Connor Lucas (Father Paul) and Ruth Acheampong (Dinah) in An American Hymnal.Supplied
The Newfoundland-Ontario circuit for new Canadian musicals is continuing to expand.
This week, Terra Bruce’s An American Hymnal – which just completed a sold-out run at the company’s 350-seat Majestic Theatre in St. John’s, N.L. – lands at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton for three performances from June 21 to 23.
This new jukebox musical, with a book by Steve Cochrane and woven around hymns and mid-century hits, tells a story about an Irish priest and a jazz singer in Chicago that spans several decades starting in 1955.
Meanwhile, Tweed & Company, a theatre company based in Tweed, Ont., is travelling to St John’s with Dear Rita, which just wrapped a pair of runs in Ontario at the Marble Arts Centre and the Bancroft Village Playhouse.
Director Ann-Marie Kerr’s production of this “musical toast to Cape Breton’s first lady of song, Rita MacNeil” was originally created by Lindsay Kyte and Mike Ross for the Charlottetown Festival and plays at the Majestic Theatre from June 19 to 23.
Dear Rita is one of a number of shows that Terra Bruce, a commercial theatre company backed by retired businessman Walter Schroeder, is bringing to the recently opened Majestic Theatre this summer in partnership with the government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
No Change in the Weather, Terra Bruce’s signature original musical that’s been rewritten by Bernadine Stapleton, will have a run from July 11 to July 31. From late August through September, plays and musicals will be presented in partnership with regional companies including Perchance Theatre, King’s Point Theatre and Rising Tide Theatre.
Terra Bruce has been premiering original musicals in St. John’s and taking them straight to Toronto in recent years, bringing Let’s Dance and The Irish Rovers to the Winter Garden last summer and fall, respectively. But the company’s approach to musical theatre has not always received a warm welcome from critics in Canada’s biggest metropolis.
Going to Hamilton first with An American Hymnal makes a lot of sense to me, especially since the company is renting out Theatre Aquarius, where artistic director Mary Francis Moore has been developing an audience eager to see brand-new musicals and recently launched a National Centre for New Musicals.
The Hammer is a safer city than Toronto to first measure mainland reaction on a show still in development. “We don’t have reviewers in St John’s,” says Krysta Rudofsky, managing director at Terra Bruce. “This is our first time taking An American Hymnal off island.”
As for Terra Bruce’s plans to eventually have its own 600-seat home in Toronto, the company’s restoration and renovation of the Regent Theatre on Mount Pleasant Road – which I wrote about last year – has not been abandoned. It has been delayed, however, after a small group of local residents opposed the variances the project was asking for at Toronto’s Committee of Adjustment this year.
Next stop: a hearing at the Ontario Land Tribunal on July 15. “That ruling is pretty much final,” says Franco Boni, who is working on the theatre for Terra Bruce’s sister company, Regent Revival. “From that point, we’ll know what the outcome is.”
It would be a real indictment of Toronto as a cultural centre if the Regent, former home of the historic Crest Theatre, were left to rot due to a handful of local NIMBYs. “It’s put a lot of pressure on the budget for the building,” says Boni. “If this were a non-profit, it would have folded.”
There’s a real need for a theatre of the size of the Regent in Toronto, especially as the CAA Theatre has been sold to developers, and grand renovation plans for the city-owned St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts have yet to get anywhere near off the ground. Toronto’s loss on this front might always be Hamilton’s gain.
What’s opening this week across the country
The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., is opening five productions this week: The Secret Garden, a new play with songs based on the Frances Hodgson Burnett novel; The House That Will Not Stand, a drama about free woman of colour in early 19th century New Orleans by Marcus Gardley; The Orphan of Chao, an adaptation of a classical Chinese drama by Michael Man; One Man, Two Guvnors, an adaptation of a 18th century Italian comedy by Richard Bean; and Kabarett, a variety show in the Shaw’s Spiegeltent. Whew!
The Freewill Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton is touring a production by its namesake playwright to outdoor hockey rinks this summer – but, no, they’re not doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I can’t make a Puck joke here. The Tempest is the company play this season and its first period takes place at Crestwood Community League from June 20 to 23. (P.S. Go Oilers!)
Anne of Green Gables: The Musical, after a controversial (though not to me) summer off the stages at the Confederation Centre for the Arts in P.E.I., is back at the Charlottetown Festival this season – and Kelsey Verzotti’s back in the lead role. This tourist-oriented production has a 28-member company and a 14-member live orchestra and runs from June 19 to August 31.