Webber musical revisits Toronto

By Sarah B. Hood

Twenty years ago, 1982, saw a dramatic change to Toronto theatre -- the opening of an unusual production: a full-scale, Canadian, independent, commercial, musical production in a resurrected theatre on Yonge Street. The theatre was the Elgin, and the show was  CATS. From 1982 to 1988 about five million people attended Ontario commercial theatre, with  CATS accounting for about one quarter of this figure.

Of course, the show itself was not Canadian: it had debuted in London in 1981. But the money behind it was. In retrospect, CATS proved that it was possible to make a commercial success of a locally produced, big-budget show. It was also the kindling for a blaze of restoration and rebuilding. Since then, both theatres in the Elgin/Winter Garden complex have been lavishly restored, joined on Yonge Street by the equally sumptuous Pantages (now the Canon) and the more modest New Yorker, and on King Street by the completely new Princess of Wales -- a total of perhaps 5,000 new theatre seats.

The only real drawback to the CATS phenomenon was that for some years afterwards Toronto producers seemed afraid to run shows by anyone other than Andrew Lloyd Webber, so we were showered for the better part of a decade by Phantom, Aspects of Love, Starlight Express, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and so on.

Webbermania having subsided somewhat, I’m now actually pleased to report that a touring production of CATS — the show that started it all — is coming back to Toronto for a brief run

For those who never saw the 1982 production, CATS is loosely based on the charming Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a lighthearted whimsy by Nobel Prize-winning poet T.S. Eliot. It’s set in the midnight world of the Jellicle Cats, where various feline characters meet to tell their stories and socialize in a moonlit junkyard. CATS runs from February 18 to March 3 at the lovely Canon Theatre.

One of the silliest and nicest original musicals ever to play Toronto was 1991’s Dora-winning Suzie Goo: Private Secretary, which starred the late Ken McDougall as Suzie Goo, a cross between Barbie and Mary Tyler Moore, whose progress at Corporeal Can Incorporated is threatened by the evil Carmelita Gulch (Edward Roy) and unscrupulous boss Vincent Bag (David Ramsden). Suzie Goo was created by then Artistic Director of Buddies in Bad Times Sky Gilbert, with music by suave pianist and crooner John Alcorn.

Well, the two have teamed up again to create a new show, archly titled The Boy Jones (or, The Rape of History, In Which A Queen’s Virtue Is Threaten’d By A Boy’s Overpow’ring Curiosity).

The Boy Jones is based on a purportedly true incident in which a 17-year-old street urchin managed to sneak into the 23-year-old Queen Victoria’s rooms. (If this seems unlikely, remember that similar incidents have befallen both our own Queen Elizabeth and our current Prime Minister Chrétien, not to mention late Beatle George Harrison.)

Produced by The Cabaret Company in association with the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama, it stars a combination of established professionals (like Mark Christmann, Paul Bettis and Richard Partington) alongside emerging actors. This one won’t please anyone easily offended by sexual innuendo (it does promise to rewrite history “from the bottom up”), but there are serious issues at the core of this pseudo-Victorian romp. The Boy Jones runs from February 6 to 17 at the Studio Theatre on Glen Morris Street.

A VERDI, A ROSSINI,AND TWO PUCCINIS

Yet another fertile stretch for opera lovers: this month the Canadian Opera Company is presenting Rossini’s Il Viaggio a Reims in repertoire with a remount of Salome by Richard Strauss until February 5. The Rossini is directed by James Robinson and stars Michael Schade and Henriette Bonde-Hansen, while film director Atom Egoyan directs Salome, starring Helen Field, Robert Tear, Tom Fox, Karan Armstrong and others.

There are also two Toscas in town. First up is the one by Toronto Opera Repertoire, which WholeNote readers will recall as a training company that performs full opera productions at the Bickford Centre annually, under the direction of Giuseppe Macina. TOR’s Tosca runs in repertoire with Die Fledermaus (by the earlier Strauss, Johann), between Feb 13 and March 3.

Then, from February 23 to March 2, Opera Mississauga steps up to the plate with another Tosca, starring Maria Dragoni and conducted by Dwight Bennett at Mississauga’s Living Arts Centre.

And that’s not all: Opera In Concert presents a concert version of Verdi’s
Nabucco on February 3 at the St. Lawrence Centre, while Opera Ontario performs Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro on February 2 at Hamilton Place (Hamilton) and February 8 at The Centre in the Square (Kitchener). And perhaps the rarest offering is a concert performance of Armenian composer Armen Tigranian’s Anoush, which runs once more on February 2 at the Markham Theatre for Performing Arts.
 

HOLLYWOOD VALENTINE

Finally Doogster Productions is presenting an apparently original movie musical review called Hollywood Bound from February 12 to 17 at the Bathurst Street Theatre. It promises a whimsical family entertainment featuring favourites from such film classic as The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music. On February 14 (Valentine’s Day), proceeds from a benefit night (featuring champagne and strawberries) go towards the AIDS Committee of Toronto.
 
 

Sarah B. Hood is the editor of Performing Arts in Canada magazine.