Valerie Planche, left, as Janie and Sheldon Elter as Tom in Beautiful Scars.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
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- Title: Beautiful Scars
- Written by: Tom Wilson and Shaun Smyth
- Director: Mary Francis Moore
- Actors: Sheldon Elter, Jeremy Proulx, Kristi Hansen, Brandon McGibbon
- Company: Theatre Aquarius
- Venue: Theatre Aquarius
- City: Hamilton
- Year: Runs to May 11, 2024
Tom, the lead character in the big bear hug of a musical that opened on Friday at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius, talks about never having felt at home – that he’d always felt like a spaceship had dropped him in the wrong yard as a child. He’s not incorrect, metaphorically.
Tom is Tom Wilson, who created Beautiful Scars with Shaun Smyth. If you don’t know his story by now, it is not for Wilson’s lack of trying. He’s a Juno-winning folk-rock songwriter/musician and artist from Hamilton who was nearly 60 years old before he discovered his hidden Mohawk heritage. Since then he’s written a soulful memoir (Beautiful Scars: Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home), presented a symphony (Mohawk Symphony) and taken part in a full-length TVO documentary (Beautiful Scars).
Wilson’s tale is about identity, deceptions, decolonization and, above all, an unsettled psyche. The premiere of the theatrical adaptation of his memoir – with friends, fans and family in the audience – was as homecoming as it gets.
Wilson was in attendance. Capably portraying him on stage was Métis actor Sheldon Elter, who first gained notice in 2003 at the Edmonton Fringe festival with his one-man show, Métis Mutt. As Tom, he’s all tuque, flannel and longing, holding a box of mementos. Beautiful Scars has him sorting through his past and trying to make sense of it.
His guide is Bear, a spirit animal, for lack of a better term. Played charismatically by Jeremy Proulx, funky Bear is the play’s comic presence.
Kristi Hansen, left, as Bunny and Brandon McGibbon as George in Beautiful Scars.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
There’s nothing funny about Tom’s parents. They are a couple “battered by life.” The father, George (played by Brandon McGibbon), is a blind war veteran. The mother, Bunny (played by Kristi Hansen), is a sad, cigarette-smoking figure who dreams of escape. Much older than the parents of his schoolmates, they show their age “like the walls of a hotel room.”
Bunny wears wigs, but pretends she does not. It is an open secret, and it is harmless. Her bigger secret, about Tom’s Mohawk birth mother – he didn’t know he was adopted but heard whispers – is devastating.
The story is told through flashbacks and, obviously, through music. Most of the songs are pulled from Wilson’s back catalogue of material he wrote or co-wrote either for his 1990s rock band Junkhouse, his Americana trio Blackie and the Rodeo Kings or his psychedelic-folk solo project, Lee Harvey Osmond. A handful of tunes were written especially for the musical.
Tom, we learn, was introduced to music at a young age from the so-called “cousin Janie,” who brought him records by Bob Dylan, Ian & Sylvia and Gordon Lightfoot. (The mere mention of the late Lightfoot brought cheers from the audience.) Tom’s first guitar, stolen from Waddington’s music store in Hamilton, was his “magic carpet.”
Bear says he’d been with Tom all these years, “riding shotgun on the crazy train.” Wilson, in real life, did not skimp on the “drugs” part of the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of his youth. The Junkhouse hit Out of My Head represents that part of his life in the musical.
The show’s songs (which includes the hard-won wisdom of Beautiful Scars from the 2017 album Kings and Kings) are not catchy by the standards of musical theatre, but neither are they emotionally manipulative, as the music of that genre tends to be.
Wilson’s son, musician Thompson Wilson, makes his stage debut playing the young version of his father. Despite his lack of experience, he exhibited a bright, animated voice of the theatre-kid kind.
The staging was eye-popping and earthy, with Tom Wilson’s artwork a big part of the set. (An exhibit of his colourful pieces runs concurrently at Beckett Fine Art in Hamilton.)
While Beautiful Scars is a crowd-pleaser, the second act lagged a bit in energy. Still, emotionally, the plot comes to its head: Tom gets his birth story – his truth – finally. For others, it is uncomfortable truth about colonialism and indigeneity denied. Tom’s adoptive parents weren’t the only ones with secrets.
It’s a natural that Beautiful Scars premiered in Hamilton, where Wilson is, ironically or not, a favourite son. His story – scars, secrets, songs and all – deserves be on stages elsewhere too.
While Beautiful Scar's second act lagged a bit in energy, emotionally the plot still comes to its head.Supplied
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the name of Tom Wilson's band, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings.