Three remarkably dissimilar music theatre productions, all in one place and performed by one company, have been thrilling audiences since previews in the spring – at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Only one of the three is a traditional Broadway-type show, the beloved musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion by Lerner and Loewe, My Fair Lady – a perfect choice for a festival named after the playwright (more about that later). The other two shows could not be more different — from My Fair Lady or from each other – and yet, like MFL, have music at the heart of their creation and in the way they connect with audiences.
The Secret Garden, at the intimate Royal George Theatre, is clearly created for children but is equally enchanting for adults. This world premiere adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s beloved children’s novel, by Shaw veterans director Jay Turvey and music director Paul Sportelli, is full of imagination and whimsy fuelled by a curated score of folk songs from the period.
The songs are mainly sung for the creation of context, but sometimes for effective character revelation, as when the old gardener Ben Weatherstaff is singing alone in the garden when met by Mary. Mary, as you may remember, is an orphan sent home from India to live with her uncle Mr Craven in his spooky old mansion in Yorkshire. Mary is bad-tempered and spoiled, and in a delightful performance by Gabriella Sundar Singh, completely identifiable as a real girl, unhappy to be uprooted from everything she has known, not knowing how to behave or deal with the new world into which she has been thrust.
Within a tapestry of songs such as Scarborough Fair, Oh Rowan Tree and Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary, Mary finds solace in helping the house’s locked secret garden come back to life, transforming not only the garden into a place of magic, but transforming herself into a much nicer and happier person. She shares that magic with her invalid cousin Colin with the help of another boy, Dickon, who introduces them to the animals that live in the garden; all three grow in friendship and kindness as the garden begins to flourish.
The staging is full of whimsy and a sense of fun, from the train and coach at the beginning created by the actors with suitcases and umbrellas, to the evocation of the mansion through atmospheric lighting and the clever use of a doorframe on wheels that is moved around the stage to be stepped through by the characters on their way from one room to another. In one brilliant sequence Mary’s traversing of the halls at night is made dramatically exciting by actors creating the impression of forbidding ancestral portraits lining the halls through a clever use of picture frames which they inhabit and move as necessary, changing character as they go – even leaning out of the frames at one point.
This wonderful use of movement never stops, enhanced by the animals that appear in the garden (particularly the Robin played by Tama Martin), and kept the 50 children in the audience with me when I saw the show thoroughly enchanted.
One Man, Two Guvnors at the larger Festival Theatre depicts a completely different world. This show is definitely for adults, although teenagers would probably get a big kick out of it. An adaptation by British playwright Richard Bean of 18th-century Italian playwright Carol Goldoni’s most famous play, The Servant of Two Masters, the show transports the audience to early 1960s England – to the slightly seedy seaside resort of Brighton, seemingly inhabited mostly by the criminal element.
Where Goldoni featured characters based on the stock figures of Italian improvisatory commedia dell’arte, Bean features stock British comedy figures: crooks, molls, a very dim daughter with a dim fiancé, and, most entertaining of all, an English version of the best-known commedia figure, the clever servant Arlequino. In Bean’s adaptation though, Bean’s harlequin, the servant Francis Henshall, thinks he is clever but really is not, and gets himself into one scrape after another as he hires himself out to two different masters at the same time.
One Man, Two Guvnors made a star of English comedian and talk show host James Corden. Peter Fernandez, a Shaw regular who recently made such a splash at Crow’s Theatre in The Master Plan and Fifteen Dogs here makes the role of Henshall his own. His energy and phenomenal ability to improvise and work with the audience had us all in stitches throughout the show.
The other highlight of the production, and the crucial ingredient in the unbelievably high energy which catapults the audience into the1960s and happily keeps us there, is the music. Before the show starts, at the intermission, and at every scene change a “Skiffle band” plays, fronted by ultra-talented singer, actor and guitarist Lawrence Libor (who was also a stand out, as Dolokhov, in Crow’s Theatre’s Natasha Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 earlier this year).
Skiffle music was hugely popular in the late 1950s. Drawing on jazz, folk, blues and country music, it was often played on homemade or improvised instruments., Young musicians all around Great Britain all seemed to be playing it. Soon-to-be Beatles John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, for instance, played “skiffle songs” as the Quarrymen. Taking a cue from this bit of history, frontman Libor looks and sounds like a slightly rougher version of McCartney, and one of the other members is costumed to look like Ringo Starr.
Unlike previous English productions where the band was separate from the cast, here the cast also plays the band, cleverly disguised to keep the audience guessing as to who is who. The band plays original songs written for the show by Grant Olding, with some additional instrumental transitions written by sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne in arrangements designed to accommodate the music to fit the instruments that the cast members could play. The music enlivens the plot throughout and keeps the atmosphere full of devil-may-care fun.
My Fair Lady tops many people’s lists of the perfect musical, so it is intriguing to remember that George Bernard Shaw famously refused to let anyone turn Pygmalion into a musical during his lifetime, and it is still his play that is the beating heart of this 1956 hit musical, making it one of the richest in the repertoire.
Somehow (once the rights were available) Lerner and Loewe found a way to keep most of the play intact, while opening up the action – in scenes such as the Ascot races, in Tottenham Court Road, and at the embassy ball. Throughout, their songs and score enhance and deepen the play’s content, adding a layer of joy to the more stringent quality of the original.
To be the best it can be, My Fair Lady needs a director who can help their actors get the most out of both dialogue and song, to find all the nuances in both. Here, AD Tim Carroll – directing his first musical – does exactly that, with the assistance of co-director Kimberley Rampersad who also choreographs.
The cast is also first-rate. Tom Rooney as Henry Higgins brings his trademark authenticity to the role, rendering the songs more musically than Rex Harrison did, and finding many of his own specific moments of meaning and emotion throughout, making us empathize with him while not shying away at all from Higgins’ less attractive qualities. As Higgins and Eliza face each other at the end it isn’t clear whether they are going to embrace or fight — probably a combination of the two, which feels just right. Kristi Frank makes the role of Eliza her own as well, not copying anybody, singing the songs with a gloriously free, full voice and finding every moment of transformation.
The Shaw has always had a music theatre component, but in recent years it has expanded to the point where there are many more “triple threat” performers in the company, equally at home singing, dancing and capturing the period speech and movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. These three productions are exciting proof of this.
The Secret Garden and One Man, Two Guvnors play through October 13. My Fair Lady plays through December 22, but with Allan Louis taking over the role of Henry Higgins on October 17. www.shawfest.com
Coming Back from Away
Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s runaway international hit Come From Away is coming back to the Royal Alexandra Theatre under the Mirvish banner after restarting with a short run at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, in which co-creator Irene Sankoff is playing the role of Bonnie! In the Mirvish Toronto production, the role will be played by Kristen Peace.
This exuberantly Canadian tale of how the population of Gander Newfoundland took in the thousands of travellers stranded when their airplanes were forced to land following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York, captures the heart of almost everyone who sees the show.
Music, story, performances and brilliant direction combine to create a world so positive it is hard to leave the theatre when the performance ends. The run begins on Sept 22 and is at this point open-ended. www.mirvish.com
Fall for Dance North
September 26 to October 6 will see the 10th anniversary return of the Fall for Dance Festival bringing individual dancers and companies from across the country and around the world to share their best works with Toronto audiences in everything from large-scale presentations in big halls to smaller-scale free workshops in smaller venues around the city. This festival year will also be the last programmed by founding artistic director Ilter Ibrahimof.
Highlights include the return of the Edmonton Ballet Company and the premiere of The Mars Project from innovative tap dancer/choreographer Travis Knights with Lisa LaTouche. www.ffdnorth.com
Jennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fight director and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a rich mix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.
