers, who have their own people, are going to welcome Canadians with open arms and say, 'Oh, good, more competition, lucky us!'? They're not going to do it."
But what about Canadians who want to paint on a broader canvas? "They wont be produced," Gray says flatly. "And if they do get them done, they had better be one hell of a success, because if they fail once, they wont get another chance... The person who requires a sixteen—or eighteencharacter show has got to leave the country and become an American. It's as simple as that." And people wonder why there's a talent drain. In other words, we're so sensible, so practical, so pragmatic that we know better than to take a chance, to risk failure, to rise above our station, to dream. Only do what you know to be possible. As Gray says, you cannot beat nature. No wonder the Europeans think we re dull as potato soup. The so-called Canadian inferiority complex is no joke. We have used it to define ourselves and in so doing it has become a licence for mediocrity. Nothing ever really catches fire. Even the critics have joined this conspiracy, for by insisting that smaller is better, we have excluded ourselves from international success. As Gray suggested, I left Canada. I didn't want to write for one girl playing the harmonica while tap dancing, or for four guys in overalls sitting on a farmhouse porch strumming their guitars and singing about prairie droughts. The laid-back-to-the-point-of-falling-over approach was not for me. I wanted to break free, to soar. But when I arrived in London, I found that I was still, in my heart, every inch a Canadian, even if Canada has a way of breaking that heart. So what does that mean? Are citizens of the second largest geographical expanse in the world really expected to think small? It's not the size of our population that is the problem, but the size—the scope—of our vision. You can't hit higher than you aim. Rob Asseltine, president of the Association of Canadian Librettists, Composers and Lyricists thought that a big show like Frankenstein... Do You Dream? could be done because al chose consciously to be naive." Our most notorious commercial producer may have been wanted "by the police, but I have to respect Garth Drabinsl^ior one things-he wasn't afraid to dream. I yearn to come home. But,ii* order for me to do that, some things have to change. Canadian theatre pfeeple have ttf recognize Inusical theatre as an art form, not just a touft$t attraction. (They can begin happening and reading their mail, and show writers at least as much respect as they show somebody applying forr an ushering job.) They have to begin to say "yes."I was very encouraged shen Canadian Stage presented The House of Martin Guerre, Larry's Party, Outrageous! and P/lagie. Whether or not they were successes doesn't matter—they were steps forward, something that can be built on. Now if only a commercial producer would grab onto one of those shows for an open-ended Toronto run, as the
fllf
253
Terry Hatty in the 2006 Charlottetown Festivals production of CANADA ROCKS! The Hits Musical Revue. Photo by Louise Vessey. Courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.
8»iY|Ora
254
Mirvishes did with The Drowsy Chaperone. Broadway? Maybe. But let's take Toronto—and Canada—first. We must also have the confidence to be openly—but not self-consciously—Canadian. To be comfortable in our own shoes. Then we'll have an image to present to the world. Whether we have three people and a piano or thirty people and an orchestra, we will begin to develop our own voice, our own sound. Three decades ago, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe unmistakably echoed the sound of British Columbia, while Needfire and Swingstep both took the Celtic strains of the Atlantic Provinces and set them to a modern beat. I believe they point a way forward. Perhaps the balletic trapeze of Cirque du Soleil is another model to be built on. Instead of just looking to New York for its commercial hits, Toronto should be looking to the rest of Canada as the Mirvishes did with Notre Dame de Paris. Luc Plamondon is Quebec's most popular songwriter and Notre Dame de Paris was the big winner at the 21st annual Felix Awards held in Quebec City in October 1999, winning eight awards. When the musical made its first Canadian tour in 1999, it broke box office records. Or perhaps some of the thousands of new Canadians will bring ideas from China, India, Japan and Africa. "It isn't easy to live next to a giant," says lyricist Elaine Campbell. "The more you keep doing it [musical theatre] in Canada, people begin to see that it belongs in Canada. We can do it as well as any other country." So what do we need to do? First of all, we can decide to exist, to start putting out our own publicity, and then to start believing it. To be not parochial but independently-minded. And say goodbye to "Canada, Limited." As far as Canadians are concerned, the musical is not a fading art form, but an emerging one. Will anybody write the Great Canadian Musical? I hope not. That's far too much pressure, too much responsibility
to pin on one show. Instead, let's write a few of them. Many of our shows will fail. (In fact, most of them will.) That's okay. Inevitably, if we keep trying and experimenting, reflecting our own aspect of the world, some will succeed. All it takes is a hit, and the world will sit up and take notice. It is inevitable.
The Playhouse Theatre Company celebrated the closing of its 2005-2006 season with a staging of No Great Mischief by David S. Young, adapted from the award-winning novel by Alistair MacLeod. Musical direction was by Alison Jenkins, with original music composed and arranged by M.J. Ross. Shown here are (1-r): Fraser Mackenzie, Ryan Reid, Janet Michael, Jonathan Teague, Stephen GuyMcGrath (fiddler), Peter Jorgensen and Duncan Fraser. Courtesy of the Playhouse Theatre Company.
FILE
255
POSTSCRIPT
IIIM Him
ncn GJO
fl ince the manuscript for this book was completed, a number of sigV nificant events have occurred. The New Yorker Theatre at 651 Yonge • 1 Street in Toronto has been rebuilt and re-opened as the Panasonic U Theatre where, as of May 2006, it has been housing the Blue Man Group. The Danforth Music Hall has also been refurbished and rededicated to use as a live theatre venue. The Lord of the Rings opened at the Princess of Wales Theatre to largely tepid reviews, and closed in September 2006. (Richard Ouzounian of the Toronto Star dubbed it "Bored of the Rings."1) However, the really big story didn't happen in Canada at all, but on Broadway, where The Drowsy Chaperone opened at the Marquis Theater on May 1,2006, to warm reviews and a very enthusiastic word of mouth. (One of the show's flyers proclaimed "This is a word of mouth show. Your mouth has been selected.") The Associated Press' Michael Kuchwara called it a "disarming, delightful souffle."2 Howard Kissel of the New York Daily News found "cause for rejoicing. It's full of wit and high spirits."3 The all-important New York Times critic Ben Brantley said, "The gods of timing, who are just as crucial to success in show business as mere talent is, have smiled brightly upon 'The Drowsy Chaperone,' the small and ingratiating musical that opened last night at the big and intimidating Marquis Theater." But he added that, "Though this rewedup spoof of a 1920s song-and-dance frolic, as imagined by an obsessive 21st-century show queen, seems poised to become the sleeper of the Broadway season, it is not any kind of a masterpiece."4 Still, on the night I attended—two days after the opening—the audience was warm and healthy. The show won seven Drama Desk awards, including Best Musical, best book and best score. It also won the Best Musical award from the Drama Critics Circle, and was nominated for thirteen Tony awards, including every category for which it was eligible. The box office advance is considered healthy, and it looks set to be Canada's first Broadway hit since the Dumbells. As co-writer and star Bob Martin told the Los Angeles Center Theatre Group's in-house magazine, "There's a community in Toronto of comic performers, and we have an affection for the musicals of that era... We were all reacting against a type of musical that was very popular at that time: overblown, content-oriented musicals like Miss Saigon or Les Miserables. We missed the way you could connect with a performer like
Fred Astaire, who entertained you in a very pure way. We decided to create a show that was a love letter to that type of performance."5 Martin, co-creator of the acclaimed TV series Slings and Arrows was artistic director of Toronto's Second City 2003-2004, and his credits also include Puppets Who Kill and Skippy's Rangers. Songwriters Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison worked with Martin on An Awkward Evening with Martin and Johnson and Slings and Arrows, among other things. Book co-writer Don McKellar created the CBC series Twitch City and the screenplays for Thirty-Two Short Films About Glen Gould and The Red Violin, and as an actor he has appeared with Martin in Slings and Arrows. "Of course, being Canadian is central to the show's observational humour," McKellar told CBC's Rachel Giese. "I think our distance really helps us. Some of the humour might be considered a little too nasty coming from an insider. As outsiders, we get a little more latitude."6 Although The Drowsy Chap&rom spoofs American musicals, Martin s "Man in Chair" character brings one very Canadian quality to the table—ironic detachment. In fact, his first Ene is "I hate theatre/Since the show began life as a wedding present for Martin and his bride Janet Van De Graaff, it is riddled with iii^jokes. (The plot of the musical concerns the impending marriage of Robert Martin and Janet Van De Graaff, and the many asides of the "Man m Cftiair* include allusions to stars of the past, including Toronto's owa^i^atxice JLfllic.) When the Tony Awards.iwgpe presented on June 11*2006, The Drowsy Chaperonew®& fi¥%iii€|iJNdingl^^€bre (Lisa Lambert and Greg Mor~ risoflt) and best teoE (Bob Martin and Don McKeEar), but lost Best Musical to Jeney Boys* a musical tribute to Prankie Vtlti and the Four Seasons directed by Canadian Des MeAmifE Only Alaft Bennetts The History Boys (which won Best Play) won more awards. While it failed to win the top prize, the presentation of a key musical number on the
The Drowsy Chaperone with the original Broadway cast pictured (1-r): Angela Pupello, Sutton Foster, Patrick Wetzel and Jennifer Smith. Photo © Joan Marcus, 2006. Courtesy of Joan Marcus.
POSTSCRIPT
257
Tony awards telecast helped bring in $700,000 the next day, four times its usual Monday box office receipts.7 Another potential hit export from Canada has emerged, Da Kink in My Hair by Toronto comedienne Trey Anthony. Set in a Carribean hairstyling salon in Toronto, Da Kink was first presented on the Toronto Fringe in 2002 and found its way to the enormous stage of the Princes of Wales Theatre three years later. In November 2006, it will open at the Hackney Empire in London, England. Only time will tell whether The Drowsy Chaperoned apparent success will focus international attention on Canada's musical theatre community. What is certain is that this show did not just appear out of nowhere. It was a product of Canada's long tradition of comedy, satire, and—yes— musical theatre. With David Warrack's great success with Rob Roy in Edinburgh in the summer of 2006, and with Da Kink in My Hair about to be staged in London, the future looks promising.
iNHDIfflYlORTH
ncq 6JO
APPENDIX H Canadian Musicals on Record Show: Aleck Cast Recording: Theatre-in-the-Round 57495 Show: All Stressed Up With Nowhere to Go Composer: David Warrack Lyricist: David Warrack Other Recording: "A Writer" on Charlotte Moore Friends of Mine Show: And You Thought Your Family Was Strange! Cast Recording: Tanglewood 26052-1824 (CD) Show: Anglo! Composer: Rod Hayward Lyricist: Alan Nicholls Cast Recording: Justin Time Just-5 Show: Anne of Green Gables Composer: Norman Campbell Lyricist: Norman CampbeE, Don Harron, Elaine Campbell, Mavor Moore Book writer: Don Hariron Cast Recording: Attic ACDM1225 (CD—Charlottetown Cast), CBS(E) 70053(LP)/Sor^^S|IK«53495 (CD) (LondanjCJI Other recordings: TRC-1031 Hits from anne of Green Cables and Six Other Canadian Musical Commedies, "Wondin'" on Jeff Hyslop WSCS-0100 Script Published: Samuel french Score published: Warnet;^^|^rf Date of first production: 1965 (TV), 1965 (Chaelottetown Festival) Show: Baker Street Composer: Raymond Jessel and Marian Grudeff Lyricist: Rsraaondjes|si^p}|^iariii^';l%tt3e^',,' " » " - r^ Book writer: Jeroiiie Co^jpdMlliitfi Cast Recording: Broadway MGM LP 1590 Other recordings: MGM 4293 witi^^MM Barton Date of first production: 1964
IPPEIOHI
9RQ uuu
Show: Beowulf Composer: Victor Davies Lyricist: Betty Jane Wylie Book writer: Betty Jane Wylie
Cast Recording: Daffodil DAF10050 (2 LP), Leap Frog LFR-1-83 (3LP) Date of first production: 1974 (record), 1977 (stage) Show: Billy Bishop Goes to War Composer: John Gray Lyricist: John Gray Book writer: John Gray Cast Recording: Toronto (LP) Tapestry GD7372,20th Anniversary (CD) No #, "In the Sky" on Field of Stars, "Friends Ain't Supposed to Die 'til They're Old" on Friends of Mine Script Published: Talonbooks Date of first production: 1978 Show: Bistro Car Composer: Patrick Rose Lyricist: Richard Ouzounian, Merv Campone Cast Recording: Berandol BER9069 Date of first production: 1976 Show: Colours in the Storm Composer: Jim Betts Lyricist: Jim Betts Book writer: Jim Betts Cast Recording: StormColour Records SCR 101 Script Published: Playwrights Canada Date of first production: 1990 Show: Counter Melody Composer: David Warrack Lyricist: David Warrack Book writer: David Warrack Other recordings: "Entertain" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1976
Bfioiivlom
Show: Cruel Tears Composer: Humphrey and the Dumptrucks Lyricist: Ken Mitchell Book writer: Ken Mitchell Cast Recording: Sunflower Records Script Published: Talonbooks Date of first production: 1975 Show: Don Messers Jubilee Composer: John Gray Lyricist: John Gray Book writer: John Gray Other recordings: "Plain Girls in Love" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1984 Show: Dracula—A Chamber Musical Composer: Marek Norman Lyricist: Richard Ouzounian Book writer: Richard Ouzounian Other recordings: "Let the Night Begin" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1990 Notes: CBC/TVOntario production. Show: Ecstacy of Rita Joe Composer: Ann Mortifee, Willie Dunn Lyricist: Georg Ryga Book writer: George Ryga Cast Recording: Kerygmt KRS10Q5 , Script Published: Talonteojfes Date offirstproduction: 1967 Show: Eight to the Ear Composer: Joey Miller Lyricist: Joey Miller Book writer: Stsph^a'VPl^ua Other.raeo^^^pj^^l^fi^ Home" On Field of stars •D«eofil^^te«S^Bl$78;'
flPPENDIXll
OP1
601
Show: Fireweeds: Women of the Yukon Composer: Cathy Elliott Lyricist: Cathy Elliott Book writer: Cathy Elliott Other recordings: "Jack's House" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1993 Show: The Growing Season Composer: Joey Miller Lyricist: James Saar Book writer: James Saar Other recordings: " Field of Stars' Q\\ Field of Stars—Songs of the Canadian Musical Theatre, Volume 1 Date of first production: 1986 Show: H.M.S. Parliament Composer: Arthur Sullivan (from H.M.S. Pinafore) Lyricist: William Henry Fuller Book writer: William Henry Fuller Script Published: Canadian Theatre Review Publications Date of first production: 1880 Show: The House of Martin Guerre Composer: Leslie Arden Lyricist: Leslie Arden Book writer: Leslie Arden and Anna Theresa Cascio Other recordings: "The World is Changing" on Field of Stars, "Nothing Can Prepare" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1993 Show: Jasper Station Composer: Steve Thomas Lyricist: Norm Foster Book writer: Norm Foster Other recordings: "Forty-Five Minutes" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 2001
BMDIY Nora
OPO
6D6
Show: Johnny Belinda Composer: John Fenwick Lyricist: Mavor Moore Book writer: Mavor Moore Date of first production: 1968 Notes: CBC Television production Show.Juba/ay Composer: Patrick Rose Lyricist: Merv Campone Cast Recording: JP9001 Date of first production: 1974 Show: Larry's Party Composer: Marek Norman Lyricist: Richard Ouzounian Book writer: Richard Ouzounian Other recordings: "Ashes to Ashes" on Field of Stars, "Little Lost Lives" and "Look at the Sky" on Marek Norman: Along the Way, "Part of Me" on Friends of Mine Script Published: McArthur & Co. Date of first production: 2002 Show: Last Night of Starlight Composer: Jim Betts Lyricist: Jim Betts Book writer: Jim Betts Other recordings: "Dancm Foot* on PrMnds of Mine Date of first production: 497iS Show: The Last Resort Composer: Leslie Arden Lyricist: Leslie Arden Book writer: Norm Foste^v Other recordings: %ivei:||itfle,J^^ bm;ll>/^ of$t%n> aA Day with Julia" on Frie%$$®fMim
Date of firrst production: 1997
(jPPEBfl
263
Show: Lies and Other Lyrics Composer: Bob Ashley Lyricist: Nancy Phillips Book writer: Nancy Phillips Other recordings: "Nostalgia" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1978 Show: Little Mercy's First Murder Composer: Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli Lyricist: Morwyn Brebner Book writer: Morwyn Brebner Other recordings: "Dress Up" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 2002 Show: Little Women Composer: Jim Betts Lyricist: Jim Betts Book writer: Jim Betts
Cast Recording: NRA&E 77502030102 Show: Log of the Skipper's Wife Composer: Allan Grossman Lyricist: Joann Green Breuer Book writer: Joann Green Breuer Cast Recording: SNE 23723-3618 Show: Mandragola Composer: Doug Riley Lyricist: Alan Gordon Book writer: Alan Gordon Cast Recording: CBC LM448 Date of first production: 1977
BHMV NORTH
264
Show: Meet the Navy Composer: various Lyricist: various Book writer: James Seymour Other recordings: "You'll Get Used to It" on LP Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical Comedies TRC 1031 Date of first production: 1943 Notes: 2 films: Meet the Navy (British National/Republic Pictures), Meet the Navy on Tour (National Rim Board of Canada)
Show: The Moose That Roared Composer: Jim Betts Lyricist: Jim Betts Book writer: Jim Betts Other recordings: "The Prenatal Course" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1985 Show: Mr. Scrooge Composer: Dolores Claman Lyricist: Richard Morris, Ted Wood, Dolores Claman Book writer: Richard Morris, Ted Wood Other recordings: "Very Long Ago" on LP Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical Comedies TRC 1031 Script Published: Dramatic Publishing Company Date of first production: 1963 Show: My Fur Lady Composer: James Domville, Gait MacDermot Lyricist: Timothy Porteous Book writer: Timothy Porteous Cast Recording: MRS-LPM-3, MRS-LPM-5 Date of first production: 1957 Show: Napoleon Composer: Timothy Williams Lyricist: Andrew Sabiston Cast Recording: Toronto EMI CDQ29428 Other recordings: London 4 song CD Date of first production:>i9S*4 Show: Needfire Composer: Rick Fox and others Lyricist: Rick Fox and othtefsr Book writer: Tom Lackey^ Cast Recording: EM^^434%98222 y DateofJfimprodi^l^ 1998 1
Show: NelRgan Cast Recording: Star 6402717002
HPPEIDIXH
265
Show: Not Wanted on the Voyage Composer: Neil Bertram Lyricist: Neil Bertram Book: from the novel by Timothy Findley Other recordings: "A Kind of Heaven" on Friends of Mine Show: On a Summer's Night Composer: Jim Betts Lyricist: Jim Betts Book writer: Jim Betts Other recordings: "Starlight" on Field of Stars, "You'll Never Want to Go Away" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1979 Show: Oops! Composer: David Warrack Lyricist: David Warrack Cast Recording: Wave 0001 Show: The Optimist Composer: Mavor Moore Lyricist: Mavor Moore Book writer: Mavor Moore Other recordings: "A Matter of Taste" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 1952 Notes: CBC TV and radio productions as The Best of All Possible Worlds Show: Pelagie Composer: Allen Cole Lyricist: Vincent de Tourdonnet Book writer: Vincent de Tourdonnet Other recordings: "The Dancing is Done" on Field of Stars Date of first production: 2004
BHiY NORTH
266
Show: Pied Piper Composer: Mona Elaine Adilman Lyricist: Mona Elaine Adilman Book writer: Mona Elaine Adilman Other recordings: "Time, Time" on Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical Comedies TRC 1031 Date of first production: 1962
Show: Ptarmigan—or a Canadian Carnival Composer: J.E.R Aldous Lyricist: J.N. Mcllwraith Book writer: J.N.Mcllwraith Script Published: Canadian Theatre Review Lost Plays Date of first production: 1895 Show: Reflections on Crooked Walking Composer: Ann Mortifee Lyricist: Ann Mortifee Book writer: Ann Mortifee Cast Recording: studio cast Jabula Records JR 35 Date of first production: 1982 Show: Revelation Composer: Jim Croccini Lyricist: John Bertram Other recordings: "Every Single Day" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1984 Show: Return of the Curse of the Mummy s Revenge Composer: Joey Miller Lyricist: James Saar Book writer: James Saar Other recordings: "A Whisper Away" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1983 Show: Road to Charlottetown Composer: Cedric Smitih Lyricist: Cedric Smith Book writer: Cedric Smith* Milton Acofti Script Published: Unfinished Monument: foess Date of first production: 19^77 Show: Rockabye Hamkt^W^Kronb^rgtSB2 %/kf&Hamkt—the Musical Composer: CliffJones Lyricist: Cliff Joiie$ Studio Recording: Eising RILP103 Other recordings: *If My Morning Begins** and *T3be Last Blues" on Varese Sarabande CD Shakespeare on Sro^wayVSD-5622 Date of first production: 1973
HPPERDIXH
w
Show: Songsfrom the Front and Rear Composer: Patrick Rose Lyricist: Patrick Rose Book writer: Patrick Rose Other recordings: "Forever and a Day" on Friends of Mine Show: Sunshine Town Composer: Mavor Moore Lyricist: Mavor Moore Book writer: Mavor Moore Other recordings: "Just the Same" on Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1954 Notes: CBC Television production, CBC Radio Production The Hero ofMariposa Show: Swingstep Composer: Charles Cozens Lyricist: Charles Cozens Book writer: Michael Lewis MacLennan Cast Recording: Toronto Schwab Publishing (No #) Date of first production: 1999 Show: Ten Lost Years Composer: Cedric Smith Lyricist: Cedric Smith Cast Recording: Rumour Six Date of first production: 1974 Show: Toronto, Toronto Composer: Charles Weir Lyricist: Mark Shekter Cast Recording: Warrack WRCl-1358 Date of first production: 1980
BROMY NORTH
268
Show: Turvey Composer: Norman Campbell Lyricist: Don Harron, Elaine Campbell Book writer: Don Harron Other recordings: "Look Over Your Shoulder" on Hitsfrom Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical ComediesTRC 1031 Date of first production: 1966
Show: Tut, Tut Composer: David Warrack Lyricist: David Warrack Cast Recording: Berandol BER9094 Show: Wild Rose Composer: Morris Surdin Lyricist: W.O. Mitchell Book writer: W.O. Mitchell Other recordings: "The Arithmetic of Love" on Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical ComediesTRC 1031 Show: Willie the Squouse Composer: Lucio Agostini Lyricist: W.M.S. Russell Book writer: Ted Allan Other recordings: "We'll Do All The Right Things" from Hits from Anne of Green Gables and Six Other Canadian Musical ComediesTRC 1031 Show: The Wonder of It All Composer: Norman Campbell Lyricist: Elaine Campbell Book writer: Don Harron Other recordings: "I Think A Thing," "The Wonder Of It AIT Jill Gait 45rpm single, Four Seasons Musical Theatre Date of first production: 197J (TV), 1980 (stage) Show: The Wrong Son Composer: Allen Cole Lyricist: Allen Cole Other recordings: "Nine'Ye^iB^ott Friends of Mine Date of first production: 1993?V Show: ZeroPatumg
'"' ^ \
Composen'QIe^'SSieflisnKii^-'i:.;. ^Lj^dsfcJa^lSte^^Gl^^ Schellenberg Book writers John Gityson Cast Recording: (film) Milan 73178 35675-2 RPPHfl
269
HPPENDIX 6 Principal Interviews Leslie Arden, October 30,2003, in Toronto Norman and Elaine Campbell, July 9,1982, in Victoria Norman Campbell, October 28,2003, in Toronto Brent Carver, December 2,1984, in Toronto Dolores Claman and Richard Morris, December 30,2003, in London, England Victor Davies, November 2,2003, in Toronto Gracie Finley, July 13,1985, in Charlottetown Bill Freedman, December 9,2003, in London, England John Gray, January 11,1985, in Vancouver Marian Grudeffand Raymond Jessel, January 19,2004, in Toronto (by telephone) JeffHyslop and Ruth Nichol, June 24,1982, in Vancouver Tom Kneebone, October 29,2003, in Toronto Blanche Lund, October 31,2003, in Newmarket Grace Macdonald, January 11,1985, in Vancouver Maureen Milgram, January 10,1985, in Victoria Maureen Milgram, June 20,2004, in Loughborough, England Mavor Moore, July 18,1985, in Toronto Mortifee, Ann, December 1982, in Vancouver Hugh Pickett, January 11,1985, in Vancouver John Russell, January 8,1985, in Vancouver Simon Webb and Jane Mortifee, July 14,1983, in Vancouver Quotes are also taken from correspondence with the above persons as well as from Michael Bawtree, Jim Betts, Susan Cluff, Charles Cozens, Michael Dobbin, Rick Fox, Michael Gutwillig, Kevin Hicks, Cliff Jones, Voigt Kempson, Gait MacDermot, Richard Maltby Jr., Joey Miller, Greg Peterson, Timothy Porteous, Patrick Rose, Andrew Sabiston, Stephen Schwartz, Marlene Smith, Vinetta Strombergs, Nelles Van Loon, David Warrack and Betty Jane Wylie—all letters are in the authors possession.
BifwiYllra
m
NOTES Overture: "...Of Canada, Limited" 1. J.E. Middleton, "The Theatre in Canada," in Canada and Its Provinces, Vol. 12, Publishers Association of Canada Ltd., Toronto, 1913, 661. 2.
Bernard K. Sandwell, "The Annexation of Our Stage," in Canadian Magazine, Vol. 38, No. 1, November 1911,23.
3.
"The Musical Comedy Book," in Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 4, Winter 1988,8.
4.
Anton Wagner (ed.), Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions (Toronto: Simon & Pierre, 1985) 281.
5.
Agnes de W$&, And Promenade Home (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1959) 89.
6.
Nick Carey, "Do Musicals Reflect Downward Cultural Drift?" in International Herald-Tribune, New York, October 20,2003.
7.
Bryan Appleyard, Sunday Times (London), April 4,2004.
8.
Michael Bawtree, The New Singing Theatre: A Charter for the Music Theatre Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) 7.
9. John Lahr, Automatic Vaudeville: Essays on Star Turns (New York: Knopf, 1984) 5. 10. Alan Jay Lerner, The Musical Theatre: A Celebration (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986) 25. 11. New/Meek, April 25,2005, 65. 12. Kevin Myers, "The Country the World Forgot—Again," in Daily Telegraph, April 21,2002. 13. Richard Gwynn, The 49th Paradox: Canada in North America (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985) 11. 14. Ibid, 189. 15. Vincent Massey, What's Pastu Pr$l&gue:Memoirs (London: Macmitta%1965) 45. 16. Eric Nicol £c Peter Whalley, Canada CamdkdB$ta$i$e of Lack ^I$jf^/(Edmonton, AB: Hurtig, 1977) 130, 17. Ross Stuart (contributor), Encyclopedia ofMmic in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981) 657. 18. Barry Webster, "Toronto, Way Off-off-Broadw^iB WmhingmPwt, October 11, 1998.
19. Michael Doucet, "A City,~WaMiig for the Sunrise: Toronto to Song and Sound," in Canadian Jmm&lfm TraMtwrnlMmit* Toronto, 1998* 20. John Gray, with Eric Peterson^ Silly Bishop G$e$ t& War: A Play (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1981) 11 21. Don Harron as quoted by Richard Omouiimn, "Arts Community Honours Media Pioneer," in Toronto Star, April 17,2004
KITES
271
22. John Coulter, "The Canadian Theatre and the Irish Exemplar," in Theatre Arts Monthly, July 1936,505-506. 23. Wagner (ed.), Contemporary Canadian Theatre,2%\. 24. k.d. lang as quoted in The Times Magazine (London), November 27,2004,13. 25. Cruel Tears Study Guide, Globe Theatre, Regina, 1999. 26. Nicol & Whalley, Canada Cancelled Because of Lack of Interest, 128 27. Lehman Engel, Words With Music: The Broadway Musical Libretto (New York: Schirmer Books, 1981) 6. 28. George Ryga, "Contemporary Theatre and its Language," in Canadian Theatre Review #14, Spring 1977,4.
ACT ONE 1: In the Beginning 1. The first European-style theatrical performance to occur north of the Gulf of Mexico. 2.
Evening Standard (London), February 26,2001.
3.
Marc Lescarbot, The Theatre of Neptune in New France (translated by Harriette Taber Richardson) (Boston: Mifflin, 1927).
4.
Henry Scadding, Toronto of Old: Collections and recollections illustrative of the early settlement and social life of the capital of Ontario (Toronto: Adam, Stevenson, 1873.)
5.
British Colonist, September 4,1839.
6.
Ibid.
7.
C.S. Clark, Of Toronto the Good: A Social Study: The Queen City of Canada As It Is (Montreal: Toronto Publishing Company, 1898) 196.
8.
The Gazette (Montreal), June 30,1843.
9.
The Patriot (Toronto), May 27, 1851, cited in "Anne Fairbrother Hill: A Chaste and Elegant Dancer" by Mary Jane Warner, a paper read to the Association for Canadian Theatre History at the University of Windsor, May 30,1988.
10. Gilbert wrote an unproduced translation of The Brigands in 1869. 11. The Tomahawk, August 24,1867,174-175. 12. Anton Wagner 8c Richard Plant (eds.), Canada's Lost Plays, Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century (Toronto: Canadian Theatre Review Publications, 1978). 13. Canadian Illustrated News, February 28,1880. 14. William Littler, "Leo, the Royal Cadet ably cast," in Toronto Star, May 4,2001. 15. For more information on the Marks Brothers, see Michael V.Taylor, The Canadian Kings of Repertoire: The Story of the Marks Brothers (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2001). 16. Pembroke Observer, November 8, 1894, as cited in Taylor, The Canadian Kings of Repertoire. 17. The Billboard, November 19, 1921, 49, cited in Taylor, The Canadian Kings of Repertoire.
BROHY NORTH
272
18. It is known that the sisters shared bills with Jimmy Durante and Sophie Tucker,
but no other information could be found. 19. Beatrice Lille, with James Brough, Every Other Inch a Lady (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972) 27. 20. Ibid, 44. 21. Ibid, 108. 22. Some sources give Marie Dressler's birth date at 1869, others as 1871. 23. Toronto World, October 12,1912. 24. From a Grand Theatre program, as quoted in Sheila M.F.Johnston, Let's Go to The Grand!: 100 Years of Entertainment at London's Grand Theatre (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2001) 24. 25. The Globe, Toronto, November 30,1929,12.
2: Dumbells and Uptown Girls 1.
Norman Jewison, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me: An Autobiography (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2004) 24-25.
2.
Captain M.W. Plunkett, Carry On (a published script, no further citation given, 1921).
3.
In August 1917, eight Canadian soldiers were pulled out of the battle line at Passchendaele and given one week to form a full-time entertainment troop. So were born The Dumbells. Headed up by a young Orillia singer/musician, Honorary Captain Merton Wesley Plunkett, the group was comprised of Plunkett s young brother Al, Jack Ayre, Alan Murray, Ross Hamilton, Jack McLaren and Bill Redpath, augmented by Ted Charters and Red Newman.
4.
Ambrose J. Small was a Canadian theatre owner and impresario who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1919 immediately after concluding the sale of his empire. No trace of him was ever found.
5. The Chautauqua was a movement begun in Chautauqua, New York, in 1874, as a form of self-improvement through lectures and performances of a morally iipEfting nature. 6.
The Massey Manufacturing Company buicte of farm equipment, w^||rtded in Newcastle, Ontario, by DanirfJ^ss^ia l§4?t*Ite business was pas^f41llp^ his son Hart, who moved the company tx»ToP3fitb in |j|Bl. ^^^tea^p^fy ac^vely supported the arts and the; ^^pw^ptatOvtflM|^,^Dhe Masaey Foundation built Hart House and Massey Halt Hart Masse^fiGtd^^^liic^iit, Massey,ent Masaey, the first Canadian-born Govi^^0a^^=^ri|'i^iiM^orMassey. ent Masaey,
7.
Some dispute this, claiming th^m€/K^^^^^^me originated with John Tiller, a wealthy English ^amafiSS^^cer who is also sometimes credited with the from Dancer History Archives, invention of the M^^^l^^ 18$t%^'fi WWW.Str^tS$^
com/histmai2/d2tillr1.htm, accessed in October2Q05, 2005
3: Filling the Cultural Vacuum
1.
The New York Tim^^mmry 28,1940, as cited in-Sfa^Ltt*s Gt'fo The Go to The Grand!',90.
2.
The Player s Club is the foick&t company rfHast Houne> made up of undergraduates and also members of Toronto's Arts and Letters Club.
(BTES
273
3.
Merrill Denison, born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1893, and died in San Diego in 1975, is considered to be one of Canada's first significant twentieth-century playwrights. His 1923 play Marsh Hay was revived at the Shaw Festival in 1996. He donated land around Lake Mazinaw to the Ontario government in 1959, to be used as a provincial park. For more information on Merrill Denison, see Mary Savigny, Bon Echo: The Denison Years (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 1997).
4.
Grace Lydiatt Shaw, Stratford Under Cover: Memories on Tape (Toronto: NC Press, 1977) 33.
5.
From "This Blind Effort Could Kill Summer Theatre For Good," in Toronto Star, July 11,1968.
6. The Harry Belafonte story is taken from the Red Barn Theatre website, www.redbarntheatre.ca/about.html, accessed in October 2005. 7.
Lloyd Bochner is a Canadian actor, born in 1924, who starred in Dynasty on TV.
8.
Brian Doherty, an Ontario-based lawyer and playwright, founded the Shaw Festival.
9.
Anna Russell, Tm Not Making This Up, You Know: The Autobiography of the Queen of Musical Parody (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1985) 119.
4: "Will You Dance With Me?" 1.
Evening Standard, an undated clipping.
2.
Saturday Night, an undated clipping.
3.
"You'll Get Used To It," lyrics by Victor Gordon, music by Freddy Grant. © 1942 Gordon V. Thompson Ltd.
4.
Knowlton Nash, Cue the Elephant!: Backstage Tales at the CBC (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996) 56.
5. Jewison, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, 41.
5: Putting the Audience on Stage 1. Wagner (ed.), Contemporary Canadian Theatre, 118. 2.
Andrew Allan, ^ Self-Portrait (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974) 119.
3. Jane Mallett is best known to people of the author's generation for a commercial she appeared in for BIC pens in the 1970s. A sweet little old lady enters a bank and asks to borrow a pen. She then hands the cashier a note: "This is a stickup." 4. William Littler, "Developing Opera and Musical Theatre," in Contemporary Canadian Theatre (Anton Wagner, ed.) 280.
BMDWflY NORTH
274
5.
Toronto Telegram, April 2,1948.
6.
The last house in which the author lived in Toronto, 193 Roehampton Avenue, used to belong to Dave Broadfoot. For the record, Mel has also heard his music played on Glen Gould's piano and made a demo tape on Oscar Peterson's tape machine. Neither of them owned the respective objects at the time, however.
7.
Murray Ginsberg, They Loved To Play: Memories of the Golden Age in Canadian Music (Toronto: eastendbooks, 1998) 116.
8.
Dave Broadfoot, with Barbara Sears, Old Enough to Say What I Want: An Autobiography (Toronto: McClelland 8c Stewart, 2002) 60.
9.
Ibid, 62.
10. Steve Tilley, "25 Years of Yuk-Yuk's," in Edmonton Sun, April 11,2002. 11. Andrew Allan, ^ Self-Portrait (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1974) 124.
6: "Rain or No Rain": Theatre Under the Stars and Rainbow Stage 1.
Curiously, a "history" of Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS), in the program for Timber!! (1952), makes no mention of Hilker at all.
2.
Taken from an undated article in Play board Magazine, Vancouver, not dated.
3.
From a personal interview with Hugh Pickett.
4.
Broadfoot, Old Enough to Say What I Want, 82.
5.
The Vancouver Sun, June 24,1952.
6.
Clyde Gilmour, "Producers Planning Timber Encores" in The Vancouver Sun, July 2,1952.
7.
The Vancouver Sun, June 20,1952.
8.
Toronto Star, July 27,1970.
9.
Winnipeg Free Press, July 8,1977.
7: On the "Crest" of a New Canadian Theatre 1.
The Toronto Star, March 19,1922.
2.
Herbert Whittaker, "The Crest Theatre," in The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989) 120.
3.
Paul Illidge, "Toronto's First Playhouse," in Toronto tor, January 5,2004.
8: "The Glory of the Modern Age" 1.
Mavor Moore, Reinventing Myself: Memoirs (Toronto: Stoddart, 1996) 226.
2.
Toronto Telegram, undated clipping.
3.
Toronto Star, undated clipping.
4.
Ibid, 351.
5.
Toronto Telegram, January 11,1:95$*
6.
The Evening News (London|||a|ttl^^;7^ 195§k
7.
The Gazette (Montreal), undated tli6pirtg
9: "Merry Madness" 1. Barry Morse, "Pulling Faq^^t^^ (unpublished manuscript) 31. 2.
Herald-Tribune, undated <^j^^
3.
Variety, undated dijpj»!3g<
g Noises: A Life on Stage and
Screen"
10:"Lovely, Juicy, Silly Fun" 1. Shaw,Stra^lQ^'G^ 2. Ibid, 70-71. 3.
Richard Ouzounian, Stratford Gold: SO T&^~5&jftisisi% SO Conversations (Toronto: McArthur 8c Co., 200^) 144.
NOIES
215
4.
The Globe andMail,]\Ay 5,1969.
5.
The Globe andMail,]\Aj 21,1969.
6.
Christian Science Monitor, undated clipping.
11: The Fur Flies 1.
Tfo Afew York Times,]uly 18,1957.
2.
The Gazette (Montreal), February 8,1957.
3.
Ibid, May 24,1957.
4.
The Globe and Mail, undated clipping.
5.
The Times (London), August 19,1957.
6.
The New York Times, undated clipping.
7.
"Nixon's Bushy-Haired 'Bastard' Bites Back," in The Globe and Mail, March 23,2002.
12: A Chilly Northern Breeze: Cabaret and Revue in Toronto the Good 1.
Broadfoot, Old Enough to Say What I Want, 83.
2.
Taken from www.videocab.com, accessed September 20,2006.
3.
Tattler, July 13,1955.
4.
Starweek (Toronto Star supplement), August 18-25,1979.
5.
The Globe and Mail, January 26,1977.
6.
Liam Lacey, "Cabaret blossoms in the city," The Globe and Mail, April 28,1979.
7.
Ray Conologue, "Happy 156th!," The Globe and Mail, February 21,1981.
13: Humhug 1.
The Globe and Mail, November 2,1963.
2.
Toronto Star, undated clipping.
3.
CBC Times, December 19-25,1964.
14: Industrial Strength 1. Jonathan Ward, "Recruit, Train and Motivate: The History of the Industrial Musical," from www.furious.com/perfect/industrialmusicals.html (March 2002), accessed September 20,2006.
15: "The Epitome of Show-Dance Professionalism" 1.
Guy Shulman, "I Can Do That!" in Dance Canada Danse, Autumn 1983.
2.
Bob Allen as interviewed by the author for the television documentary/^/1 One More Time, Cable Ten, Vancouver, 1983.
3.
Max Wyman, Vancouver Province, April 8,1987.
16: "Something Truly Wonderful"
BROiiYlim
276
1.
One of Don Harron s daughters, Mary, went on to direct the film American Psycho. Makes you wonder.
2.
Martha Harron, Don Harron: A Parent Contradiction, A Biography (Toronto: Collins, 1988) 261.
3.
© 1965 Avonlea Music, used by permission.
4.
Mavor Moore, Reinventing Myself, 316.
5. Ibid. 6.
The New York Times, August 22,1965.
7.
The Times (London), April 18,1969.
8.
Toronto Star, August 19,1969.
9.
Ann Thurlow, "Maritime Moods," in Performing Arts in Canada, September 1985.
17: "The Toast of Their Home Town" 1. Alexander H. Cohen, liner notes to the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Baker Street, MGM SE 7000 OC. 2.
Emory Lewis, Cue Magazine, February 23,1965.
3.
Mark Steyn, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Broadway Musicals Then and Now (London: Faber and Faber, 1997) 121.
18: Vancouver: "The Things That You Yet Will Do" 1.
From E. Pauline Johnsons poem "A Toast," written in 1903. For more on E. Pauline Johnsons works, see Sheila M.F.Johnston, Buckskin & Broadcloth: A Celebration of E. PaulineJohnson—Tekahionwake, 1861-1913 (Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 1997. "A Toast "was set to music and sung at a Vancouver pageant in 1914.
2.
© 1974 Deloraine Music, used by permission.
3.
Winnipeg Free Press, May 3,1974.
4.
Winnipeg Free Press, May 9,1974.
5.
The Vancouver Sun, June 28,1974.
6.
The New York Times, March 24,1978.
7.
Unpublished work. This manuscript was sent to both composer Marek Norman and lyricist Richard Ouzounian for verification.
8.
The Vancouver Sun, February 21,1975.
9.
"Eight-hander" is a term for eight characters,
19: Learn the Rules, Tlien Break Them 1. Wannabe is a joke acronym for Wholly agreeavle, Nearly Normal Artists Before Exhibition. 2.
Stage Door,Mxy 7,1970.
3.
Engel, Words With Music, 244.
4.
The Globe and Mail, July 23,19?%,;
5. Bruce Kirkland, "Stafe Veterans Hit ligjit Netftf % Toronto S^jiy^12,1979. 6.
Toronto.^Mr,W^y:^l^, ;
7. AnAony Field, "Seminars'^^:;Soitdbeim^M $^&&MRr^, ^^px 1, Spring 1991. 8.
Cameron Mackintosh in a letter to the author dated Jiily IS, 2<)03.
9.
®^ Kr
IKIES
271
20: "A Lot of Heart": Charlottetown After An ne 1.
Eugene Benson 6c L.W. Conolly (eds.), The Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1989) 89.
2.
Toronto Star, August 3,1966.
3.
The Globe andMail,]u\y 28,1970.
4.
Toronto Star, July 5,1967.
5.
Ibid, August 5,1967.
6.
The Globe and Mail,]v\y 4,1968.
7.
Ibid, October 20,1983.
8.
Ibid, June 29,1971.
9.
Toronto Star, June 27,1972.
10. J. Brown, "The Charlottetown Festival in Review," in Canadian Drama, Vol. 9 (1983). 11. Toronto Star, undated clipping. 12. Winnipeg Free Press, April 10,1982. 13. Martin Dorrell, "A Problem Free Year—Almost," in The Globe and Mail, August 4, 1979. 14. The Globe andMail,]n\j 27,1970. 15. H. Shirley Home, "Confederation Centre renews its mandate to produce Canadian musicals," in Performing Arts in Canada, Spring 1998. 16. Lori A. Mayne, "Music to His Ears," in Car/ton University Magazine, Fall 2000.
21: A "Radiophonic" Musical 1.
Dennis J. Duffy, Imagine Please: Early Radio Broadcasting in British Columbia (Victoria, BC: Sound and Moving Image Division, Provincial Archives of British Columbia, 1983).
22: "Try, Try, Aim for the Sky" 1.
Taylor, The Canadian Kings of Repertoire, 14, citing The Billboard, November 19, 1921,49.
2.
Betty Jane Wylie doesn't remember saying this.
23: "I Could Change the World" 1.
Statement by Charles Morowitz in Confessions of a Counterfeit Critic: A London Theatre Notebook (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973), cited in Ronald Hayman, Theatre and AntiTheatre: Ne<w Movements Since Beckett (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1979) 198.
2.
Twenty-fifth Street House Theatre, Paper Wheat: The Book (Saskatoon, SK: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1982). This is a published play script, created collectively by the Twenty-Fifth Street Theatre.
3.
Michael Rossiter, "Mummering: Theatre of Antiquity," in Muse, Vol. 49, Issue 11, Memorial University of Newfoundland, not dated.
4.
© 1974 Shoehorn Music.
24: "The Killer Hero": Billy Bishop Goes to War B»m||0ra
970
6/0
1.
UBC Chronicle, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Summer 1985.
2.
"Canadians Prefer Intimate Musicals," in Toronto Star, March 19,1994.
3. John Gray, with Eric Peterson, Billy Bishop Goes to War: A Play (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1981) preface. 4.
Ibid.
5.
Macleans, December 4,1978, 70.
6.
Gray, Billy Bishop Goes to War.
7.
Max Wyman, "From the Wild Blue Yonder to the Great White Way," in Vancouver, July 1979.
8. John Gray, "Letters from the Front," in Vancouver, October 1984. 9.
Ibid.
10. Gray, Billy Bishop Goes to War. 11. Gray, "Letters from the Front," October 1984.
ACT TWO 26: Broadway Bound—And Gagged 1.
Quote from Variety, as cited in http://olympusarts.com/hamletA.htm, accessed October 30,2005.
2.
"The Power of Rock and Roll," in Gallery Magazine, May 1978.
3.
The New York Times, February 18,1976.
4.
"Cliff Pins his Hopes on Musical Marilyn," The Globe and Mail, January 15, 1980.
5.
Blaik Kirby, "Hamlet's Birth and Death Pains on Broadway," The Globe and Mail, January 6,1977.
6.
Los Angeles Times, November 25,1981.
7.
The Chronicle-Herald (Halifax), November 13,2003.
8.
Engel, Words With Music, 272.
9.
Toronto Star, April 8,1984.
10. Chicago Tribune, February 6,2005, , 11. John Coulter, "The Canadittt Theatre anjj the Irish Exemplar/ M lEK^h^Arts Monthly, July 1936,509.
27: "The Virtuosity of Opera with the Vitality of IfcratiAk^ 1.
Michael Bawtree, The New Sieging Tfa#frfy
V&*
2. Ibid, 115. 3.
Tom Jones, M^f^Mza^^;^f%fe^^/lMfe^^^ toth Weof MttitfaW^UQ/Mw (NewYbrk:Limd^E^^ s, 1998) 134-139.
28:ACatti«ii|^teNew York 1. Martin KneMan, *H&dfc McAurf/ in TkmM Lift* Septembcr;i98S,
29: Nice Tries and Missed Opportunities 1.
Toronto Telegram, January 10,1970,
NOTES
279
30: Sunday in the Park with Emily 1.
Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr (Toronto: Clark, Irwin, 1966) 7.
31: "Minding the Store": Theatre as a Business 1.
Garth Drabinsky, with Marq de Villiers, Closer to the Sun: An Autobiography (Toronto: McClelland 8c Stewart, 1995) 290.
2.
Toronto Star, March 15,1988.
3. John Coulbourne, Toronto Star, October 31,1999. 4.
Drabinsky, Closer to the Sun, 392.
5.
John C. Lindsay, Royal Alexandra: The Finest Theatre on the Continent (Erin, ON: Boston Mills Press, 1986) 27.
6.
Toronto Star, March 16,1987.
7.
The Globe and Mail, April 7,1988.
8.
Toronto Star, August 26,1984.
9.
Ibid, February 9,1987.
10. Martin Hunter, "Classical Cabaret Plans Grand Finale," in Toronto Star, May 3,1985.
32: Defying Gravity: The Unmaking of The Grand Finale 1.
Interview on CKO (Toronto) with Al Michaels, aired August 16,1985.
2.
The Vancouver Sun, August 1,1985.
33: The "Canadian Imperative" 1. Jewison, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me, 44. 2.
The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1980-81 (Toronto: Empire Club Foundation, 1981) 263-274.
3.
Evening Standard, September 4,2003.
4.
Pat Donnelly, "The Search for the Perfect Musical," in The Gazette (Montreal), April 4,1998.
5.
Drabinsky, Closer to the Sun, 393-94.
6.
Ibid, 292.
7.
Performing Arts in Canada,Wmter 1998.
8.
The Toronto Sun, September 27,1997.
9.
Glenn Sumi, "Music Ma'am," in NOW (Toronto), September 7-13,2000.
10. Kieran Grant, "A Gathering of Our Clans,"in The Toronto 5w«June 21,1998. 11. Deidre Kelly, "Third Celtic Revival Roars to the Stage," in The Globe and Mail, June 11,1998. 12. Ibid. 13. Mitch Potter, "Tossing a Celtic Curveball," in Toronto Star, June 7,1998. 14. Gary Smith, "The Passion and Power of Gothic Horror," in The Hamilton Spectator, November 4,2003. 15. Variety, October 9,2000. BnniDRRYllDRTH
280
16. Glenn Sumi, "Brad s Pit," in NOW (Toronto), October 5-11,2000.
17. Eye Weekly (Toronto), October 5,2000. 18. Time Canada, January 22,2001 (Vol. 157, No. 3). 19. Eye Weekly (Toronto), September 21,2000. 20. MW (Toronto), September 21,2000. 21. Richard Ouzounian, "Novel Makes, Draws on History," in Toronto Star, April 3, 2004. 22. Kamal Al-Solaylee, "Out of the Woods," in Eye Weekly (Toronto), June 8,2000. 23. Eye Weekly (Toronto), April 8,2004. 24. Ibid,January 23,2003.
34: Breaking Into Song: The Primal Scream of the Civilized Set 1.
Ian Bradley, You've Got to Have a Dream: The Message of the Musical (London: SCM Press, 2004) 26.
2.
Inayat Khan, The Music of Life (Sante Fe, NM: Omega Press, 1983) 335-6.
3.
Time, December 29,1961.
4.
The continuation of the outline of The Psychology of Breaking Into Song, © 1990 Roy S. Cameron and Mel Atkey: We will begin Monday morning by introducing all participants and hearing the song each has chosen personally. We will follow this with a brief discussion of the aim of the course. We will then have a first read/sing through of the musical scenes which we have assigned. The afternoon will be an introduction to sense memory exercises, stressing the specific exploration of a particular memory, while also absorbing outside stimulus such as the instructor s voice, the radiator pipes, etc. We begin day two with more sense memory, including details of a specific room in one s past. At this point we introduce music as a stimulus. The participants will each describe his/her conception of the characters in that space. We then work through the assigned musical scenes on our feet with each student taking a couple of significant lines and finding non-specific gestures for each word. We cad the morning with each actor using a Specific line of dialogue for his/her db&meljer and placing it in various locales* That aftemooa^e begin game phyii^;^tfi; stock characters, eventually putt^?^l|ietioijs^-scene work ($ueh,af ^§|8^ and "Laurie" played by "LaureF 2^^Kf^^^e,^^dQ.^-^^^^nan per Q improv, in which the participants must dNc^er;|^tr 0^^^:^^* Here we are reaching the heart of the course* ^:Wt^t^|hril^t;l§>r &^fS^-df musk as an hemotional soundtrack. On day three, the instructor will use character studies written by the students to guide the sense memory exercises. This should guide them toward some deeper emotional recall. Wefei^^^^^ti s0j^rS^^/fercto;^d group coloration of emotJpirf^l^Hiii^^^;;/'' The following day, sence memory leads into a discussion of each stident's personal song choice"and'the;;|ieitt0ri^iHbat;the stegt\cattxy with ifcem*They build a character around ea>ci song and assume the $!ct& of tfaii'cfetocter, walking around the room and greeting the Characters they meet* We then perform the assigned scenes in class for open forum discussion and critique*
KITES
281
The morning of day five we spend exploring sense memory with both instructors doing as much individual work with the students as possible. We end the morning by assigning new pieces and the afternoon is spent applying the things we have done this week to the new work. Day six will be spent gathering all of the week's information into one pocket, then performing the musical scenes assigned. We finish the day with fun and games, switching roles, playing each other's songs in camp style, allowing the workshop to end on a positive note while at the same time releasing a week's pent-up energy. By this time, each participant will have spent a week in an alternative universe, in which deep and basic emotions, which are real to us all, have been externalized through song. The performer will be able to divide his mind between the technical, presentational side in which he/she exists as an actor on a stage, and the textual side, in which he/she opens a door to subjective thought. 5.
Mel Atkey, "Something in the Air," from Perfect Timing, © 1991 The Friendlysong Company, Inc. Administered by Friendlysong Music, SOCAN.
35: "With Glowing Hearts, We See Thee Rise": The Canadian Musical Identity 1.
"Great Composers Scored on Language," in The Guardian (London), November 20,2004.
2.
Gwynn, The 49th Paradox, 184.
3.
Ibid, 187.
4.
Ginsberg, They Loved to Play, 116.
Postscript
RROHDMIY NORTH
282
1.
Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star, March 26,2006.
2.
Associated Press, May 1,2006.
3.
'"Drowsy Chaperone' a sleeping beauty," in New York Daily News, May 1,2006.
4.
"Nostalgic 'Drowsy Chaperone' Opens on Broadway," in The New York Times, May 1, 2006.
5.
Quote from Bob Martin in the Los Angeles Center Theatre Group's "Discovery Guide," 2006.
6.
Rachel Giese, "Ironic Canadians Hit Broadway: Don McKellar on The Drowsy Chaperone? from www.cbc.ca/arts/theatre/drowsy.html (CBC online), May 1,2006.
7.
From Playbill On-Line, www.playbill.com (New York), June 13,2006.
BlIOHPHY "Annual Report,"Toronto, Livent Inc. 1999. Baillie, Joan Parkhill, Look at the Record: An Album of Toronto's Lyric Theatres, 18251984. Oakville, ON: Mosaic Press, 1985. Bawtree, Michael, The New Singing Theatre: A Charterfor the Music Theatre Movement. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Belts, Jim (ed.) Field of Stars: Songs of the Canadian Musical Theatre.Toronto: Northern River Music, 2005. Bradley, Ian, You've Got to Have a Dream: The Message of the Musical. London: SCM Press, 2004. Broadfoot, Dave, with Barbara Sears, Old Enough to Say WhatI Want: An Autobiography. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2002. Brown, J.F., "The Charlottetown Festival on Record," in Canadian Drama, Volume 9, University of Guelph, 1983. Colerick, George, From the Italian Girl to Cabaret: Musical Humour, Parody and Burlesque. London: Juventus, 1998. Drabinsky, Garth, with Marq de Villiers, Closer to the Sun: An Autobiography. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1995. Druxman, Michael B., The Musical: From Broadway to Hollywood. South Brunswick, NJ: A.S. Barnes, 1980. Engel, Lehman, Words With Music: The Broadway Musical Libretto. New York: Schirmer Books, 1981. Ganzl, Kurt, Musicals: The Complete Illustrated Story of the World's Most Popular Live Entertainment. London: Carlton Books, 2001. Gwynn, Richard, The 49th Paradox: Canada in North America. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1985. Gray, John, with Eric Peterson, Billy Bishop Goes to War: A Play. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1981. Harron, Martha, Don Harrow A Parent Contradiction, A Biography. Toronto: Collins, 1988. Hutton, Jack, The World is Waiting for the Sunrise: An Affectionate Tribute to Two Young Canadians Who Wrote the Tune in 1916. Bala, ON: Bala's Museum, 2000. Illidge, Paul, Glass Cage: The Crest Theatre Story. Toronto: Creber Monde, 2005. Jackson, Arthur, The Best Musicals. New York: Crown Publishers, 1977. Jewison, Norman, This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me: An Autobiography. Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2004. Kislan, Richard, The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theater. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1980. Johnston, Sheila M.F., Let's Go to The Grand!: 100 Years of Entertainment at London's Grand Theatre. Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2001.
BlBllBCRRPHY
Jones, Tom, Making Musicals: An Informal Introduction to the World of Musical Theatre. New York: Limelight Editions, 1998. Lahr, John, Automatic Vaudeville: Essays on Star Turns. New York: Knopf, 1984. Larkin, Colin, The Virgin Encyclopaedia of Stage and Film Musicals. London: Virgin Books, 1999. Lerner, Alan Jay, The Musical Theatre: A Celebration. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Lindsay, John C., Palaces of the Night: Canada's Grand Theatres. Toronto: Lynx Images, 1999. , Royal Alexandra: The Finest Theatre on the Continent. Erin, ON: Boston Mills Press, 1986. Lillie, Beatrice, with James Brough, Every Other Inch a Lady. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1972. Mandelbaum, Ken, Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. New York: St. Martins Press, 1991. Moore, Mavor, Reinventing Myself-Memoirs. Toronto: Stoddart, 1994. Nothof, Ann R, "Staging a Woman Painter's Life: Six Versions of Emily Carr," in Mosaic, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Sept. 1998) 83-109. Nicol, Eric, Anythingfor a Laugh: Memoirs. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 1998. Ouzounian, Richard, Stratford Gold: 50 Years, 50 Stars, 50 Conversations. Toronto: McArthurStCo.,2002. Raymond, Jack, Show Music on Record: The First One Hundred Years. Washington, DC: J. Raymond, 1998. Shaw, Grace Lydiatt, Stratford Under Cover: Memories on Tape. Toronto: NC Press, 1977. Steyn, Mark, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Broadway Musicals Then and Now. London: FaberStFaber,1997. Taylor, Michael V, The Canadian Kings of Repertoire: The Story of the Marks Brothers. Toronto: Natural Heritage Books, 2001. Wagner, Anton (ed.), Contemporary Canadian Theatre: New World Visions. Toronto: Simon Sc Pierre, 1985. Wagner, Anton & Richard Plant, Canada's Lost Plays (4 vols.). Volume 1: The Nineteenth Century; Volume 2: Women Pioneers; Volume 3: The Developing Mosaic: EnglishCanadian Drama to Mid-Century; Volume 4: Colonial Quebec: French-Canadian Drama, 1606 to 1966. Toronto: Canadian Theatre Review Publications, 1978-1982. Weintraub, William, City Unique: Montreal Days and Nights in the 1940s and '50s. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1996.
BHiYNORTH
284
Index AM AS Repertory Theater, 160 Abbey Road Studios, 111 Abbott, George, 118 Abbott, Michael, 86 Absolutely Fabulous, 86 Academy of Music (Montreal), 33 Acorn, Milton, 164,267 Actor s Colony, 46 Adams, Bryan, 29,121 Adams, Lee, 205 Adamson, Frank, 158 Adderly, 165 Adelaide Court Theatre (Toronto), 207,208 Adilman, Mona Elaine, 266 Adilman, Sid, 147,148,152,179,182-185 Adilman, Toshiko, 179 Adrian, Max, 16 Adventures of Private Turvey, The, 115,142 After Hours, 66 Agnes of God, IS, 4S Agostini, Lucio, 55,194,269 Ahrens, Lynn, 226 Aimee!, 145 Ainslie, Robert, 110 Ain't We Got Fun, 152 Air Farce, 55 Airs on a Shoestring, 63, 86 Alberta Theatre Projects, 24,121 AldousJ.E.P.,34,267 Aleck,2S9 Alexander, Andrew, 89 Alexandra, the Last Empress, 181 Alhambra Theatre (London), 37 Atias,l93 Alice in Wonderland, 150 All Star Gambol, 38 All Stressed Up With Nowhere to Go, 25£^j V Allan, Andrew, 54,58 Allan, Anne, 229
Allan, Chad, 158,159 Allan, Eddie, 45 Allan,Ted, 163,194,195,269 Allen, Bob, 101 Allen, Jay Presson, 169 Allen, Lewis, 168-171 Allen, Peter, 21
Altman, Robert, 18 Always, 14 Ambassadors Theatre (London), 170 Ambridge, D.W., 80 American Musical Theater, 2 American Rockets, 43 And Now Noel Coward, 88 And You Thought Your Family Was Strange, 259 Anderson, Pamela, 29 Anderson, Susan, 110 Anne and Gilbert, 115 Anne ofAvonlea, 115 Anne of Green Gables, 12,106 Anne of Green Gables, The Musical, 1, 7,11-13, 18,22,24-26,63,100,104,106-115,122, 134,142,145-148,167,176-178,198-200, 207,234,242,246,247,248,259 Anne of the Island, 115 ./fomV,182,196,202 Annie Get Your Gun, 2,121,130,141 Annis, Francesca, 182 Anthony, Trey, 258 Antony and Cleopatra, 71 Anyone Can Whistle, 247 Anything Goes, 102 Anything That Moves, 231 Appelbaum, Louis, 65,74 Apprenticeship ofDuddy Kravitz, They 25, 182,185 Arcand, Denys, 13 Anfcn, Leslie, 48,115,135-137,140>lt4,
146,17^6,227,240,251,262,263 Are You Lonesome Tonight?,\45,148 Arena Stage (Washington), 169 Armenian,Raffi, 75 , Armstrong, Louis, 119 , ^^S^^,T^^^^ Ama2,Desi,60 Aronson, Boris, 138 Arthur, Jack, 42,43,48,51,52,85 Arthur Midge, 51,52 Artistes and Admirers^ 188 I Arts and Letters Club(Toronto), 30,85, 181,274 Arts Club Revue Theatre (Vancouver), 121,
123,124,126-128
In
not 60J
Ashley, Bob, 134,145,264 Assassins, 193 Asseltine, Robert George "Rob," 230,253 Association of Canadian Librettists, Composers and Lyricists, 140 Asterix Productions, 98 Astaire,Fred,13,257 Astley, Sue, 126,164 Atkey, Marilyn, 211,214 Atkinson, Brooks, 73 Atkinson, W.S., 46 Atlantic Symphony, 109 Atwood, Margaret, 8,207 Auber, Daniel Fran9ois-Esprit, 30 Auden,W.H,234 Australian Broadcasting Corp., 22 Avian, Bob, 102 Avon Theatre (Stratford), 74,80 Awkward Evening with Martin and Johnson, An, 257 Ayckbourn, Alan (Sir), 164 Ayckroyd, Dan, 89 Aylesworth, John, 51,185 Ayoub, Michael, 46,129,204 Ayrejack,40,48,273
limi i iwi t IIIIIIN
286
BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) Canada, 52, 117,129,133,136 B Movie, the Play, 208,209 Babies, Bless Them All, 147 Bacharach, Burt, 130 Baerg, Theodore, 230 Baerg, William, 158 BagBabies,2W Baker, Michael Conway, 122 Baker Street, 55,105,118,143,194,259 Bakers Wife, The, 161,247 Bala(ON),45 Ball, Benny, 104 Ballade, 144 Ballerina, 107 Ballet Russe,W Banff Centre, The, 138,188-190,214 Banks, Joe, 36 Barbizan Plaza Hotel (New York), 73 Barkerville Follies, 120 Barlow, Curtis, 149 Barna, Terry, 213 Barnes, Clive, 89,113,165,180 Barnum (Cy Coleman), 119 Barnum (JesselVGrudeff), 117
Barnum, P.T., 117 Barrett and Mackay, 147 Barras, Charles M., 35 B arris, Alex, 65,66 Barry, Phillip, 75 Barrymore, Ethel, 44 Barsky, Barbara, 126,230 Bart, Lionel, 20,21 Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning (University College), 8 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 103 Bass,Alfie,94,95 Basso, Guido, 243 Bassettjohn, 85 Bastien, Mark, 154 Bastion Theatre (Victoria), 199 Bawtree, Michael, 6,75,138,188,189,191,246 Baxter, Beverly (Sir), 70 Baylis, Lillian, 53 Bayview Playhouse (Toronto), 90,196, 202,204,208,209 Beattie, Earl, 68 Beauty and the Beast, 221 Beckwith, John, 131 Bedford, Stuart, 190 Beggar's Opera, The, 74 Beginning and End of the World, The, 157 Behan, Brendan, 84 Being Crazy is Fun, 131 Belafonte, Harry, 46 Bell, Karen, 227 Bell, Marilyn, 52 Bellows, Mary, 129 Bells Are Ringing, 101 Belsize Cinema, later Crest Theatre, 64 Ben Geet, Philip (Sir), 53 Bennett, Alan, 257 Bennett, Michael, 102 Bennett, Tony, 244 Benton, Nicholas, 73 Beowulf, 155 Beowu/f(musiczl), 159-161,223,247,260 Beowulf Enterprises Ltd., 157 Bergen, Candice, 169 Berger, Michel, 224 Berklee School of Music (Boston), 131 Berlin, Boris, 131 Bernhardt, Sarah, 221 Bernstein, Leonard, 68,91,150,179,179,237 Berton, Pierre, 55,56,143 Bertram, John, 267
Bertram, Neil, 266 Bessborough, Lord (Gov. Gen.), 44 Best Musicals, The,24 Best of All Possible Worlds, The (see also The Optimist), 68,150 Bethune—The Making of a Hero, 195 Betts, Jim, 11,22,76,91,92,129,132,134, 136,137,140,145,153,184,185,232,239, 240,260,263-266 Bey, Salome, 129,248 Bibb, Leon, 121,128 Biencourt, Jean de, 29 Biff Bing! Bang!, W Big Revue, The, 51,57,71 Big River, 193 Billy, 182 Billy Bishop Goes to War, 7,9-11,17,18,24, 26,76,164,166-169,176,211,242,246, 248,260 Billy Budd, 182 Birkenhead, Susan, 182 Birney, Earl, 115,142 Bishop, William Avery (Capt.), 167 Bistro Car on the CNR, A, 124-126,150, 248,260 Bite of the Big Apple, A, 180 Bittersweet, 240 Bizet, Georges, 32,188 Black, Don, 11 Black Crook, The, 35 Blackburn, Bob, 95 Blackouts, 48 Blair, Tony (Prime Minister), 15 Blanche, Frank, 80 Bleasdale, Alan, 148 Bligh, Stanley, 62 Blitzstein, Marc, 110 Blondel, 190 Blood Brothers, 17 Bloomfield, George, 121 BlumaAppel Theatre (Toronto), 139,220, . 230,232 Blumencranz, Karl, 143 Blyth Festival, 134 Bochner, Lloyd, 46 Bockjerry,97»118 Bolger, Ray, 60 Bolshoi Ballet, 100 Bonanza, 47 Boss Brass, 243,244 Boublil, Alain, 136,137,226
Boulez, Pierre, 155 Bourgeoise Gentilhomme, The, 119 Bowring, Marilyn, 181 Boyfrom Oz, The, 21 Boyfriend, The, 86 Boyle, Harry, 145 Boyle, Joseph Whiteside (Lt. Col.), 245 Braden, Bernard, 112 Bradley, Ian, 233 Bragg, Martin, 230,231 Braithwaite, Dennis, 151 Bramble, Mark, 182 Brannagh, Kenneth, 126 Brantley, Ben, 256 Braun, Pegi, 55 BraunsteinJefT, 98 Breaker Morant, 13 Brebner, Morwyn, 232,264 Brecht, Berthold, 6,83 Brennan, Brian, 183 Breslin, Mark, 57 Brever, Joann Green, 264 Bricusse, Leslie, 206 Bridge, Peter, 170 Bridgeman, Billie, 191 Bridewell Theatre (London), 6 Bridie, James, 53 Brigadoon, 63,130,141 Bright Sun at Midnight, 65 Brighton Beach Memoirs, 213 Bristol Old Vic, 71,72,87 British Canadian Theatrical Organisation Society, 38 British National Films, 49 Britt^n^ Benjamin, 91 Bfoadbetit, Aida, 59-62 8r0adf00t» B«iy, 163
Broadf00t, Ikve, 51,55,56,57,61,81,85,107 JBm®4w$y B&$m $#y Gowtnigbt* 1 IS Broadway Mnsual^ A^ 205 Broadwif Theater (Ne^lferk), 118,195 Brodckmse* Robert, 220 Brofifemn family 178, 179 Brooke^ Chris, 163,164 Bf00l4$Mt0a,20 Brooks AtMiisoo Theater (New Ifbrk), 25 Br0wii,Bte,89 Brown, Mturra$ 64 Br0wa, Steve, 21 Brubeck, Dave, 130 BuUte,36
I N DEX
9Q7 60/
Buckingham, Bill, 61,62 Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (Toronto), 84 Buddy, 206 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 119 Burgess, Michael, 198,230 Burke, Johnny, 146 Burning Passions Theatre, 231 Burtjim, 86 Bushnell,The (Hartford, CT), 227 Butt, Donna, 164 Butterflies Are Free, 129 Butterfly Ward, 139 Buttery (Niagara-on-the-Lake), 134 Byatt, Irene, 117,198
miHDmYiiffl
nnn 600
CNE Grandstand Show, 43,51,52,60,85, 86,97 COMUS Music Theatre, 75,191 Cabaret, 2,76,97,169,195,220 Cabaret and Musical Theatre Alliance (CAMTA), 83,90-92,138,140,219 Cable, Howard, 42,52,69,85,93,97,98,144 Cadman, Stephanie, 229 CageAux Faux, La, 182 Cahn, Sammy, 11 Caims, Glen, 231 Caird, John, 137,224 Calgary Herald, 1S3 Callbeck, Caroline, 148 Callow, Simon, 104 Came/of, 61,144,192 Cameron, Charles, 34 Cameron, George, 34 Cameron, Roy, 200,209,219,235 Campbell: Elaine, 12,83,105,106,108-111,198,199, 202,213,254,259,268 Norman, 1,6,11,12,17-19,26,50,59,68, 69,73,74,76,83,87,104-111,113-115, 117,142,143,147-150,186,198,199,201, 202,206,211-214,219,242,247,259,268 Campbell, Neve, 18,205 Campbell, Rick, 84 Campone, Merv, 123,124,260,263 Canada After Dark, 152 Canada and Its Provinces, 1 Canada Council for the Arts, 10,53,66,67, 78,81,88,146,202 Canada Goose, 85 CANADA ROCKS!: The Hits Musical Revue, 254
Canadettes, 51 Canadian Association of Broadcasters, 109,247 Canadian Brass, 45 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), 22,44 Canadian Illustrated News, 34 Canadian Magazine, 1 Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), 42 Canadian National Railway (CNR), 44, 45,150 Canadian Opera Company, 63 Canadian Pacific Railway, 29 Canadian Players, 66 Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission, 13 Canadian Stage Company "CanStage" (Toronto), 6,67,136,207,227,228, 230-232,253 Canadian Theatre Review, 203 Candide, 68, 76 Candy, John, 89 Canon Theatre (formerly Pantages) (Toronto), 225,252 Canova, Judy, 60 Capeman, 136 Capitol Theatre (Ottawa), 49 Capitol Theatre (Vancouver), 60 Capitol Theatre (Winnipeg), 42,102 Cariou, Len, 11,63,97,139,150,154,155, 192,193,220 Carman, Milton, 65 Carmen, 32 Carmen Jones, 32 Carnegie Hall (New York), 123 Caron, Sandra, 89 Carousel, 234 Carr, Emily, 15,19,115,198,201,206 Carriere, Berthold, 76 Carter, Jack, 63 Carver, Brent, 11,76,90,92,100,120, 123-125,179,192,220,222,230 Cascio, Anna Theresa, 226,262 Cats, 2,50,138,162,170,203,204,211, 216,217 Cavett, Dick, 169 Ceballos, Larry, 49 Celtic Mass for the Sea, A, 243 CentreStage (Toronto), 211,212 Century 21 Studios (Winnipeg), 158 Chamberlain, Douglas, 80,139,153
Champion, Gower, 50,179,180,195 Clark, John, 72,87 Clark, Petula, 21,194 Champion, Marge, 50,104 Champlain, Samuel de, 29 Classical Cabaret, 91,209 Champlain Productions, 178 Clear Channel Entertainment, 225 Chandler, Christine, 157 Clinton (ON), 162 Chapman, Christopher, 195 Closed Session, 153,154,210 Chapman, Vern, 55 Closer to the Sun, 225 Chappell Music, 157 Cluff, Susan, 134 Charleys Aunt, 55 Cocciante, Richard, 224 Charlie and Algernon (see Flowers for Cockburn, Bruce, 16 Algernon) Coe, Peter, 96,181 Charlotte Revue, The, 37 Cohan, George M., 15 Charlottetown Festival, 6,41,50,52,77,92, Cohen, Alexander "Alex," 117,118 100,107-110,114,115,119,129,131,138, Cohen, Leonard, 8,88 142-151,156,157,164,177,178,181,198, Cohen, Malka, 180 199,224,228-230,247,248,254 Cohen, Nathan, 46,63,94,108,109,119, Charnin, Martin, 119 139,143 Charter, (Sergeant), 40 Cohen, Phyllis, 94,139,140 Chateau Laurier Hotel (Ottawa), 44 Colas et Colinette, 30 Chase, Mary, 206 Colbourne, John, 227,229 Chautauqua, 41,273 Colbourne, Maurice, 44 Chaykin, Maury, 252 Cole, Allen, 92,231,232,266,269 Cheep, 37 Cole, Holly, 92 Cherry, Don, 153 Coleman,Cy,119,240 Cherry, Zena, 143 Colicos,John, 72 Chess, 193 Coliseum (London), 40 Chesterton, G.K., 252 Collected Works of Billy the Kid, The, 193 Chicago Sun-Times, 227 Colours in the Storm, 11,133,137,239,260 Chicago Tribune, 187,227 Columbia Records, 157 Chin Up, 40 Comden, Betty, 150 Chotem, Neil, 62 Comedy Theatre (London), 170,206 Chorus Line, A, 22,102,137,138,164,169 Company, The, 18,102 Christian Science Monitor, 76,196 Composers, Authors and Publishers Christie, Babs, 52 Association of Canada, 109,248 Christie, Dinah, 45,74,75,88,98 Concert Productions International, 202 Christie, Margot, 106 Coi^Kdemtion Centre of thefts * Christie, Robert, 45 (Cliarlott^own), 107,1084% 143,146, Christmas, Eric, 72 147,149,179 Chu Chin Chow, 60 Cosologiie, tb# 91,131^1^,139,148,183, Chu-Chen, 194 2QO,2QM32 Cimolino, Antonio, 193 Co&lgr, Cotmite, 85 Cineplex Odeon Corp., 203,205,220, " Xbnfte, I^chel, 144 Cirque du Soleil, 10,187,254 ' Cook» DofisM, 105 Citadel Theatre (EdmoM0f4 25,126(4$}, Coo^P€te^l6 182,214 OdtlH^iickt88 Cookman, Anthony, 86 City,St^;(V^icotf^ii^ Civic Theatre, 47 C^p^su^dxJ^dme, 118,^59 Cop|K>i^ Pftuck Fim& 194 Claman, Dolores, 26,59-<3»'&s ****?> 93-98,241,265 C0tt£&, Hemai&io Jr*f 103 Clap Hands, 85 Cortex aad CoMpany, 103 Clark, Christopher St. George* 84 Coiiltxmme, John, 205
INDEX
289
Coulter, John, 19,187 Counter Melody, 260 Courville, Albert de, 39 Couture, Suzette, 153 Coveny, Michael, 170 Cowan, Grant, 134 Coward, Noel (Sir), 37,49, 88,90,92, 111, 162,240 Cozens, Charles, 229,236-238,244,268 Cradle Will Rock, The, 110 Crawford, Michael, 182 Crazy for You, 223,236 Creley,Jack,72,74 Cremieux, Hector, 32 Crest Theatre (Toronto), 46,64,65-67,72, 73,87,93-95,109,129,204,207,208,211, 213,217 Crest Theatre Foundation, 65,93,204 Crew, Robert, 139,167,207,208,230 Crime Writers of Canada, 96 Crimson Veil, The, 231 Criswell,Kim,250 Criterion Theatre (London), 170 Croccini, Jim, 267 Cronenberg, David, 13,186 Cronyn, Hume, 218 Crosby, Bing, 60 Grossman, Allan, 264 Crowbar, 157 Cruel Tears, 23,165,261 Cue Magazine, 118 Cullum, John, 144 Curtains Up, 90, 92
BNHYlORTH
290
Da Kink in My Hair, 258 Daffodil Records, 157,159 Dafoe, Christopher, 124,125 Daily Express (London), 50, 70 Daily News (New York), 113 Daily Telegraph (London), 8,50 Dale, Cynthia, 139,198 Dale, Jennifer, 186 Dalhousie University (Haifax), 103 Dalrymple, Jean, 160 Dames at Sea, 159 Damn Yankees, 100,193 Dance Canada, 100 Dance Magazine, 103 Dancers Responding to AIDS, 103 Danforth Music Hall (Toronto) (see also The Music Hall), 203,207,208,256
D'Angelo, Beverly, 150,179,181 Daniels, Stan, 11,55,66,117 Danso, Michael, 131 Dante, Ron, 182 Davies, Frank, 157,158 Davies, Garaint Wyn, 208 Davies, Heather, 160,223 Davies, Lori, 156,159,161 Davies, Victor, 155,156-161,223,247,260 Davis: Donald, 29,46,64,65,67,129 EJ.,64 James, 64 Murray, 29,46,64,65,67,93,95 Davis Leather Company, 64 Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, A, 170 Days and Nights of Molly Dodd, The, 89 Deane, Joseph, 90 Death of the Bishop ofVbrindisi, 82 Delamont, Gordon, 126,131,178 Dempsey, Patrick, 213 Denison, Merrill, 45,274 Derrick Murdoch Award, 96 Desrosiers, Robert, 18 Dewhurst, Colleen, 179 Diaghlev, Serge, 40 Dickens, Charles, 21,29,93 Die Fleidermaus, 32 Diefenbaker, John (Rt. Hon.), 80 Diller, Phyllis, 169 Ding Dong at the Dell, 88 Disney, Walt, 107 Dobbin, D. Michael, 12 Dobie, Edgar, 205 Dodd,Cal,152,178,248 Doggs Hamlet, Cahoofs Macbeth, 234 Doherty, Brian, 46 Doherty, Denny, 228 Dominion Drama Festival, 44,53 Dominion Theatre (Winnipeg), 46 Domville, James de Beaujeu, 76,78, 80-82,265 Don Messers Jubilee, 171,242,261 Donate, Peter, 86 Donkin, Eric, 74,76 Donnelly, Pat, 224 Doohan, James, 65,211,212-215,217,218, 236,241 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, 53,114,132, 226,229,232
£/gvfc /o /£f'«W^^O-232 E.V. Young Award, 103 Easton, Richard, 72 FA^mj^m,m;; Ebb, Fred, 26,97,195,220 K^^yl^Skip^ Ebersole, Christine, 230 ' F^»gr,1tate (Toronto), 92, 23 3 Eckman, Philip, 213 :f^$^cy,m Ecstacy of Rita Joe, The, 1,26, 88,121:12£%JB, -W&^^^M1 248,254,261 Awi^if yfte^'Hk^?,^ 6^200^205 Ed Sullivan S&w^Wb; EdismJk^^^ "Bmtor^ lOOty 15 Eder, Richard, 1# AwMfat^ ^71, m^ Edgemont, 16 Ita £Mv % 16 Edinburgh Festival, 131,170 Fajm^e, Ritet, 11,15,45,^48,114,243,244 Edmonton journal, 145,183 Pmmtfer 142 Egoyan, Atom, 13 Feld Ballets, 103
Dorn, Harding, 93 Dorsey, Tommy, 243 Dotrice, Roy, 182 Doucet, Michael, 16 Dowie, Fran, 120 Dowie, Frank W., 121 Downtown (Toronto), 202 Dr. Music, 158 Drabinsky, Garth, 202,205,206,220,224-
INDEX
901
LUl
BHDWRY NORTH
909 LOG
Felix Awards, 254 Fellig, Usher (Arthur), 232 Fellini, Frederico, 7 Fenwick, Gillie, 72 Fenwick, John, 108,109,143,263 Ferguson, Jeremy, 88 Festival Lennoxville, 167 Festival of Mixed Crass, The, 207 Festival of New Musicals, 230 Fiddler on the Roof, 10,11,17, 66,76,97, 125,127,138 Field, Anthony, 137 Field, Sid, 50 Field of Stars, 22 Fields, Grade, 49 Fifth Avenue Theater (Seattle), 103 Fifty Million Frenchmen, 49 Fig Leaf, The,7% Filion, Jill-Diane, 127 Financial Times, 170 Fmdley, Timothy, 222,266 Finians Rainbow, 97,175,194 Fink, Bert, 181 Fink, Stanley, 73 Fmlay, Melodee, 90 Finley, Grade, 112 Finn, Stan, 131 Fireweeds: Women of the Yukon, 231,262 First World War (WWI), 39,41,48,167, 245,246 Fisk, Michelle, 153 Flarity, Stephen, 226 Flea in Her Ear, A,7l Flett, Sherry, 139 Flight Into Danger, 212 Floor Show, 51 Flowersfor Algernon, 25,182 Floyd S. Chalmers Children's Play Award, 132 Fo, Dario, 175 Foley, Cynthia, 102 Foley, Geraldine, 102 Follows, Laurence, 209 Fontaine, Robert, 195 For the Love of Howard, 153,154,181,181 Ford Centre (now the Toronto Centre for the Arts) (Toronto), 229 Forbidden Christmas, 207 Forever Plaid, 20% Formby, George, 50 Forty-Ninth Parallel, 81 Foster, Christine, 139
Foster, Norm, 176,262,263 Foster, Sutton, 257 Fotheringham, Alan, 126 Four Jacks and a Jill, 60 Four Seasons Musical Theatre (Victoria), 199,200 Fox, Michael J., 29 Fox, Rick, 228,229,265 Foy, Eddie Jr., 60 Franca, Celia, 51,52 Francis, Ron, 204 Francks, Don, 93,152,194,248 Frankenstein—Do You Dream?, 230,253 Frankenstein—The Man Who Became God, 207 Franklin, Barbara, 72 Fraser, Brad, 139,230 Fraser, Duncan, 255 Freedman, Bill, 64,65,67,71-73,110,112,205 Fridolinades, Les, 11,54,78 Friendlysong Theatrical Ventures Ltd., 215,217 Friends of Mine, 22,247 From Here and There, 86 From Leicester Square to Old Broadway, 59 From Shakespeare to Sondheim, 88 Fugitive, The, 107 Fuller, William Henry, 33,34,262 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A, 75 Furman, Roy, 225 Fylan, Mickey, 185,186 Gaines, Davis, 207 Gales, Lome, 80 Gallipoli, 13 Gait, JiU, 199 Gance, Abel, 224 Garber, Harry, 79 Garber, Victor, 11,162,192,193,196, 204,220 Garrard, Don, 62 Garvey, David, 157,158 Gas9on, Gabriel, 89 Gas9on, Jean, 75,76 Gay Deceivers, The, 105 Gazette, The (Montreal), 31,70,79,80,224 Gburek, Edda, 126,134 Gelinas, Gratien, 54,78 General Electric Company, 97 General Motors of Canada Ltd., 97 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, 61 George, Dan (Chief), 121
Grand Finale, The, 210-218,236 George Ignatieff Theatre (Toronto), 229 Grand Opera House (Toronto), 33,38,221 Georgia Straight (Vancouver), 120,126 Grand Theatre (London, ON), 38-41,44,46, Germann,Willi,121 69,70,87,200,218,248 Gershwin, George, 11,15 Grant, Freddie, 49 Gershwin, Ira, 3 Gravenhurst Opera House, 129,160 Gersten, Bernie, 102 Gray, Jack, 86 Gerussi, Bruno, 117 Gray, John, 9,14,16,17,19,25,54,115,120, Gesser, Sam, 182,183,185 147,164,166-171,231,234,239,240,242, Gibson, Margaret, 139,230 252,253,260,261 Gielgud, John, 46 Grease, 127 Giese, Rachel, 257 Great Adventure, The, 149 Gift to Last, A,\W Great Expectations, 110 Gilbert, William Schwenk (W.S.) (Sir), Green, Adolph, 150 31-34,71,74,76,91,188,242 Green, Justin, 21 Gimby, Bobby, 12,45 Greene, Lome, 47, 85,107 Gingold, Hermione, 212 Greenwich Theatre (London), 6 Girl in Pink Tights, The, 244 Greenwold,Jack,88 Glasgow Citizens Theatre, 64 Greer,John, 35 Glass Cage, The, 64,65 Gregory, Fran, 61 Glass Menagerie, The, 46 Gretzky, Wayne, 153 Glassman, Jodi, 91 Greyson, John, 269 Global Village Theatre (Toronto), 129 Grimaldi,Joe, 31 Globe and Mail, 69,70,72,74-76,80, 85, 88, Grossman, Larry, 184 89,91,95,118,131,133,139,143-146, 148,151,152,164,166,167,180,183,204, Groundworld Adventure, The, 132 Growing Season, The, 139,262 206,223,224,228,232 Cruder!, Marian, 11,26,55,56,105,116-119, Globe Theatre (Regina), 166 143,194,229,259 Glove, The (Toronto), 33 Guess Who, The, 157,158 Glover, Bill, 93 Guild of Canadian Musical Theatre Writers, Go Fly a Kite, 97 140,153 Godspell, 5,164,186,192,204 Guiness, Alec, 58 Coin Down the Road, 106 Gulf Oil of Canada Ltd., 98 Gondoliers, The, 76 Guthrie, Tyrone (Sir), 45,68,74, llg Golden, Ann, 82 Goodall, Howard, 21 Gatwiflig, Mike, 196,197 Goodbye Girl, The, 152 Guy-HcGrath, Stephen, 255 Goodman, Benny, 42 CtymJDtfa 130,13B44S, ,185'' Goodman Theatre (Chicago), 136,226 Qwp^E^md,B,%ML,^ Goodtime Charlie, 184 Offy,26,^» Goon Show, The, 20, 71 Gordon,Alan, 151,152,154,264 OMS. Mmmmt, 12,fS, 262 Gordon, Paul, 224 ":$$£ Km^re, 32,74$B,' Gordon, Victor, 49 K^&^-Ampm The^lLoodo^ 258 Gore, Christopher, 144,194 jfadyian:^^m^%l^' ;|[^l^Artbw,2ia Gore,Leslie, 144 ' , Bi^ 79,127,1S1,193,1H M7 Gottlkb, Mymn, 20^^ Gould, Glenn, 15»?|t Hamfm$24,2$2 Goulet, Robert, 12,60,61,6ft, 70,74,105, Hal^Ludovi^Si Half a Sixpence, 110, 121 192,195 Graffitti, 96 HaMf^(HS},76,171 mii/m Ghrmidt-Herald, 150,181 Grand Ballets Canadiennes, Let, SI
in
9QQ uuu
IHINY NORTH
294
Hall, Monty, 51,68 Hall, Peter (Prof.), 8 Hall, Sir Peter (Sir), 194 Hamilton, Barbara, 51,56,90,108,110-112, 114,153 Hamilton, Ross, 40,273 Hamilton Place, 98,230 Hamilton Spectator, The, 230 Hamlet, 115,151,179,180,182 Hamlet: The Musical, 150,178 Hamlisch, Marvin, 226 Hammerstein, Oscar II, 11,14,22,26,32, 105,132,136,242 Hancox, Bill, 145 Hannaford Street Silver Band, 115 Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave, 170 Happy Gang, The, 44,243 Happy New Year, 75,169 Happy Time, The, 195 Harburg,E.Y"Yip,"97 Hardy, Hagood, 243 Harkness Theatre (Broadway), 66 Harnick, Sheldon, 97,118 Harper, Valerie, 97 Harris, Blanche, see Blanche Lund Harron, Don, 17-19,26,51,54-56,65,104109,113-115,142,143,147,148,192, 198-200,206,259,268 Harron, Mary, 276 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, 18 Hart, Harvey, 213 Hart, Moss, 192 Hart House (University of Toronto), 44,64,273 Hart House Theatre, 45,49,53,54,71,72,85, 139,229 Hartman, Paul, 87 Harvie, Eric, 146 Hatty, Terry, 254 Hauptman, William, 194 Havoc, June, 60 Hawken, Tom, 85 Hayward, Susan, 60 Haywood, John, 86 Haywood,Rod,259 Hearn, George, 182 Hearn, Roma, 178 HeeHaw, 185,200 Hefner, Hugh, 75 Heinel, Cynthia, 165 Helen Hayes Theatre (New York), 182 Hellman, Lillian, 46
Hello, Dolly!, 2,138,141,159 Helzapoppin!,ll% Henderson, Florence, 97 Hendry,Tom, 74,75 Hennig, Kate, 92,213 Henning, Doug, 186 Henry, Martha, 200 Heppner, Ben, 42,91 Her Majesty's Theatre (Montreal), 70,72 Her Majesty's Theatre (London), 182 Her Scienceman Lover, 104 Herald-Tribune (New York), 73 Herbert, Victor, 115,242 Herman, Jerry, 167,182 Herrmann, Bernard, 233 Hero ofMariposa, The, 68,150 Herve,Florimond,31,32 Heslup, Willie, 199 Hey, Marilyn!, 26,150,151,154,181 Hibou, Le, see Le Hibou Hicks, Kevin, 139,189,214,235 Hildebrande,Jim,158 Hilker, Gordon, 59,81 Hill, Anne Fairbrother, 31 Hill, Arthur, 104 Hill, Barton, 31 Hill, Dan, 222 Hill, Rosalie, 31 Hippodrome (London), 49 Hired Man, The, 21 Hindemith, Paul, 189 Hirschfield,Al,15 History Boys, The, 257 History of the Village of Small Huts, The, 86 Hobson, Harold, 111 Hochauser, Jeff, 115 Hockey Night in Canada, 95,241 Hogg, James, 30 Holden, John, 45,46 Holiday, 75 Holiday Festival Singers, 158 Hollingsworth, Michael, 86 Holman, George, 33,36 Holman Opera House (London, ON), 33 Holman Opera Troupe, 31,33 Honnegar, Arthur, 116 Horsfall, Basil, 59 House That Jack Built, The, 63 House, Eric, 85,139 House of Martin Guerre, The, 10,25,135,178, 226,227,253,262
How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, 193 Howe, Gordie, 153 Huckleberry Finn, 193 Hudson, Don, 51 HufFa, Joanne, 231 Hughes, Howard, 181 Hullo, Canada, 39 Human Comedy, The, 183,197 Hummer Sisters, 86 Hummingbird Centre (see also O'Keefe Centre), 203,221 Humphrey, Hubert, 111 Humphrey and the Dumptrucks, 165,261 Hunter, Don, 157 Hunter, Grant Mitchell, 128 Huron Country Playhouse, 140 Hurst, Scott, 83,90 Hutchison, Janelle, 134 Hyland, Frances, 44,121 Hyslop, Jeff, 76,100,101,125,132,220 7,224 I Remember Mama, 23,119,144 rilTellYouMine...IfYou Tell Me Yours, 134 Illidge, Paul, 64,67 Illustrated London News, 111 Imperial Theatre (Toronto), 205 In the Klondike,^ Inside Canada, 124 Inside from the Outside, 178 Into The Woods, 77,206 International Musical of the Year, 116 Internet Theatre Database, 24 Intimate Recital Revue, 41 Invention of Love, The, 72 Investigator, The, 57, 85,212 Iolanthe,76,2W Irish Rovers, 248 Irma La Douce, 21* Irving, Henry, 221 Iscove, Robert, 196 It'll Never Get WelllfYouPkk^,, 54
Jack—,•AF/a$Fm^$^\' Jack andJill, 4$ Jacks, Susan, 121 Jacks, Terry, 121 Jackson, Arthur, 24 Jackson's Point (ON), 46
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, 132,184 Jacobi, Lou, 55 Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, 89,121-124,158 James, Polly, 110 Jane Eyre (Paul Gordon), 224 Jane Eyre (Shaper-Stevens), 110,144,146, 248 Jane Mallet Theatre (Toronto), 54,226 Jarrett, Henry, 35 Jarvis, Bob, 94 Jasper Station, 262 Jefferson Award, 227 Jenkins, Alison, 255 Jennings, Will, 224 Jersey Boys, 257 Jessel, Raymond "Ray," 11,23,26,55,56,83, 105,116-119,143,144,194,259 Jest of God, The, 18 Jesus Christ Superstar, 157,179,196 Jewish Repertory Theatre (New York), 194, 196,197 Jewison, Norman, 11,12,18,39,51,55,56, 218,219 Joey, 145 Joey—or "God Created Man, But I Created Newfoundland," 164 Jeffrey Ballet, 18 Johnny Belinda, 14,143,149,157,263 Johnson, Bryan, 164 Johnson, E. Pauline, 15,120 Johnston, Jimmy, 59,61,100 Johnston, Bob, 115 Jolso%Al,43 *" Joe^/Chiis, 7
Jotjei, Cliff, f 15,144,147,1480^153, . , . 179-181^^26 Jones,Ete^lTS Joitt^ TOII^ 21,191,24% .-' J0fi^i^e%Jpet^v2 Jh^^:^t^^mming1^^c0kr bmmmttt$% 8 Jmfm^Pwn^(f^,l43 45
;)mtm$&K&im>^122^123
jui^w>, ia4, i», iskm.m
. J&tkeiSl ' JnHe^lOS.lSO JvH^SfoWt&b JtJlari School of Mask (New York), 61,126 Jmtine, 129
INDEX
295
Illumine HII HH
296
.0,187 Kander, John, 26,97,195,220 Kaplan, Jon, 229 Kareda,Urjo,144,179 Kastner, John, 153 Kelly, 194 Kelly, Barbara, 112 Kelly, Deirdre, 228 Kelly, Ned, 15 Kempson, Voigt, 159,160,161 Kennedy, John R, 93 Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), 202 Kenny, Sean, 159,160 Kern, Jerome, 102 Kerr, Deborah, 49 Kerr, Don, 163 Kerr, Jean, 105 Kerr, Walter, 73,105,113,169 Kert, Larry, 61 Keys, Daniel, 182 Keys, Janice, 124 Khan, Hazrat Inayat, 233 Kidder, Margaret "Margot," 100,103 Kidstuffi66 Kildonan Park (Winnipeg), 63 Kilmer, Val, 196 King andI, The, 63,138,238 King Lear, 65 King of Friday Night, The (see also Rock and Roll), 111 King of Hearts, 105 King of Kensington, 244 King, Martin Luther Jr., 175 Kirby,Blaik,88,151,152 Kirkland, Bruce, 131,145 Kiss of the Spider Woman, 120,179,192, 220,223 Kissel, Howard, 165,256 Kitzwiser, Kay, 93 Kitsalano Boys' Band, 125 Klaatu, 157 Kleban, Ed, 137 K/eeWyck,l9S,2Ql Klotz, Florence, 138 Kneebone,Tom, 65,66,72,73, 87,88,90, 92,244,246 Knelman, Martin, 163,193 Knuttel, Wolfgang, 122 Koffman,Moe,15,243 Kotcheff,Ted,183 Kozak,John, 133
Kraglund, John, 75 Krall, Diana, 92 Kretzmer, Herbert, 251 Kroeger, Uwe, 222 Kronborg 1582,144,150,178-181,248 Kuchwara, Michael, 256 Kunze,223 Kurosawa, Akira, 7 La Ballet Concert, 61 La Jolla Playhouse (La Jolla, CA), 193,225 La Plaza Theatre (Toronto), 208 La Mandragola, 151 La Revefantasque, 61 La Scala (Milan), 3 Lacey, Liam, 86, 89 Lackey, Tom, 228,265 Lady and the Logger, The, 211 Lahr,John, 7 Lake Simcoe, 45,46 Laliberte, Guy, 187 Lamb, Thomas, 202 Lambert, Lisa, 229,257 Lane, Stewart R, 185 lang,k.d.,21,121 Langham, Michael, 74,118 Lansbury, Angela, 150 Larry s Party, 230,248,253,263 Last Call—A Post Nuclear Cabaret, 127 Last Night of Starlight, 263 Last Resort, The, 263 Last Winter, The, 160 Latimer, Jeffrey, 208 Lauder, Harry (Sir), 42 Laugh In, 57 Laught With Leacock, 107 Laurence, Margaret, 18 Lavalee, Calixa, 12,34 Laurentis, Bill "Willy" de, 88,91 Laurentis, Joe de, 91 Lavender Hill Mob, The, 94 Lawrence, Sean, 126 Layton, Joe, 182 Le Hibou (Ottawa), 186 Leacock, Stephen, 20,68,69,88 Learning, Walter, 148,207 Leave it to Beaver is Dead, 193 Lee, Peggy, 45 Legend of the Dumbells, 41,148,256 Leigh, Andrew, 78 Leigh, Mitch, 194
Leiterman, Doug, 106 Leiterman, Richard, 106 Lemay, Jacques, 114,148 Lenya, Lotte, 83 Leo, the Royal Cadet, 34 Leonidoff, Leon, 42,43,60,102 Leonowens, Anna "Mrs. Anna," 138 LePage, Robert, 13,187 Lerner, Alan Jay, 7, 8,26,139 Les Miserables, 2,21,114,136,137,162,188, 194,198,204,206,221,224,250,251,256 Lescarbot, Marc, 30 Let's Go, 159 Levy, Eugene, 89 Lewis, Emory, 118 Lewis, Roy Harley, 146 Lewis, Sheri, 181 Liberace, 110 Lieber, Jerry, 25,182,184,185 Lief, Arthur, 69 Lies and Legends, 214 Lies and Other Lyrics, 264 Lies My Father Told Me, 194 Life Can Be—Like Wow!, 119 Like Can Be Like Wow, 143 Life,A,lS2 Lightfoot, Gordon, 16,21,88,235,236 Lights of New York, 49 Lights tone, Marilyn, 144 Like Father, Like Fun, 25 Lillie, Beatrice, 36,37,41,257 Lillie, Lucie, 37 Lillie, Muriel, 36,37 Lillie Trio, 37 Lillo, Larry, 218
L imelight Dinner Theatre (Toronto),90,134 Lincolns, The, 167 Linden, Hal, 97 Linsley, Karen, 154 Lion King, The, 221 Lister, Laurier, 63, 86 Listowel (ON), 168 Lithe and in Person, 127 Little Big Man, 121 Little Foxes, Thef 46 Lti&JLtkeMvgbtA) 1*1;,,' Little Lord Faunitoriy, $46* Little Mercys First Murdtr^Z Little Night Music, A, 5,35,155,193 Little Princess, A, 242 Little Shop of Horrors, 67,185,204,213-215,217
Little Women, 264 Littler, William, 3,19,54,179,179 Littlest Hobo, The, 139 Littlewood, Joan, 162,163 Live Entertainment Corporation of Canada (later Livent Inc.), 205,220,224-226, 240,252 Livingstone, Linda, 85 Lockhart, Araby, 85,133 Lockhart, Gene, 41 Lockhart, June, 41 Loesser, Frank, 66,239 Loew, Marcus, 202 Log of the Skippers Wife, 264 Logan, Joshua, 118 Lowe, Ruth, 243 London Coliseum, 40 London Free Press, 70,144,145,218 London Palladium, 50,110, 111, 120,168 London Symphony Orchestra, 160 Long, Jeremy, 167,167 Look Back in Anger, 192 Look Ma, I'm Human, 87,117 Lord of the Rings, 252,256 Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, 60 Los Angeles Times, 180 Lottery Madness, 207,208 Louden, Dorothy, 88 Louis Kiel, 36 Louise Lortel Theatre (New York), 170 Love and Maple Syrup, 88 Love Boat, The, 119 Love Me, Love My Children, 129 Loves Labours Lost, 125,150 Lowe, Ruth, 243 Ludv%, Robert, 159
Ly%0tvidm, 102420,J26 ;l4ii*d, Akif4l, 48~^%£7» &,71,74,97, 107-111,131,140,142,1131145-148,178, ^IT^IS^W Ii*04 Ma^ (Hi^sJlip^SS, 69-71, ;p 30^1^142,146,1 Ism$&>l*ymsl6$ -
Luscomjb^ George* 162* i63 ;Lyte,Jobn,38 •l&m>Glttbii,:50' M Squtm E&tertatmm€|E%"20S MCA (M^ic Corporatidn of America), 73 MMLmves -forever, 127,129 MacBeao, Andrew, 180,180
I N DEX
907 LlG/
BHHDRIIY NORTH
298
Macbeth, 125 Macbeth—A Rock Opera, 211 MacDermot, Gait, 11,78,79,81,157,183, 194,196,197,265 Macdonald, Ann-Marie, 231 Macdonald, Brian, 76,78-81,90,148, 182-185 Macdonald, Olivia, 79 Macdonald, Grace, 14,42,62,100-103 Macdonald, Grant, 45 Macdonald, Ken, 126 Macdonald, Rose, 55,70 Machievelli, Niccolo, 151 Mack, Paul, 229 Mack and Mabel, 179,179 MacKenzie, Fraser, 255 Mackenzie, William Lyon, 9 MacKernan, Stephen, 207,208 Mackintosh, Cameron (Sir), 2,71,104, 138,140,186,203,206,251 MacLachlan, Murray, 16,228 Macleans, 228 MacLennan, Hugh, 54 MacLennan, Michael Lewis, 268 MacLeod, Alistair, 255 MacMillan, Scott, 243 MacNee, Patrick, 208 MacNefF, Stephen, 188,190,191 MacNeil,Rita,16,243 MacPherson, Fraser, 121 MacPherson Playhouse (Victoria), 127 MacSween, Donald, 78, 80,81,197 Made in the Mountains, 188 Madras House, The, 232 Maggie May, 183 Magic Flute, The, 32 Magic Show, The, 186 Magic Trumpet, The, 155 Maid of Cashmere, The, 30 Maillet, Antoinine, 231 Main Line Circuit, 35 Making of a Musical, The, 135 Malek, David, 140 Malenfont, Lloyd, 52 Malkin,W.H,59 Mallet, Gina, 136,203 Mallett, Jane, 46,51,54,55,65,274 Mallory, Doug, 158 Maltby, Richard Jr., 91,137,184,185 Mama Let Me Sing, 209 Mama Mia, 5,194,206
Mame, 110 Man of La Mancha, 141,194 Mancini, Henry, 244 Mandelbaum, Ken, 11 Mandragola, 151,154,248,264 Manings, Allan, 65 Manitoba!, 56 Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC), 46,74, 124,155,159,193,211,217,230 Mann, David, 196 Mann, Peter, 196 Mannering, Peter, 198,199 Mannings, Frederic, 54 Manson, Margery, 62 Maranatha, 125 Marcus, Joan, 257 Marcus Loewe's Downtown, 202 Marden, Marti, 193 Margaret Eaton Hall (Toronto), 46 Marilyn Tapes, The, 181 Marion Malkin Memorial Bowl (Vancouver), 59,60,61,63,127 Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), 170 Marks, Alice (Alicia Markova), 20 Marks, Robert William "R.W.," 35,36,155 Marks Brothers Dramatic Company, 35,36, 41,48 Marlene, Marlene, 86 Marquis Theater (New York), 256 Mars, 186 Mars, Susannah, 184 Marshall, Jim, 131 Marshak,Judy,90 Marshall, Larry, 179 Martin, Andrea, 76,89,204 Martin, Bob, 229,256,257 Martin, Connie, 89 Martin, Margaret, 199 Martin, Mary, 160 Martin Beck Theatre (New York), 118 Martin Guerre, 226 Martins Opera House (Kingston), 35 Marx, Groucho, 11,214 Mary, 144,194 Mason, Charles Kemble, 31 Mass, 179 MassAppealj2MassAppealj2QfoQfo Massey, Raymond, 44,81,273 Massey, Vincent (Gov. Gen.), 10,53,81,273 Massey Foundation, 44,273 Massey Hall (Toronto), 203,273
Matter of Heart, A, 92 Maynard, Fredelle Bruser, 140 Mayne, Lori, 149 Mayoff, Steven, 229 McAllister, Loraine, 61 McAndrew, Barb, 178 McAndrew, Jack, 143,178 McAndrew, John, 86 McAnn, Sean, 129 McAnuff, Des, 11,193,194,257 McCallum, Conrad, 232 McCarthy, Sheila, 76 McConnell,Rob,243 McDonald, Mary Ann, 133,152 McDowell, Eugene A., 33 McGill University, 54,78,80,130,197 McGill Recording Service, 79,80,248 Mcllwraithe, Jean Newton, 34,267 Mclntosh, Duncan, 226 McKay, Stuart, 86,87,97,98 McKeUar,Don,229,257 McKinnon, Catherine, 63,198 McLaren, Jack, 273 McLaren, Norman, 11 McLaren Advertising, 93 McLean, Quentln, 39 McLellan, Gene, 16 McLeUan, Michael, 229 McLuhan, Marshall, 20 McManus, Don, 117 McMillan, Andrew, 55 McMillan, Richard, 76 McNally, Terence, 220 McNamara, Helen, 66 McPeek,Ben,85,145 McPherson, Aimee Semple, 145 Me Nobody Knows, The, 67 Meat Loaf, 180 Medea, The, 208 Medium, The, 75 Meehan, Thomas, 196 Meet the Navy, 49,50,264 Meet the Navy on Tour, 49 Melbourne Symphony, 22, Melody Fair (TonffiG^ 6&$£
MelviEe Boys, The, l^V Menken, Alan, 1SS Menotti, Giancarlo, 75, SI Mercer, William M., 29 Mercer Hansberry Theater (Newlfork),89 Mercury Musical Developments, 6
Mercury Theatre, 110 Merrick, David, 181 Messer, Don, 244 Metcalfe,Vince,92 Metropolitan Opera (New York), 56 Mews, Peter, 54,55,85,108,112 Michael, Janet, 255 Michaels, Lome, 54 Middleton, Jessie Edgar, 1 Midsummer Nights'Dream, A, 52,59,140,145 Mietkiewicz, Henry, 153 Mikado, The, 11,74,76,212 Mi'knaw First Nation, Mi'kmaq, 29,30 Milgram, Maureen, 199,200 Mille, Agnes de, 4 Mille, WiUiamC.de, 61 Miller, Glenn, 244 Miller, Joey, 19,48,91,98,130,134,137-140, 145,183,207,230,237,238,261,262,267 Miller, Roy, 229 Miller, Roger, 193 Millerd, Bill, 128 Milligan, Tuck, 160 Mills, John (Sir), 110 Mills-Cockell, John, 186 Minor Adjustment, A, 25,206 MinskoffTheatre (New York), 180 Mirvish, David, 76,148,205,206,208,224, 225,228 Mirvish, Ed, 76,202,204-206,217,220, 225,228 Mirvish Productions, 229,248,252,254 Miserables, Les, see LesMiserables^ Miss Saigon, 137,221,223,256 .;Mut$rLincoln, 182 Mitchell,Joni,8,16,20,21,38,236 ^3^^1,1^23,165^164*^^^6 Mitcell,WO.269 Moll Flamders,116 Mollen Car,231 Moliere,119,138 Molanar,Juliain,227,231 Moolnar,Julius,86,117
; l^^^M^ii^l;: Motgonnery,Lucy Maud,xiii,12,108,110,149 Montreal Repertory Theater,50 Montreal Theatre Ballet,79 Montreal Theatre Ballet,79
Mmfor/%;J€^%
HDEX
900 uJG
Moore, Dora Mavor, 29,47,53,55,56 Moore, Frank (Rev.), 53 Moore, Mary Tyler, 214 Moore, James Mavor, 12,14,45,53-58,62, 65,68-70,86,87,105,107-109,134,142, 143,146,147,149,167,177,234,236,237, 240,247,249,259,263,266,268 Moose That Roared, The, 265 Morawetz, Oskar, 91,131 Morawetz,Ruth,91,209 Morley, Sheridan, 223 Morosco Theater (New York), 24,76,169 Morris, Libby, 57 Morris, Richard, 26,65,84,85,87,93-95,97, 98,265 Morrison, Greg, 229,257 Morse: Barry, 65,71-73 Heyward, 73 Sydney, 73 Mortifee, Ann, 1,15,89,91,100,120-122, 157,243,244,261,267 Mortifee, Jane, 123,125,126 Motorama, 97 Mowat, Aline, 222 Moyse Hall (McGill), 79,80 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 32 Mr. Scrooge, 11,62,65,93-95,167,177,265 Much Ado About Nothing, 125 Muir, Alexander, 37 Mullock, Cawther, 38 Mulock, Alfred, 46 Mulroney, Brian (Rt. Hon.), 15 Mummer's Play, 163 Mummer's Troupe (Newfoundland), 163 Munn, Scott, 218 Muppet Show, 184 Murray, Alan "Al," 40,273 Murray and Donald Davis Ltd., 64 Music By Faith (CBC), 243 Music Hall, The (Toronto), 35,208 Music Theatre Studio Ensemble (MUTSE) (Banff Theatre), 11,138,188,190,191,214 Musicians Union, 65 Musical Futures (Greenwich Theatre), 6 Muskoka, District of, 45,46,64,65 Muskoka Festival, 46,129,153 Muskoka Foundation of the Arts, 129 Mussoc (University of British Columbia Musical Theatre Society), 53,100,101, 103,121,125-127,164,167,214
SiiiY NORTH
300
Mustakes, Alex, 140 My American Cousin, 16,106 My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 18 My Fair Lady, 2,20,76,138,175 My Fur Lady, 76,78-83,197,248,265 My Three Angels, 131,139 Mystery of the Oak Island Treasure, The, 132 90 Minutes Live With Peter Gzowski, 152,159 MW, 227,230 Napoleon, 26,221,223,224,248,265 Nash, N.Richard, 21,195 Nash, Nowlton, 50 National Alliance for Musical Theatre, 230 National Arts Centre (Ottawa), 88,185,222, 227,230 National Ballet of Canada, 18,51,79,79 National Ballet School, 18 National Film Board of Canada, 11,49,81, 243 National Theatre School, 72,81 Navy Show, The, 48 Needfire, The, 228,248,254,265 Negin, Louis, 88,89 Nelligan, 265 Neptune Theatre (Halifax), 76,171,181,208, 217,218 Neville, John, 76,126,208 New Century (formerly Danforth Music Hall), 207,208 New Play Society, 47,53,55,68,69,142 New Theatre (London), 111 New York City Center, 24,160 New York Daily News, 256 New York Post, 165,169 New York Telegraph, 40 New York Times, 73,78,81,89,113,122,124, 165,169,176,180,220,242,256 New Yorker Theatre (formerly Embassy Cinema) (Toronto), 209,256 New Zealand, 17 Newcombe Theatre (Victoria), 199 Newell, Norman, 111, 122 Newman, Red, 273 Newton-Davis, Billy, 91 Nichol, Ruth, 92,101,121,123,128 Nichols, Liz, 183 Nichols, Mike, 168-171 Nickinson, John, 31 Nicol, Eric, 10,25,104,105,135,150, 178,206
Nicholas Nickleby, 188 NichoUs, Alan, 259 Nightcaps, The, 20 Nimmins, Phil, 106 Nine, 137 Nixon, Doug, 61,62,105 Nixon, Richard (Pres.), 81 No Great MischieJJ255 No, No, Nanette, 59,75 Noel, 125 Norman, Karl, 125 Norman, Marek, 76,100,101,120,125, 126,149,178,230,231,261,263 Norman Conquests, 164 North Shore Music Theatre (Beverly MA), 76 North York, North York, 91 Northmore, Jack, 57 Not Likely, 37 Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops, 11 Not Wanted on the Voyage, 266 Noto, Lore, 214 Notre Dame de Paris, 224,254 Novello, Ivor, 223 Novick, Julius, 122 Nowlan,Alden,207 Nunn, Trevor (Sir), 6,137,236 Nunsense, 207 Nylons, The, 196
Olympiad, 126,150 Orc a Summers Night, 140,145,266 On the Buses, 208 O«ft? in a Blue Moon, 22 Ondaatje, Michael, 8,193 Onefor the Road, 50, 79 O'Neil, Sandra, 90 Ontario Heritage Foundation, 202 Ontario Heritage Trust, 203 0^7,89,131,266 Opera Comique (London), 33 Opera House (Gravenhurst), 46 Opera House Theatre, The (see La Plaza Theatre) Optimist, The, 68,69,266 Orangeville (ON), 140 Ornadel, Cyril, 110 OrpheeAux Enfers, 32 Orpheus in Hades, 32 Orpheus in the Haymarket, 32 Orpheus in the Underworld, 32 Osbourne, John, 162 Osaka (Japan), 112 O'Shea,Tessie,94,95 Osterman, Lester, 179,181 Ostrovsky, Alexander, 188 Othello, 165 Ottawa Citizen, 145,228 Ottawa Journal, 144 Out of the Blue, 224 Outrageous!, 139,149,230,253 Ouzounian, Richard, 1,74,76,100,120,121, 124-126,149,167,211-218,230-23|, 256, 260,261,263 ''Owatfj*, Dave, 103 Ovl|0MWbael,225 Oij^fCm^jfnion on to C&mf^i^r^^ 6, ?^l^:
110intheShade,2l O'Connor, Donald, 206 O'Connor Sisters, 36 O'Day, Patsy, 55 Odyssey Theatre (Santa Monica, CA), ISO Of Toronto the Good, 84 Offenbach,Jacques (Jacob), 31,32, ill1 Oh Calcutta!, 204 Oh Coward!, 88 <MN ijflfeat* i^^.;. Oh! What a Lovely War, 163,164,194 PROCanada Oh Please Louise, 105,150 O'Keefe Centre (now Hummingbird Qcsgtt^fjf ^^^'^^ffti^is^ 137 "^^^^^ia 117,118,192,203,221 Oklahoma!, 10,20,21,56,13^1^^^^ :^^13f ^^^l^iejaf : 188,234,236,247 oldconterMinsterlsTab,85 Old Vic (London),31,53,76,206
Oliver, Stephen, 188,190 07/wr/, 2,20,96,138,159/234 Oliver Twist, 21 Olivier, Laurence, 94
^^M^m^^>--
,|yt^Hii^l4S^ PM^^etfe$tf^|^gp^)^2S6 PaimeE, ^^iid^Of Papmges Tteatre (Toronto), 205,225 Parttages Theatre (Winnipeg), 63
INDEX
301
BUDiY NORTH
302
Panych, Morris, 126 Paper Mill Playhouse (Millburn, NJ), 159 Paper Wheat, 7,163,246 Papp, Joseph, 183,193 Parade, 192 Paradise Hi/1,143 Parker Playhouse (Fort Lauderale), 144 Parker, Rocky, 213 Patel,Aniruddh(Dr.),241 Patinkin, Sheldon, 89 Paris (France), 21,31 Patria II: Requiem for a Party Girl, 75 Patriot, The (Montreal), 31 Pauline McGibbon Theatre (Toronto), 134 Peake, Linda M., 142 Pearl, Bert, 45,63 Pear's Cabaret (Toronto), 86 Peggy Sue Got Married, 148,206 Ptlagie, 150,231,232,253,266 Pelagie-la-Charette, 231 Pendleton, Austin, 185 Pennington, Bob, 139 Peppiatt, Frank, 51,185,185,200 Perfect Timing, 238 Performing Arts in Canada, 227 Perrault, Ernie, 105 Peroff, Peter, 202 Persephone Theatre (Saskatoon), 165 Peter Pan,94,196 Peters, Bernadette, 159 Peterson, Eric, 120,164,167-171,248 Peterson, Greg, 237 Peterson, Oscar, 244 Petty, Frank, 72 Petty, Ross, 153 Phantom of the Opera, 23,138,162,204-206, 220,223,225,251 Phillips, Melinda, 90 Phillips, Nancy, 264 Phillips, Robin, 183,222,230 Phipps, Fred, 114 Phoenix Theatre (Edmonton), 208 Phoenix Theatre (London), 206 Piaf,B5 Piaf, Edith, 21,194 Piaf: Her Songs, Her Loves, 128 Pied Piper, 266 Piccadilly Theatre (London), 65 Pickett,Hugh,13,60,61,62 Pickford,Mary,37,38 Pickwick, 25,110
Pieces of Eight (Jule Styne), 25,182 Pieces of Eight (Laurier Lister's revue), 86 Piercy, Shel, 127 Pierrot Players, 41,42 Pillar, Heinar, 139 Pinsent, Gordon, 114,138,144,181 Pippin, 175 Pirates ofPenzance, The, 74,76 Pitre, Louise, 91,194 Place to Stand, A, 195 Plamondon, Luc, 195 Planche, John Robinson, 32 Playboard, 103 Playhouse Theatre Company (Vancouver), 255 Plays and Players, 112,220 Player's Club (Toronto), 44,273 Playground, 207 Please Dont Eat the Daisies, 105 Plummer, Christopher, 72 Plunkett, Albert "Al," 40,273 Plunkett, Mert "M.W." (Capt.), 39,40,273 Pollock, Harry J., Ill Poor Alex Theatre (Toronto), 193 Porgy and Bess, 179 Porky s, 7 Port Carling Memorial Hall, 46 Port Carling Summer Theatre, 129 Port Royal (now Annapolis) (NS), 29,30 Porteous, Timothy, 78,80,81,265 Porter, Cole, 2,49,75,124,162,242 Porter, Helen, 145 Porter, MacKenzie, 134 Portman, Jamie, 121,144 Poste, Dorothy, 86 Potter, Mitch, 228 Powell, Michael, 81 Praedon, Jerome, 222 Praise, 90 Pratt, John, 49,50 Pratt Foundation, 22 Presentation House (North Vancouver), 127 Pressburger, Emerick, 81 Previn, Andre, 244 Price, Lonnie, 185 Priestly, J.B., 65,162 Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The, 169 Primedia Productions, 207 Prince, Harold "Hal," 55,118,120,192,220 Prince Charles Theatre (London), 85 Prince Edward Hotel (Toronto), 182 Prince Edward Island, 12
Prince of Wales Theatre (London), 50 Princess of the Stars, 30 Princess of Wales Theatre (Toronto), 221, 224,228,252,258 Princess Theatre (Toronto), 38,221 Private Turveys War (see Turvey) Prix Gencourt, 231 Producers, The, 24,184,196,252 Programme X, 12 Ptarmigan—or a Canadian Carnival, 12, 34,266 Public Theater (New York), 193 Puccini, Giacomo, 188 Puig, Manuel, 220 Pulitzer Prize, 230 Pump Boys and Dinettes, 204 Punch,\\\,\l§ Pupello, Angela, 257 Purchase College Conservatory of Dance (NY), 103 Purely for Pleasure, 86, 87 Quartet Productions, 95 Queen (now Harper and Queen), 111 Queen Elizabeth Playhouse (Vancouver), 121,127 Queen Elizabeth Theatre (CNE), 186 Quesnel, Joseph, 30 Quilley, Denis, 86 Quince Productions, 80 Quincy, M.E., 20 RCA Victor, 157 Rabu, Joelle, 128 Rachel, Rachel, 18 Radio City Music Hall, 42,43,60 Radner, Gilda, 89,196,204 Rado, James, 197 RafFerty, Pat, 54 Raging Bull, 73 Ragni, Gerome, 194,197 Ragsdale, Robert, 95,106 Ragtime, 127,224,226 Rainbow Stage (Winnipeg)* 63,68>;J|£ Rainmaker, The921 RammmdAlmttndfyi^ Randall, Bob, 1S6 Rankin Family, 243 Rattigan, Terrence, 162 Ray, Jamie, 112 Raymond, Jack, 24
Reagan, Ronald (Pres.), 15 Red and White Revue, 54, 78 Red Barn Theatre (Jackson's Point), 46 Red Mill, The, 60 Red Violin, The,2S7 Redgrave, Michael, 111 Redpath, Bill, 273 Redpath, E., 40 Reflections on Crooked Walking, 122,266 Regan, Dean, 57,108,119,123 Regent Cinema (see also Crest Theatre), 207 Regent Theatre (Toronto), 38 Reh, Virginia, 35 Reid, Fiona, 129 Reid, Ryan, 255 Reiner, Carl, 66 Reitman, Ivan, 186 Rekert, Winston, 165 Renault, Norma, 24,72 Rent, 224 Renton, Ken, 170 Return of Martin Guerre, 135 Return of the Curse of the Mummy's Revenge, 267 Reuben, Reuben, 84 Revefantasque, La, 61 Revere, Paul, 55 Reynolds, Dorothy, 71,73 Reynolds, Marjorie, 150 Rhodes, Andrew, 127 Rice, Elmer, 143 Rice, Tim (Sir), 180,190 Rich, Harry W., 37,41 Richler, Mordecai, 25,182-185 Richmond Gateway Theatre (Va&co&ver), 218 Riel, Louis, 9 Ri^,Lya%21,136 1%, Do^ 151,152,158,264 #%O*d^i90 Rise and Fall Of the City of mabagonny,the,17 Rising Tide Taheater(Trinity,NL),164
Bitck,Fraitk?220 EitdiM4C)^H95 MtzThsate (Hew York), 194 ^iw4B^153 < '$*wr^m&?,22g / Rma'te Ckwhmtwm, ^164,26? ^^^131,258 Rdbotsoa, Margaret, 89 Robertso^ Meryl, 170 Kolbim, Toby, 64,71,228
INDEX
303
moiMflY NORTH
304
Robinson, Kelly, 148 Robson, Wayne, 126 Roby, John, 134 Rock and Roll, 150,167,171,234,242 Rockabye Hamlet (see also Kronborg 1582), 24-26,144,150,178-180,195,248,267 Rockettes,29,43,273 Rocky Horror Show, The, 91,127 Rodgers, Ginger, 110 Rodgers, Richard, 11,14,21-23,26,104, 119,144 Rogers, David, 131,182 Rogers, Stan, 92 Rogge, Florence, 42,43,51 Romance of Canada, The, 45 Romberg, Sigmund, 244 Rose, Patrick, 1,6,97,100,101,120,121, 123-126,153,157,158,204,260,263,268 Rosefor Mr. Tango, A, 208 Rose Marie, 15 Ross, David, 164 Ross, Jerry, 186 Ross, MJ, 255 Rossen, Stig, 222 Rothefel, Samuel, 42 Rothery,Teryl,103 Rowan and Martins Laugh-in, 20 Rowdyman, The, 144,181 Roxy Theater (New York), 43 Roxyettes, 43 Roy, James, 134 Roy Thomson Hall (Toronto), 38 Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, 53 Royal Alexandra Theatre (Toronto), 38,54, 67,70,72,80,87,101,186,206,221,224, 229,252 Royal Ballet (London), 53 Royal Canadian Air Farce, 154 Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), 42,119,178 Royal Court Theatre (London), 63 Royal Lyceum Theatre (Toronto), 31-33 Royal National Theatre (London), 53,236 Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), 55,85 Royal Opera House (Convent Garden), 62 Royal Opera House (Toronto), 33 Royal Winnipeg Ballet, 114,122,155 Rubes, Jan, 63,74 Rubin, Don, 203 Run For Your Money, 98 Rush, Richard, 154
Rushdie, Salman, 24 Russell, Anna, 47,56,57 Russell, John, 127 Russell, W.M.S., 194,269 Russian Ballet School of Dancing (Toronto), 42 Ruther,Wyatt,121 Ryga, George, 1,26,121,243,261 .7776,2,141 SCTV, 89 SOCAN (Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada), 129 Saar, James, 139,262,267 Sabiston, Andrew, 221,222,224,265 Sadler's Wells Opera (London), 53,62 Salad Days, 2,25,65,71,72,87,88 Salsberg, Gerry, 126,215 Salty Tears on a Hangnail Fence, 167 Saltzman, Avery, 208 Same Time, Next Year, 129 Samovar Club (Montreal), 48 Samuels, Arthur, 144 Sanwa McCarthy Securities, 222 Sasha, 188-190 Saskatoon (SK), 163,165,184 Saturday Night, 49,163 Saturday Night Live, 20,124 Satyricon, 74,75 Savage, David, 61 Savidge, Mary, 72 Say Hello to Harvey, 206 Scadding, Henry, 30 Schellenberg, August, 198 Schellenberg, Glen, 269 Schmidt, Harvey, 21,242 Schonberg, Claude-Michel, 136,137,226 School for Scandal, 30 Schwartz, Scott, 225 Schwartz, Stephen, 20,161,186,225 Schustik,Bill,89 Scorcese, Martin, 73 Scott, Gavin, 80 ScriptLab (Toronto), 6,232 Seary, Kim, 164 Second City, 89,92,257 Second World War (WWII), 40,53,126, 168,212 Secord, Laura, 55 Seeing Things, 158 Seetner, Samuel, 68 Sehlans, Bernard, 89
Seitz, Ernest (Raymond Roberts), 41 Selwyn Theater (New York), 37 Senge, Chase, 228 Sereda, John, 164 Service, Robert, 95 Seussical, The, 226 Seymour, James, 264 Seventh Veil, The, 1 Sex Tips for Girls, 165 Sex Tips for Modern Girls, 164,165 Shafer, R.Murray, 30,75 Shaffer, Paul, 204 Shaftesbury Theatre (London), 120,206, 220,223 Shaklee,98 Shakespeare on Broadway, 181 Shaper,Hal,110,146 Shapira, Jack, 63 Shatner, William, 78 Shaw, Grace Lydiat, 45 Shaw, Joseph, 65,66,95 Shaw Festival (Niagara-on-the-Lake), 46, 208,222,232 She Loves Me, IIS She Stoops to Conquer, 105 Shea brother, 35 Sheas Hippodrome (Toronto), 39 Shearing, George, 45 Shekter, Mark, 91,132,244,268 Shelly, Carole, 88 Shelton, Reid, 201,255 Shenandoah, 132 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 31,153 Sheridan College, 237 Sherman, Hiram "Chubby," 110, 111 Shevelove, Burt, 66,75,169 Shick, Rick, 218 Shields, Carol, 230 Shikara,ll4,lS4 Shiki Theatre Company (Japan), 113 Ship, Reuben, 57,85,212 Shipley, Don, 193 Shire, David, 91 Shoctor, Joseph, 25,182-185 Shoestring'57,73 " / , , Shoo/ingi/DmMt(*r^^:3$9 . Short, Martin, 89»:£&, Show Boat, 223 Show Music on Record, 24 Showtime, 192 Shubert, Juri, 85
Shubert Organization, 46,203 Shubert s (Toronto), 85,86 Shubert Theatre (Boston), 118 Shulman, Guy, 100 Shulman, Susan, 251 Shuster, Frank, 44,48,53-55,98,107 Side by Side by Sondheim, 88,206,207 Siders, Irwin, 184 Sillane, Douglas, 75 Silver, Louis, 49 Silver King, The, 38 Silverman, Stanley, 74,75 Simon, Paul, 136,159,169 Sinatra, Frank, 45,243 Sinclair, Clayton, 79 Sinclair, Gordon, 93 Sinclair, Lister, 55,104 Singin and Dancin Tonight, 181 Sis Hopkins, 60 Skelton, Red, 39 Skin of Our Teeth, The, 150 Slade, Bernard, 129 Slade, Julian, 71-73 Slaight, Alan, 203 Sleeping Arrangements, 142 Sleuth, 208 Slings and Arrows, 257 Small, Ambrose J., 37,40,48,221,273 Small, Madeline, 37 Smile Theatre, 92,245,246 Smith, Brian M., 72 Smith, Cedric, 163,267,268 Smith, Geoffrey, 223 SmithJacquie, 62 Smith,Jennifer, 257 STOifc,Marlene, 6,90,101,203-208*211,
213,216,117,221-223 • '; Smith, Qtoer, 118 $m®ke$JwiGj/0,l%4 £M&Zfol8
$m$$y>lB4 &Z^lft&&n^6&;:!' ' $&m$i$€&m4^46
;
SoapBubbles,160
Sofa Suge (Toronto), 91 Soles, Pawl, 44 8010^^^011,150,154 i So%Bffl,«U88 S$mtfMyBt$tK&i$Am-friends, 152,153 S$M€thing*$ R&ckin* in Denmark fsee also ' Kwnk0rgl$$2}
I N DEX
305
IWIWllliilll
306
Sondheim, Stephen, 5,7,132,136,140,193,251 Songs from the Front and Rear, 126,268 Sound of Music, The, 18, 111, 114,175,236 Sound Stealer, The, 157 South Pacific, 22,77,114 Southam News Service, 144 Sparks, John, 241 Special, The, 196 Spellbound, 186 Spencer, David, 185 Spend, Spend, Spend, 21 Spewack, Bella, 139 Spewack, Samuel, 139 Spielberg, Steven, 16 Spiro, Bernard, 143 Sportelli, Paul, 232,264 Spring Thaw, 11,23,46,52,54-58,61,65,66, 85-87,108,116,117,134,141,185,246 Spring Thaw '65,108 Sprung, Guy, 207 St. Cyr, Lili, 79 St. James Theatre (New York), 194 St. Laurent, Louis (Rt. Hon.), 80 St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts (Toronto), 54,139,151,213,237 Stacey, Dan, 228 Stage West (Mississauga), 202 Stapley, Diane, 65,83,91,92,138 Star (Montreal), 70 Star Trek, 65,211,212,214,215,217,236 Starkman, Carol, 117 Starmania (see Tycoon) Stargate SG-1,103 Starweek, 88,179 Steele's Tavern (Toronto), 21 Stein, Joseph, 66 Stella, Frank, 221 Stepping Stones, 102 Stereo Review, 121 Sterling Sound (New York), 159 Stevens, Clifford, 179 Stevens, Monty, 182 Stevens, Roger, 202 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 182 Steward, Michael, 182 Steyn, Mark, 118 Still, Dana, 90 Stinchcombe, John, 154 Stokowski, Leopold, 160 StoUer, Mike, 25,182-185 Stone, Paddy, 183,184
Stone, Peter, 2,3,25 Stoppard, Tom, 234 Storey, Raymond, 134 Strand Theater (New York), 36 Strange Medicine, 231 Stratford Festival of Canada, 7,52,57,74-77, 80,81,100,105,118,156,169,183,184, 191,193,200,202,212 Stratton, Alan, 209 Strauss, Johanne Jr., 32 Straw Hat Players, 46,64 Strindberg, August, 55 Strombergs, Vinetta, 183-185 Strongman, Wayne, 191 Strouse, Charles, 11,25,182,205 Stuart, Marilyn, 57 Stuart, Ross, 13 Stunt Man, The, 154 Styne,Jule,25,182,240 Sullivan, Arthur Seymour (Sir), 31,32,71,74, 76,91,188,242,262 Sullivan, Ed, 50 Sullivan, Kevin, 115 Sullivan Playhouse (New York), 71 Sumi, Glenn, 227,231 Summer Burning, A, 145 Summer Romance, 105 Sunday Times (London), 6, 111 Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, 68 Sunshine Town, 11,68,70,143,167,176,247,268 Surdin, Morris, 269 Susan Bloch Theater (New York), 165 Sutherland, Donald, 54,194 Swan Lake, 105 Sweeney Todd, 7,136,150,155,185,193,220 Sweet Reason, 9Q Sweet Smell of Success, The, 226 Swenson, Inge, 105,144 Swerdfager, Bruce, 57 Swerdlow, Elizabeth, 129 Swerdlow, Robert, 129 Swertzer, Tom, 160 Swindley,Tom, 229 Swing, 142 Swingstep, 229,236,244,248,254,268 Swit, Loretta, 97 Sydney Theatre Company (Australia), 214 Taboo Revue, The, 86
7^,37 Tahmanhous Theatre Workshop
(Vancouver), 167 Tait, James Fagan, 231 Take Me Along, WQ, 103 Take to the Woods, 105 Tallulah Bankhead Revue, 86 Tandy, Jessica, 218 Tapestry Music Theatre, see also Tapestry New Opera, 114,191 Tapestry New Opera, 191 Tapestry Records Ltd., 168 Tarnow,Toby, 106 Tarragon Theatre (Toronto), 204,232 Tattler, 86 72m, 55,66 Taylor, Deanna, 86 Taylor, Nat, 64 Taylor, Paul, 103 Teague, Jonathan, 255 Teasefor Two, 89,131,134 Telegram (Toronto), 55,68,70,72,94,95,197 Telegraph (London), 24 Telford, Mark, 243 Telgmann, Oscar, 34 Teller's Cage (Toronto), 91,134,207 Tempest, The, 197 Temple Sinai (Toronto), 116 Templeton, Jean, 85 Ten Commandments, Hie, 196 Ten Lost Years, 7,11,13,24,25,163,164,268 Teresa, Mother, 123 Terry, Ellen, 221 That Hamilton Woman, 109 That's the Ticket, 208 Theatre Aquarius (Hamilton), 92,229 Theatre de Lys (New York), 170 Theatre de Societe (Montreal), 30 Theatre des Bouffes-Parisienne, 32 Theatre du Neptune, 30 Theatre-in-the-DeU (Toronto), 85^ f I 131,134,152,213,215 Theatre in the Park (Vancouver), 103 Theatre Passe Muraille (Toronto), 162-ljj 166,167,169,209,229 Theatre Ontario, 235 Theatre Plus (^wo^X^, Theatre Royal(Montre),31 Theatre Royal(Stratford Esat),146
Theatre Royal Windsor (U|§U*& Theatre Toronto, 66,67 Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS)^ 59-63,68 100,103,242
Theatre Workshop (Joan Littlewood), 162 There Goes Yesterday, 50 They Club Fish, Dont They?, 164 7£mM129,153,154 Thirty-two Short Films About Glen Gould, 257 This Hour Has Seven Days, 106 This Is Our First Affair, 65 Thomas, Powys, 72 Thomas, Richard, 220 Thomas, Steve, 262 Thompson, Paul, 163,167 Thomason, Hugh, 68 Thomson, Loraine, 52 Thomson, Tom, 11,133 Thoroughly Modern Millie, 37 Threepenny Opera, The, 2,21 Timber!!, 13,61-63,86,93,199 Time Magazine, 231 Times, The (London), 80,194 Ti-Coq, 54 Tin Hat Revue, 50 Titanic, 193 Toast of the Town, 50 Tom Kneebone at the TK, Cabaret, 90 Tomfoolery, 24 T^wy,193,194,220 Tony Awards, 72,76,130,155,176,179,192195,197,220,256,257,258 Toronto Arts Foundation, 67 Toronto, 1960,52 Toronto Free Theatre, 193 Toronto Fringe Festival, 229 Toronto Operetta Theatre, 35 Toronto Second City, 229 ; Ibr&ntj* Star, 35,64,67,68,94> 1^Sft, 131, £$139,143-145,147,15^1^^167, ;^482 >;a03-205,a07^ .totfeto,S f^|f^iSi22S, 227,229 '''ftf^l^/S^piio^ldi^vr ,4te^1^^, Sa^qQ^lH 244,268 Toronto,Toronto,II,91 Toronto Workshop Production(Twp),208
\^i^:^^37 Touchstone Theatr(Vancouver),164 Tourdonnet,Vincent de,231,266
<
INOEX
3D!
Trivial Pursuit, 20 Trouble in Tahiti, 237 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot (Rt. Hon.), 81 TrufFaut, Frar^ois, 7 Tz/r^, 115,142,143,268 Turvey, Jay, 231,264 7M 7W,131,134,269 TVOntario, 76 Tweed, Tommy, 54 Twelfth Night^ Twenty-fifth Street Theatre (Saskatoon), 163 Two Gentlemen of Verona, 194,196 Two Pianos, Four Hands, 22,129,206,229 Two Solitudes, 54 Tycoon, 224 Tyson, Ian, 21,88 Tyson, Sylvia, 21 USA Today, 227 Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The, 21 Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, 139,230 United Empire Loyalists, 10 United Press International, 13 University of British Columbia (UBC), 100, 104,120,125,167 University College Follies, 44,53 University of Manitoba, 155 Dramatic Society, 68 University of Prince Edward Island, 97 University of Toronto, 44,53,64, 72,151,154 Up Tempo, 88 Up!, see Via Gallactica Upstairs at Old Angelos (Toronto), 85,91,134 Upstairs at the Downstairs, 86,117 "Uptown Girls," 42 Uptown Theatre (Toronto), 42,43 Urbania, 193 Uris Theatre (New York), 194
SUDIY NORTH
308
Vai's, Michel 54 Valli,Frankie,257 Van Bridge, Tony, 139 Van De Graaff, Janet, 257 Van Home, William Cornelius (Sir), 29 Van Loon, Nelles, 133-135 Van Norman, Bob, 52 Vancouver Civic Theatre Society, 59 Vancouver East Cultural Centre, 168,169 Vancouver International Festival, 57,81,88 Vancouver Musical Theatre, 127
Vancouver Opera, 125 Vancouver Playhouse, 13,44 Vancouver Province, 100,101,121 Vancouver Sun, 62,121,124-126,165,166,199 Vancouver Theatresports League, 128 Vanderheyden, Tina, 203,216 Variety, 22,73,81,178,225,227,230 Variety Dinner Theatre (Toronto), 21,134 Vaudeville Theatre (London), 37,71 Vaughan, Sarah, 45 Venetian Twins, The, 21 Vereen,Ben,160 Vesak,Norbert,122 Vessey, Louise, 254 Via Gallactica, 157,194 Victor/Victoria, 183 Victoria Palace (London), 40 Victoria Theatre (Toronto), 49 Vidal, Gore, 72 Vigneault, Gilles, 88 Visit to a Small Planet, A, 72 Vivian Ellis Prize, 251 Voeden, Herman, 38 Voltaire, 68 Vosburgh, Dick, 170 Walker, Don, 244 WaUey,Moira,101,214 Wang, Eric, 78 War and Peace,222 Ward, Jonathan, 99 Warehouse Theatre (Winnipeg), 124 Warhol, Andy, 169 arrack, David, 6,88-91,126,130-135,137, 139,140,144,145,154,178,181,212,214, 244,258-260,266,269 Warren, Robert, 88 Washington Post, 15 Watkin, Fen, 108 Watts, Richard, 113 Wayne, Johnny (Lou Weingaraten), 44,48, 53,55,98,107 Webb, Rudy, 90 Webb, Simon, 127 Webber, Andrew Lloyd, 5,132,137,181, 205,251 Webber, Lois, 131 Weill, Kurt, 7,15,21,83,188,189 Weir, Charles, 91,132,244 Weldon, Duncan C., 112,223 Well Rehearsed Ad-libs, 85
Welles, Orson, 110 We re No Angels, 139 West Show, The, 163 West Side Story, 26,61,137,236 Wetzel, Patrick, 257 Whale Rider, 17 What's That Got to Do With the Price of Fish?, 164 Wheatley, William, 35 Wheeler, Hugh, 7 Wheeldon, Barbara, 133 When the Rains Come, 121 When We Both Got to Heaven, 9 Which Witch?, 178 White, Josh Sr., 123 White, Nancy, 115,145,153,178 Whitehead, Harold, 70 White Oaks Dance Project, 103 Whiteoaks ofjalna, The, 12,44 Whitfieldjime,86 Whittaker, Herbert, 67,69,70,72,74,80,95, 118,143,144,146 Wicks, Ben, 15 Widow, The, 12,34 Wiggins, Chris, 65,93 Wild Rose, 269 Willan, Healey, 30 WiUard,Kathy,105,106 Willes, Christine, 164 Williams, John, 244 Williams, Kenneth, 86 Williams, Sharon Lee, 152 Williams, Tennessee, 46 Williams, Timothy, 221-223,265 Williamson, Nicol, 182 Willie the Squouse, 194 Willows, Alec, 127 Wilmot, Anna, 52 Wilson, Jessica-Snow, 114 Wilson, Julie, 63 Wilson, Sandy, 16 Windsor, 131,140 Winged Warfare, 167 Winnipeg Free Press, 63,124 Winnipeg Kiddies, 102 Winnipeg Sympfa<wif Gfrd^ttra, 158" Winsbf* Saad$ 127 Winter, Jack, 163 Winter Garden Theater (New Yoik), If4 Winter Garden Theatre (Tomato), 1, 26,42, 202,203,206,207,229,252 Wise, Robert, 236
Withrow, Pat, 124 Witkin, Stephen, 131,138,140,145,261 Wizard of Oz, The, 63,207 W>jeck,2Q Wolvin, Roy, 79 Women's Canadian Club, 62 Wonder Of It All, The, 19,26, 111, 115, 198-201,206,269 Wood, John, 222,223 Wood, Ted, 65,93,94,96 Woodjetts, Stephen, 91 Wooster Street Theater (New York), 129 Wooten,A.S.,59 Wright, Geoffrey, 86 Wrong Son, The, 269 Wyatt,Pia,199 Wylie, Betty Jane, 155-158,260 Wylie,Bill, 155-157 Wyman, Max, 101,125,126 Ye Gods!, 138,140 Yearling, The, 215 Yeko, Bruce, 161 Yellow Submarine, 122 Yeston, Maury, 137 York Theatre (New York), 115,118,125 York Theatre (Vancouver), 125 York University, 13,249 You Cant Beat Fun, 68 Young, Dave, 157 Young, DavidS., 255 Young, E.V., 59 Young, Neil, 16,21 Young, Patrick, 145 Young,Peter, 93
Y0wtig>Ibly,49 Yop6ig»Vlctp208 Y<m»g B^I^s The^pf CR^4);i33 ThtftyfA OMM^^&^^Si^m, 134 yuk-yuks's(Toronoto),57
^ffi^-52 Jwi^e^ Airnkdlhca^l^Uford), 110x &db^,Ffia^^^^3
'iS^E/tantoi^lil Z^^El^fl Zttibtifal,Ptvd,5 Zer& P#M&t€*9M9 Zion Chafdl (T0ioiit0), S6 Zwar, Cluarles, 86
IK
309
This page intentionally left blank
Hum AUTHOR el Atkey was a theatre and film critic and host of a nationally syndicated radio series in his native Vancouver before turning to writing for the musical theatre. About his work in this latter field, Stephen Schwartz, the composer of Wicked has said, "such talent is rarer than you know." His musical Perfect Timing was a finalist in the International Musical of the Year competition in Aarhus, Denmark, in 1996 and has been showcased at London's Greenwich Theatre. He has written special cabaret material for Olivier-award winning actor Janie Dee. He wrote music and lyrics for the 2001 Oflfoff-Broadway musical 0 Pioneers! with book by Robert Sickinger. The New York Times praised Atkey's "lovely music" for A Little Princess also written with Sickinger at Wings Theatre, New York, in 2003. His first book, When We Both Got to Heaven, was published by Natural Heritage Books in 2002. Mel Atkey is a writer associate of Mercury Musical Developments (London) and a member of The ^Vkiteci'Union of Ctna^^ttd the Association of Canadian Librettists^CSl&pOsei's and Lyridili*^;*'
M
Hlillll! IHI I|III!II'H!
311
