Volume 25 Issue 7 - April 2020

April 2020 was going to be a month notable for Canadian work,
with shows again ranging from small cast to large, all promising to
grab their audiences with stories that need telling: connected to the
past but also important in the present and serving to create a better
future. Small consolation, but at least I can honour what they promised
but were denied the opportunity to deliver.
Anandam Dancetheatre: Phenomenal Toronto-based tap dancer
Travis Knights, artistic director of the 2018 Vancouver International
Tap Dance Festival, was to star in the one-man-show Ephemeral
Artifacts for Anandam Dancetheatre Productions at Theatre Passe
Muraille. Originally created by director Brandy Leary in 2017, this
edition of the show is co-created and choreographed by Leary and
Knights together, with the goal of using storytelling, dance and music
to explore the intertwined history of tap and jazz, and how both are
inextricable from the African American experience, both historical
and contemporary. On top of this intriguing premise, this was also
going to be a must see for me, having been bowled over by Knights’s
wonderful combination of Gene Kelly and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson
dance styles in Soulpepper’s The Promised Land last summer.
Native Earth Performing Arts were going to present the Toronto
premiere of celebrated Ojibway playwright Drew Hayden Taylor’s
Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion, described by the
Ottawa Citizen as “a smart punchy show that’s bolstered by sharp
satire, a quirky musical score ... and a refreshing dose of humour.”
Main character Bobby Rabbit has some unfinished business with
Canada’s first prime minister. When Bobby learns that his grandfather’s
medicine bundle lies mouldering in a British museum –
another casualty of the residential school system – he enlists his friend
Hugh to execute an epic heist and secure the ultimate bargaining chip
– the bones of Sir John A. On their way to find the bones, they give a
ride to a Kingston girl trying to get home and the road trip becomes a
tangle of comedy, history and politics, all leavened by a fun score with
lead vocals by Herbie Barnes as Hugh featuring riffs on The Romantics’
Travis Knights in Ephemeral Artifacts
What I Like About You, Heart’s Crazy on You, Alanis Morissette’s You
Oughta Know, Sinéad O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U, and Cheap
Tricks’ I Want You to Want Me. I was looking forward to this show not
only for the combination of what sounded like a fun story peppered
with songs and a contemporary political twist, but also because it was
to be directed by the founder of Crow’s Theatre, acclaimed Canadian
director Jim Millan.
Leslie Arden: Third on my list, and with the biggest cast, was Toronto
Musical Concerts’ semi-staging of Leslie Arden’s Dora Award-winning
large-scale musical The House of Martin Guerre. Originally produced
by Theatre Plus in 1993, winning three Dora awards, with further
award-winning productions following at the Goodman Theatre in
Chicago in 1996, and in Toronto again by Canadian Stage in 1997,
Martin Guerre then seemed to disappear. It started showing up again,
however, in 2018 in a concert staging at the Charlottetown Festival, at
Theatre Sheridan in a fully student production in April 2019, and just
last fall at the Stratford Festival in a concert staging starring Chilina
Kennedy. It turns out that the rights had been tied up for the last two
decades with American commercial theatre producers but now that
they are free again, productions are popping up all over.
The timing might be to the benefit of the show, as not only does it
have a beautiful score, but the story it tells of a woman at the mercy
of her community resonates even more today in the era of #MeToo.
Based on a well-known legend from 16th-century France, The House
of Martin Guerre tells the tale of Bertrande, a young Catholic peasant
girl who suffers eight years of abusive marriage to Martin Guerre only
to be abandoned by him, left alone with their infant son. Years later,
a stranger arrives claiming to be Martin, but completely transformed.
Although Bertrande accepts her new loving husband, their happiness
is threatened by the jealousy and greed of others. She is ultimately
forced to denounce him as an imposter.
Christopher Wilson, the artistic producer of Toronto Musical
Concerts (TMC) says that the contemporary relevance of the story was
part of the musical’s draw. As he put it “This musical is a fascinating
18 | April 2020 thewholenote.com