I’d never experienced a rehearsal period as a battlefield. “Earnest”, at the end of each day, left the wounded and maimed on the rehearsal room floor, dragging themselves toward the exits, seeking emotional solace at the nearest bar. I was never among the injured and I didn’t drink, so my involvement in that drama was minimal. My observations, private and internal, were from a distance, and only now find release. As time went on, the mood in the room grew darker and darker.

            An actor’s approach to their work is incredibly personal. Most of the time, that process is kept firmly contained below the surface, internally modified with each new set of conditions in the rehearsal room. When it isn’t, when “the play’s the thing” mentality is set aside and Ego becomes the driving force, the result is uncomfortable and counter-productive. In our case, this very quickly became the status quo. The degree of contention in every quarter was embarrassing and frequent. I suppose at base, these were nice people. I mean, they surely had loved ones and friends with whom they interacted well, social relationships that kept them on an even keel. But this was something else altogether. Niceties gradually disappeared and the personal dynamics became fraught, verbally combative and unpleasant. People were afraid of each other, openly antagonistic and rude, and it was all I could do to maintain focus as all this happened around me.

            Susan Clarke, a television performer from the U.S. (notably for her role as “Webster’s” TV Mom) was playing ‘Lady Bracknell’. While this casting might have been questionable, her work was clear, with a secure and wholly believable English accent and she seemed to stay above the fray … perhaps because she was “from away” and had no connection to these “colonials” and their petty squabbles. I, too, was having no problems, but just watching it all take place was extremely disheartening. Our hometown folks (Mairi Babb, Teri Cherniak, David Warburton) were doing great work and seemed placid enough. But every now and then they would be drawn into the conflicts that originated with the Toronto visitors. Over the years, I’d become painfully aware (and have written about it in other postings) that our Eastern friends had a distinct attitude when playing “the provinces”, a superior air that would invade the space and colour the mood. I vowed it would be my last experience in this type of environment.

            Things calmed down once we were into tech. The play was pretty well set, and the first run with costumes and hair brought everything down to the lowest common denominator – when everyone had to tuck their discontent behind the character’s trappings and focus on creating the reality of the piece. Since I was playing two roles, they had to be as distinct from each other as I could make them … and the externals were my foundation. While ‘Lane’, at the top of the show, was pretty well straight-forward looking basically Richard, it was ‘Merriman’ in the later scenes that took everyone by surprise when I walked out in full regalia … and three inches shorter. I had conspired with the Costume folks to provide me with very wide (period correct) pants that would allow me enough room in the legs to bend my knees without it being obvious and thus reducing my height. It took a bit of getting used to walking with bent knees like that, but only served to add to the age of the character – old and decrepit. A little theatrical trickery which I loved mining for all it was worth. The first time I appeared fully got up as ‘Merriman’, the cast went nuts.

            Opening was quiet, not as full a house as I would have expected, but the response was positive. By the time the cast got upstairs to the Lobby afterward, the crowd had pretty well cleared out and all the food was gone. I stayed for a very short while, said hello to friends and left feeling a tad let down. But then, that probably summed up the whole experience as far as I was concerned. Once into the routine of the run, the relationship between “Actors” and “Human Beings” became much more comfortable – the stress of rehearsals was gone and with the production up and running, we had the chance to get to know each other socially, or as “social” as one can get during performances. Away from the tensions of rehearsals, the folks turned out to be rather pleasant. There remained some distance between a few of us, but then, not everyone is always a “fit” and that was alright. Since I had a lot of time off stage, my dressing room became “Central” for the on-going Scrabble games that helped us pass the time. On the surface everything toddled along, but after the opening, I think we all started counting down the days until it was over … which is never a good sign. Sadly, “Earnest” just didn’t turn out to be one that would go down in the “I-could-have-done-this-show-forever” book.

            During the run, MSI kept my days full as always, with the payrolls and budgets. But now, since I had booked a cruise on the Queen Mary II to the Eastern Caribbean for a couple of weeks, I had to arrange for the weeklies to be dealt with in our office during my absence. The ship would not be able to accommodate all the faxing I needed to do to meet deadlines. As I started organizing the details for others to deal with, I found myself seriously thinking about what this job actually entailed, how complicated it had become. Over time, it had evolved organically, incrementally, addressing individual circumstances as they arose, and had morphed into what was now the company’s operating structure. With retirement thoughts growing more persistent, the thought of someone else doing this job frightened me a little – both personally and professionally. There was no date set for my departure, but the notion started to colour the time ahead. It affected how I felt about the job and seemed to ease the pressure I had been putting on myself for almost twenty years now. It wasn’t that I didn’t care any longer, but I came to realize that the all-consuming, all controlling intensity was wearing me down. Sam and I had superficially talked about it and, in his mind, the sooner someone could begin “training” to take over the better. Identifying who that person would be was another thing altogether. And even more difficult, at least for me, would be formally setting down what I actually did – the job description! The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this job was huge! In structural terms I was now Vice President and CFO of a multi-million dollar company, established and respected in the Industry. How would I even begin to write this down?

            I’d never gone on a cruise before. The Queen Mary II was the ultimate in luxury, a self-contained floating city and nothing to do but relax. The otherworldly isolation drove me inward. With stabilizers and modern engines, one doesn’t feel the motion of the sea. At night, standing on a darkened deck, the vastness of the sky is astonishing. One feels so small and a bit lost … “at sea”. My life was on the brink of fundamental change, and I would just have to deal with it.

            Just to keep one foot in the real world, I started organizing myself for “The Full Monty”. As a Director, this was a part of the process I loved most, making notes for the opening remarks, creating a timetable and laying out a framework in which everyone could feel comfortable and productive. By the end of the first week, Act One would be done and ready for a run, and we’d be touching on Act Two. Thankfully, the casting had come together and I was very pleased that there would be no chasing down of first choices because we’d waited too long to make offers. I had the folks I wanted signed and sealed. Once I set foot on dry land, all would be straight forward – a week in New York and then straight into rehearsals.

            The week in New York after the cruise was special because my good friend Olaf (“The Wave”) Pyttlik was in town and we spent days together seeing shows, sightseeing, and an entire morning walking around Lower Manhattan in pursuit of a vintage and very expensive Les Paul guitar Olaf had heard was for sale. It was fascinating hearing him discuss the pros and cons of the instrument with the shop salesmen and then to barter with them and settle on a price. In the course of that evening and the dinner that followed, in typical Olaf style, he fretted and questioned whether his ultimate purchase had been the right one. That angst-ing went on for a couple of days until he discovered that Les Paul himself was appearing at a little jazz club up on 59^th Street. He hauled himself (and the guitar) up to the club and, wonder of wonders, the fabled guitarist signed Olaf’s new purchase. It made the trip for him. We also went to see “Bodies; The Exhibition” which was happening at the South Street Seaport. Olaf always had a unique way of looking at the world and going to this exhibit was something I would never have done had I been by myself. It was a rather creepy experience, looking at real human bodies that had been preserved through a process called “plastination” and then taken apart and put back together to show how the human body works. There had been a lot of controversy surrounding this travelling exhibit because the subjects, deceased Chinese prisoners, had been “used” without any consent by either themselves when they were alive or their families afterward. Caught in the Olaf Whirlwind for this week, I became very aware of how sheltered an existence I had been living for perhaps much too long. He also convinced me to go see a production from Argentina called “Fuerza Bruta”! If you don’t know what that is, there is no way I can describe this extraordinary theatrical experience! Google it (“fuerzabrutaglobal.com”) and if you ever have a chance to see it, don’t hesitate … GO! Trust Olaf to open my eyes! But the break was over. I left this high energy fantasyland behind, ibuprofen coursing through my body to ease the pain from days spent walking the Streets of New York with Olaf.

            They say that casting is ninety percent of the job and I’d done my job in spades with “Monty”! One doesn’t really know that to be the case before rehearsals begin. One hopes, but it’s not until folks are in the room, on their feet and working that one knows for sure. There was immediate confirmation on our first day. My six guys (Steve Ross, Jeremy Koz, Marc Devigne, Mantee Murphy, Jeff Kohut and Gord Tanner) bonded as soon as they saw each other. There was no hanging back. From the very first moment, they launched into the blocking and musical numbers (Scott Peter as our Choreographer) with incredible energy, great humour and inventiveness, and it only got better as time went on. I was in heaven. It was so smooth and easy. The ladies (Debbie Maslowsky, Stacey Nattrass, Melanie Whyte) were the emotional anchors for the show, devoted and loyal, funny and willing to do just about anything to make something work, never shying away from a difficult moment. Oh, Lands, but they were good! I could not have asked for better artists!

            “The Full Monty” tells the story of a group of unemployed steelworkers in Buffalo, N.Y. who, in order to raise some bucks, decide to present a strip act at a local club after seeing their wives enthusiastic response to The Chippendales and the money that act generated. There is a heart and warmth built into this show as these loveable regular guys discover and overcome their inner demons and insecurities.

            The show-long lead up to the strip that the boys have to do took a couple of weeks to set in place. But we eventually got to “it”. For so long during rehearsals, the actual doing of it had remained a complete unknown. The mechanics of the strip had been worked thoroughly in advance, clothes on, and the choreography memorized. But it was all theoretical! Getting down to their “gotch” was scheduled toward the end of the second week. There was no way to tell what it was going to look and feel like until they did it. And that actually happened spontaneously one afternoon – a surprise to everyone, including themselves – a very natural progression during a run. Rather than stopping when they reach the song “Let It Go”, they just did it! Without encouragement or urging from me, it just happened. That was the first hurdle, and it was done. It was incredibly touching. The boys were so in tune with each other, all a bit nervous but honestly desperate to make it work, and, at the same time, having a great deal of fun! Next was doing it with the breakaway costumes but that had to be put off for a few days because they were late arriving from the South. It was frustrating because now they were tugging at the bit to do the real thing. The clothes eventually arrived. It was a case of them doing the strip down to their own underwear (which they wore under the G-strings) to get comfortable and accurate in the mechanics of taking off everything they were wearing.

            The afternoon of the costume run of the Second Act was fraught with anticipation. The whole cast was in the rehearsal room for the first time and as we got closer to the Finale you could feel the energy in the room rising. The boys started the number. The jackets and ties and shirts came off. The break-away pants disappeared at exactly the same time and the cast went nuts. They started screaming and hooting and that just served to buoy the guys on the rehearsal hall floor. Then it was down to the G-string and finally losing that. When it was done, the cast stood and applauded and yelled at the bravery of my boys and how great it had gone. I doubled over with laughter as it happened, more out of relief that it worked than out of amusement.  “What a rush” was Steve’s comment. The crucial test wouldn’t happen until we got into the theatre.

            The move into the Pantages was very easy, at least for the cast. Everything was in place as far as their work was concerned. There were some spacing things and an entrance or two that had to be altered, but for the most part, I knew we would sail through this with flying colours. The set was a bit shabbier than I thought it should have been considering it was a rental and was supposed to be in working order upon its arrival. But we had it repaired in no time and everything was running smoothly. It wasn’t until the Thursday before opening that the guys finally went down to the buff!

            We cleared the Theatre of all non-essential folks and they got into their security guard uniforms, this time with no underwear. Scott’s choreography was done to perfection, their voices, now mic-ed, rang out in the house, and I could tell that the guys were having great fun. Then, in a blink, it was done. The lead up to the final pose was complicated and had to be timed immaculately with the crucial lighting cue. At this point, they had only their security guard hats in their hands covering their private parts as they did the last steps of the routine. On the final musical button they simultaneously throw their hats away and step into a naked spread eagle pose as the huge wall of marquee lighting behind them spelling out “The Full Monty” flashes to life, basically blinding the audience for three or four seconds, silhouetting the naked guys followed by a blackout. Timing was everything. We had taken great care to make sure the boys felt as “safe” as possible. They were shown what the lighting looked like from both sides of the proscenium. From the on stage perspective the entire house was lit up like high noon from the marquee lights. They had that experience first. There is no way to trick your mind into believing that the folks looking back at you couldn’t see “everything”. You could see their lit up faces in perfect detail … why couldn’t they see yours? It was very disconcerting.  But sitting them in the house and having some stage hands play them in the moment the lighting cue happened, they understood that, indeed, they were blinded by the dazzling lights. In the days that followed they got to do it five or six more times and it didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. The next test would be opening and 1600 people looking at them!

            These talented young guys had been fully committed from the outset and met each challenge with a “this-is-the-job” attitude. Early on in the show, Jeff Kohut had to “audition” for the group showing his “reportedly prodigious credentials”, bare butt to the real audience but supposedly exposed to his friends. He wore a “sock” in the show, but in the absurdity of the moment as the guys have to look at “it” they could hardly control themselves. In fact they did lose it a few times. But the good humour of it all anchored the work and by the time we opened, they were having a total blast!

            Jeremy carried a huge burden as the major character in the show, and there were moments of understandable insecurity at times, but just before opening he settled in and blew me away with his truth and appealing vulnerability as both the character and the actor. There was a funny, crusty, open quality about him that went right to one’s heart. I told them all how proud I was of them and so grateful for their trust and honesty. I also told them I was completely overwhelmed by their trust of each other. When the Orchestra finally hit the pit and when Michael Walton’s grungy, industrial and theatrical lighting defined the stage, I knew this was another really GOOD show! It only remained that Winnipeg thought the same thing I did. 

            The structure of the story line is a constant tease leading, of course, to the big final strip number, “Let It Go”. The Pantages is laid out with boxes abutting each side of the stage and that is where we put the girlfriends and wives of the men. They would act as a subtle “guide” for how the real audience should be reacting. But on Opening Night, the real folks didn’t need any guidance! They played their part, laughing, cheering, applauding and laughing some more. All the performers nailed their roles, maintaining that honesty and focus, carefully building the dramatic arc of the song – tentative and slightly scared at the start, but slowly, with the vocal encouragement of the ladies, gaining more and more momentum. But by the time the clothes started coming off, everyone in the Theatre was on the same page. The screaming and yelling was overwhelming, and the guys played it for all they were worth, becoming more and more brazen and confident. I held my breath as we approached the last moments. The boys have been coerced by the girls in the house into “taking it all off”. After a moment of hesitation, the music ramps up into full bore, the dance continues, and the boxer shorts came off and are discarded leaving them in only G-strings. After few more dance steps sashaying up stage, bare butts to the house, they unhook their G-strings which spring free and are now hanging down from the hand protecting their modesty; the hat in the other hand comes down, covering the unloosed G-string for an instant. The G-strings are discarded at exactly the same time, and after another four steps toward the house, they plant themselves, legs spread apart and, with the final “whomp” played by the orchestra, they lift their hats above their heads and the wall of light snaps on, blindingly, to end the song.

            The house EXPLODED! I just started laughing out loud, again with relief. The audience rose to their feet en masse and cheered. The guys came out for their bows in white terry cloth bathrobes and were hailed even louder by the house! I was so proud of their work and took heart that we probably had a great run to look forward to. The after-party was joyous and somewhat giddily manic for all of us, and I got the feeling that the cast was anxious to settle in for the rest of the run.

            But those anticipated houses and sales didn’t materialize. No one could figure out why. It drove Ken mad. Folks who did come went wild for the production, but box office never took off and that baffled and angered him. I was sad for the cast. They deserved full houses. I’d not been this emotionally connected to a group of folks in a while, and, as the show whimpered to a close, we all took heart that we’d done our best. What was next?

It really came as no surprise at all when “The Pirate Queen” put up its closing notice. Right from outset, there were rumblings and rumours that this would happen sooner rather than later. We got some advance notice but didn’t put any word out – that job was up to the Producers. Our pit rep had been keeping us up to date on the house sizes and after opening they had rarely gone above 40%, which is disastrous for a show this big and expensive. Reviews had been dreadful and there was no recovering from those. There were no Tony Award nominations. By the time it went down, it had played 32 previews, 85 performances, and had lost all of its 16 million dollar investment. Our weekly fee would be missed but my feelings were with the great bunch of musicians we had hired from near and far. On Broadway, there is no guarantee. The number of hits is far surpassed by the number of flops. We’d already experienced several of those over the years. The hopes and dreams and all the work so many people depended on … well, in this business nothing was concrete or quantifiable … or even identifiable. There must have been a little whimper somewhere, but I didn’t hear it. It was on to something else. And in my case, it was “The Sound of Music”.

            The “Boot Camp” was a hoot. Twenty kids gathered for a half day of singing and dancing and antics that would culminate in Ken and I deciding who would make up the seven Von Trapp kids for the production. We made it as fun as possible, playing theatre games and doing improvs to see how they worked together and responded to each other, all while trying to keep to a minimum the pressure in what was, unsubtly, a very pressure-filled experience … for ALL of us. It was hard to ignore how the day would have to end. I could have cast the show twice-over with the talent before us. There were a few that rose to the surface right off the bat, but considering the combination of looks and ages and sizes and personalities as well as abilities made the narrowing-down process painful. When Ken and I met to compare notes at the end of the day, we discovered that we had exactly the same names on our final lists. I was relieved.

            Bob Ivey’s set design was a marvel. After considering all the options, we had decided to build rather than rent. I wanted the visuals to be “adult”, no Disney-ing up of the stage, to be elegant and simple, and perhaps most importantly, to work. I wanted the set changes to be filmic, to segue one into the next, seamlessly, quietly and quickly. I could see from his model that this goal was not out of reach. And with all that in place, we got started.

            There is no escaping the fact that “The Sound Of Music” is a “sweet show”. It was pointless to try to avoid the built-in and somewhat cloying quality of the material. But there is also a darkness that permeates the story, and I made it clear to everyone at the outset that I wasn’t going to ignore that element of the piece. I wanted a certain reality to anchor the performances – that a danger lurked in the nooks and crannies of the space they were inhabiting. And that space was huge. It was the nature of the Stage at Rainbow and there was no way to minimize it. It would dictate the blocking. Since there are very few crowd scenes and the vast majority of the story was told in intimate settings, they would have to be very aware of how I was placing them on stage to maintain a focus within those spatial relationships. There could be no wandering about on a whim. That visual focus had to be set in stone. And everyone, thankfully, took that to heart as we launched into the “Blocking Express”, as somebody called it. There were no grand production numbers, no time-consuming choreography and, thank God, no flying. And, even to my own amazement, by the Sunday night of the first week, we were done … sketchily, but all blocked.

            The cast was wonderful! Everyone continued to focus on telling the story as clearly as possible and each performer understood where their responsibilities lay and how they were crucial to moving things forward. All that was rather academic, but the fortunate thing was that everyone also played the “heart” of the show. Our Nuns were glorious. While it was a delight to hear them sing together, it was also astonishing to see their own individual personality inhabit each Nun. At the head of that group was Colleen Skull, our Mother Superior. I knew there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house when she sang “Climb Every Mountain” at the end of Act One. But there were some tense moments. In her scenes with ‘Maria’ her spoken dialogue was rushed, as if she wanted to get to the singing part of the role. She is a very accomplished opera singer. That is her métier, her usual performance mode. At one point, as I pushed her a bit in a scene, she told me, “But I’m a singer!” I said, “No, you’re an actress” and she couldn’t argue with that and got on with it. And ultimately was superb!

            The kids quickly bonded with each other during rehearsals. They had a wrangler, so they were never left to their own devices. They ate together under the trees out in the park during the dinner breaks. They went swimming together at the pool during their down time and would generally just hang out as a very intimate group. Half way through the rehearsals, I spent an hour talking with them, just checking in to find out how they were doing. We talked about how they saw themselves in their characters and what concerns they had about the process we were going through. They all chimed in with great questions, “actor” questions and observations about technique and relationships, small details that only they would notice. Amazingly, they even began to look like a family.

            The set arrived at the stage and, while it took some time to master its physical movement and idiosyncrasies, it ended up looking stunning and worked like a charm. Scott Henderson’s lighting was, as always, perfect, and as we moved into tech I would sit out in the house watching the whole thing happen, calming myself in the silent acknowledgment that this was really a good show. To be expected, there were small lapses from time to time, when I’d have to backtrack, reminding them of the details we had spent so much time defining and incorporating into the story. But those were always good conversations that always resulted in even more clarity for everyone, including me. It was very solid work. No one, not even the kids, were “playing at it”. They were all inside the material. That’s what made it, to my eye, “a good show”.

            But there was one point that concerned me. The last quarter of the show gets very … well, emotionally manipulative. It pushes buttons very quickly, one after the other, starting from the middle of the Concert Sequence, and the show turns dark and dangerous. At this point, the Rainbow audience becomes the Kaltzberg Concert Hall audience. When ‘von Trapp’ can’t sing “Edelweiss” any longer because of his pent-up emotion. ‘Maria’ asks the “audience” to help by singing the song with him. We had printed the request and lyrics in the program so they knew this would be coming. I was sitting in the house for the first preview and my heart was pounding as we got to this moment. Darcy Fehr, who was playing ‘The Captain’, acted the moment with such honesty that one wasn’t sure if his stopping was really a part of the show or not. But with ‘Maria’ going to him and then facing the audience and making the request, everything seemed to flow into another reality. Don (Horsburgh), our Conductor, turned to the audience as the song’s intro began again and conducted them. There was no hesitation on the part of the 2,600 people under the dome. They sang! All those voices together could have been overwhelming, but the sound was so gentle, encouraging, hopeful. I began to get choked up. At the little bridge section – “blossoms of snow …” – they spontaneously broke into harmony. The sound was ethereal, so heartfelt. There must have been a lot of Mennonites steeped in the choral tradition in the house that night (and all the nights to come) – because there was no holding back as the little song grew and grew. It was so amazing. The applause at the end was remarkable … they were applauding for themselves – inside the show!

            Opening night was a marvel. Everything and everyone came together seamlessly. The cast was on the money. The sets moved smooth as glass (something that was even mentioned in the reviews) and the orchestra sounded incredible. The audience went nuts and that was the state of affairs every night of the run. The party afterward was a huge high as the praise for everyone came fast and furious. The “powers that be” were over the moon. It was a show I was incredibly proud of. It was a mature, sophisticated and very clean production, and each time I went back it was exactly the same. I couldn’t have asked for more.

            One other thing that happened opening night was that Ken offered me “The Full Monty” to direct for them the following Winter. I had lost hope on that project because he’d offered it to Bill Robertson earlier in the year. But it turned out that Bill had some conflicts that couldn’t be rearranged. So, with the news of a few weeks earlier that I’d been cast in “The Importance of Being Earnest” at MTC, my upcoming season was well in hand. I’d also been working on another assignment I’d been given by MTC to come up with “an entertainment” for their 50^th Anniversary Celebration. Trying to decide how to approach this important milestone had had me in a tailspin for a while now, but I thought I was getting closer to having it figured out.

            Just after “SofM” closed, I decided to take some time off. I’d been going heavy since the Spring and needed a bit of “me time”, so, with Teresa, and my heart in my hands, I jetted out to Victoria, BC. to see Mom who had moved out there earlier in the year. The circumstances surrounding that move are complicated and a little fraught. Over time, Mom had been considering a change from the life she’d been used to in Toronto and, with the departure to the West Coast of her close friend and companion Bob, she decided it was time to make that change. I was of two minds about this. Mom’s memory had been failing, and now the upheaval of a move to an unfamiliar environment would, I thought, only accelerate her condition. A trip to Victoria might help put my mind at ease about a move. It didn’t exactly work out that way and only left me feeling that I would need to do something more specific and concrete about how to maintain my connection with Mom. I returned to Winnipeg with a new set of thoughts about my future, personally and professionally.

            The plans for MTC’s 50^th had been in the works in-house for some time before they’d asked my input. The Theatre had already approached a number of people about their involvement, so our first official meeting was aimed at amalgamating what they needed and what I thought should happen. I’d prepared a timeline and now presented it to them. We still had to wait to find out whether the folks they’d invited would be there in person or send “recorded messages” to be played throughout the evening. They’d asked Tom Hendry, one of the Theatre’s founders, to formally welcome the audience, and had approached some big names – Keanu, Judd Hirsh, Martha Henry, Len Cariou – along with other familiar performers to contribute. My ideas for the “entertainment” went over well. As an overall theme, the show would be a tribute, a 5- decade arc that would highlight performances from various high profile productions. The opening “number” would celebrate all 78 productions presented during the first decade … in under five minutes! How? I didn’t know, but the idea seemed to catch everyone’s imagination, so we went for it. We would take famous lines from each of these shows and have them spoken by six actors arrayed across the front of the stage reading from long rolls of paper as a clock projected on a screen behind them counted down the allotted time. Richard Ouzounian would then speak for a bit after which Steven (Schipper) would come out to “host” the rest of the evening. There would be some musical numbers and some scenes and what ever else I could inject into the presentation. That was the idea … in theory.

            Then “Full Monty” took over my life for a bit. As always, as soon as I’d been given the project, my focus became casting. “Full Monty” requires a larger cast with a sextet of men playing the crucial, and large, roles, men who would be up for anything included “baring it all” at the end of the show. There were certain requirements with regard to “type”, very diverse specifics with regard to size, age, colour and personality. Finding those exact guys at home would be a challenge.

Our first Winnipeg audition went extremely well. Fifty people turned up, 35 of whom were men. The quality of talent exceeded my expectations, but it became obvious that we’d have to head down East for more specific choices. Which is not to say the Winnipeg guys were below par … it was those physical type requirements that didn’t come up to the mark. One of the characters, ‘Horse’, must be an older Black man. I knew that part was going to be a major challenge to find in Winnipeg. Early in the selection process, Rainbow President Campbell McIntyre suggested we approach Khari Jones. Khari had been a quarterback for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for a number of years before retiring, and had maintained a huge following because of his involvement in the community while a player and now as a football commentator for the CBC. I learned that he’d majored in Theatre and Dance while at UCDavis in California, so Cam’s suggestion was on the mark … academically. I approached him via the new social media platform called “Facebook” and was amazed when he got back to me. He told me that he’d been approached by a Theatre in Calgary to do the show in October, but had to turn them down because of his duties with the CBC during the season. But with our production happening after the football season, he would talk to his family about doing it. I was now waiting to find out about that. He would generate an incredible amount of press and excitement. I held my breath.

            During my trip to Victoria and away from the familiar, I relaxed. I mean, really relaxed. I was about to turn 62. My Future always seemed to just be there, a new project, a job, a role, an opportunity, things that moved me through Time. But of late, and I don’t know why, I’d become aware of “this” not lasting forever. Would it be a case of not being asked anymore, not being able to do it anymore or not wanting to do it? I needed to somehow be in control of that, and all the practicalities involved. With Mom noticeably starting to slowly, very slowly … fade, I needed to redefine that part of my life. She lived so far away, and I was so tied down to MSI and the next “job”. The two didn’t seem to mesh. But if nothing else, my time in Victoria allowed me to see what a glorious place this was. Putting it all together, I mentioned it to Mom and Teresa. Mom got very excited about the prospect of my living nearby. Teresa was supportive and considerate in her thoughts. I knew this new perspective was probably going to colour a lot of my thinking in the time ahead and I also knew that sooner rather than later, I was going to have to bring all this up with Sam. I didn’t know how I was going to broach that. I’d not made any decisions so it could wait. But it percolated under the surface. A lot.

            “The Full Monty” (or “the whole thing” in British slang”) had been musicalized shortly after its film debut in 1997 with its setting switched from Sheffield, England to Buffalo, New York. The change of locale addressed the problem of Yorkshire accents for the actors and that was one less thing to worry about. I needed specific “types” and found some of them at home. Khari and I had some further conversations but ultimately, it wasn’t going to work out for him. I was massively disappointed but had to move on. In Winnipeg, we landed on Jeremy Koz as the lead, ‘Jerry’, Gord Tanner as ‘Harold’, Marc Devigne as ‘Malcolm’ and Jeff Kohut as ‘Ethan’. All great guys. We cast all the ladies with no problem – Stacey Nattrass, Debbie Maslowsky, Melanie Whyte and some powerhouse vocalists to round out the cast Principals. We headed to Toronto over a weekend and found Mantee Murphy to play ‘Horse’, the role already under his belt after the Stage West production in Calgary. At the same time, we received a killer video from the great Steve Ross. I told Ken to hire them all right away … I didn’t want any defections … and that was it. I was happy and excited, but Oscar Wilde was calling me.

            James Dodding, an elderly Englishman (and I use that description in the best of all possible senses) was our director. He had taught Stephen Shipper a long time ago and that was probably the reason he’d been given the task at MTC. It became very clear very quickly that James’ way of directing was not something we were familiar with in this part of the world, at least not to this assemblage of folk. I was taken aback at the detail with which James approached the blocking in our first meeting. My entrance at the very top of the show as ‘Algernon’s’ houseman ‘Lane’ was to set up a very large tea service in the elegant sitting room. Alone on stage, I held forth following James’ orders. “On this word, you turn your head to the left and walk three steps forward, pick up the cups on this word, walk toward the table, circle downstage and set them down to the right of the napkins” was one of his directions to me! It was a very long and involved session to stage this opening sequence, but it worked out very well. I loved working this way, and it seemed that I was now his golden boy for being so attentive. I could hardly wait to see how everyone else was going to react to his directing style. I didn’t have to wait long. Everyone was accommodating for a few days, but by the end of the first week, it was clear that there were going to be some turbulent times ahead. I guess word had spread about the burgeoning discontent because during the second week, Robbie (Paterson, our Assistant Director) was in the room sussing out what was going on. In the days that followed, the mood got darker and darker and more and more intense. The “discussions” (read arguments) with James’ about his approach, although relatively polite, were indicative of something a bit more combative bubbling beneath the surface. James continued to meticulously detail the scenes which was now driving folks pretty well crazy – the stopping and starting and repeating with each physical movement being examined and honed. It culminated one afternoon in Mike (Shara, playing ‘Algernon’) losing it, falling to his knees in an emotional plea to James to “just let me work!!” and then running from the room. I was not a part of those “discussions” with the other cast members, so I was now taken unawares to hear the commotion and see him dash to the exit. I thought perhaps he’d had some bad news from home. I asked Mairi Babb, playing ‘Cecily’ what was going on. “He’s very unhappy”, she said. I sensed that the rest of the cast was feeling the same way, but I was oblivious to it. My scenes were few and far between and the detailing didn’t bother me. In fact, I kind of liked it if only because it was like choreography, and I was quite used to that. It only got worse.

            The cast was in camps. I was very much on the outside of all these dynamics and wanted it to stay that way. I had my business down to a gnat’s eyebrow and just followed the patterns James had given me. In fact, once we opened, this seven minutes-long, one-man production number-like opening sequence of setting the up the gigantic tea service, got a round every night as I stopped at the edge of the stage, took a satisfied look at my work, turned and smiled slyly at the audience and I walked off set. It was great fun. While there were some who went with the flow during the rehearsals, there were others (the out-of-towners from “the East”, actually) who took great exception as to how the show was being put together and let their feelings be known at every opportunity. How this was all going to land was, at this point, anyone’s guess!

There was no doubt in my mind about signing the Rainbow contract Ken offered me toward the end of the year to direct “The Sound Of Music” the following summer (’07). The contract included a fee “deposit”, so the commitment was sealed. I even began casting with Ken’s approval, pinning down at least one lead I wanted – Darcy Fehr as ‘Captain Von Trapp’. I had suggested Samantha Hill for ‘Maria’ and had even approached Tracy (Dahl), with my heart in my hands, to play ‘Reverend Mother’ for us. That was going to be a long shot. But all these possibilities would bubble enticingly beneath the surface as the Fall months moved along. I was feeling optimistic.

            Dalnavert and the “Christmas Carol” readings reached the 18^th year, this time with a split schedule – six performances with two nights off in the middle – and the run was sold out well before we opened mid-December. Realizing that I had become a cash cow for the Museum, Linda, the General Manager, asked me if I would be interested in doing a reading for their Halloween Nights the following year. She suggested “The Picture of Dorian Grey” and I thought of a truncated version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”. That booking was way down the road and I said I’d think about it.

            Before the New Year, we’d secured Don Horsburgh as our Musical Director for “Sound”, Georgette Nairn, a great Stage Manager, and a few more locals fell into place for the cast including the glamorous Jennifer Lyon as ‘Elsa’. I was also concerned about finding the right look for the sets and costumes, so we began a far-ranging search of existing rental packages. There are a lot of smaller Theater Companies in the US (mostly) which, after having mounted a production of their own of a particular show, put their sets and costumes up for rent with a hope to re-coop some costs. Some were good, some not so much. We even looked at some Asian companies, but they would be pricey. A few had good costumes and others had good sets, but finding a combination of both in one cost-effective package was the trick. With my MSI connection to Troika Entertainment, one of our Contracting partners, I managed to introduce Ken to their crackerjack Production Department and left it for him to investigate. As these details seemed to be falling into place, one major hope was fading away. Tracy had commitments to sing in Prague which would take her out of our first rehearsal week and there was another engagement in Banff that might be tricky to re-schedule, but I harboured hope as I headed to Hawaii for another rest.

            It really wasn’t a rest. Manilow payrolls pursued me no matter where I went and, although we had sub-contractors for some sites, there were still major concerts that fell to me to coordinate. We were contracting a touring production of “Rocky” at the same time, still prepping “The Pirate Queen”, and a bunch of one-offs and some regionals that needed attention. I think I had more paper work than clothes in my luggage! My tiny escape served me well and I returned to Winnipeg, somewhat rested but with a boatload of new things to deal with including a crazy tour of a show called “Rock Star Supernova” created out of a TV reality series. I’d never heard of the show, but Sam had shoe-horned us into this project while I’d been away. It was a 28-city schedule of the music I like least in the world and our involvement was very simple – provide a String Quartet that played with the rock groups for two songs! The fact that we were being paid $500.00 U.S. Dollars per site for basically no work made it teetering-on-the-edge-of-acceptable, but this genre was wa-a-ay outside our lane, and I let Sam know it. He said he couldn’t resist the offer and I just rolled my eyes … something he didn’t like me doing to him – but accepted in this case. Work place dynamics!

            The “Sound Of Music” auditions, like all auditions for Rainbow productions, were draining. Aside from a medium-size ensemble which doesn’t have a huge amount to do, there weren’t a lot of parts I had to cast. But we had to see almost 200 people (and these were only the adults) and there were a few pleasant surprises. Sadly, Tracy had finally opted out, reluctantly and with profuse apologies, so I was biting my nails that a ‘Reverend Mother’ might turn up out of the blue. The Theatre Gods must have been smiling on us. Colleen Skull, a magnificent mezzo, appeared out of that mystical “blue” and blew all of us away with an astonishing voice and look for ‘Reverend Mother’. We hired her right away. I found Melanie Whyte to double up in a few key roles, a ‘Rolf’ and a ‘Liesl’ and two of the other older Von Trapp kids – ‘Friedrich’ and ‘Louisa’. That last detail meant that the pressure would be lessened (but no less painful) in a couple of weeks at the kid auditions. We were getting there.

            Then, out of the blue (this time, not the mystical one), MSI got tagged for an audit by Revenue Canada! Ambush! The blood runs cold, and the heart sputters as the fear runs up the back of your neck. For no real reason, a sense of guilt seems to invade and colour every consideration you make about everything in your life, and the world is thrown into an unfightable chaos. This was a G.S.T. audit.  If you run a business in Canada, GST (Goods and Services Tax) is a 7% surcharge added to the fees you charge a client. Essentially, you become a tax collector for the government. As the listed CFO, I had been contacted by a nice-sounding lady named Amber and we had set up an appointment. Not knowing what the face-to-face meeting was going to be like, I had stressed myself out, but I needn’t have worried.  She was most pleasant. At the outset, we did a lot of talking about dogs (Morgan had greeted her enthusiastically at the front door) and family and trips before settling into what she needed for the audit. She had put me at ease – something I’m sure she had been trained to do – and I ended up feeling confident that this was going to be a breeze.

            A while back, the bookkeeper at our Accountant’s office had pointed out to me that I had not been including our U.S. Income in our G.S.T. reports. This had been gnawing at me as the possible reason a red flag had gone up on MSI. I mentioned this to Amber, but she didn’t seemed concerned, telling me that so many people did that. Since the conversation with the bookkeeper, I had started tracking the US amounts on the GST spreadsheets and would now include that number in our next return. It will probably send RevCan into another tailspin. She looked at my GST returns, and I explained how I did the calculations. She asked for four of our returns to be backed up with documentation as to how I arrived at the figures and gave me a week to generate the information. I took the rest of the day to calm myself down – I wasn’t about to be carted off to prison after all! – and in the days that followed, produced a substantial pile of paper for her to go through. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the whole megillah and I waited with bated breath for the next shoe to drop. Then Sam got a call from Revenue Canada asking why we weren’t doing G.S.T. reports for Lutent Holdings, one of our accounts that held US funds that had already been processed but on which, we discovered, we still had to pay GST. My head was spinning from all these switchbacks and hairpin turns, but I dutifully wrote cheques as they requested knowing that it could all be claimed as expenses, and concluded that this was all just paper generation and a waste of time … at least as far as I was concerned. Mercy! My breathing started to return to normal.

            By now, “The Pirate Queen” was well into previews in New York. Sam had been back there keeping things calm and organized. All this while, I had been creating and explaining the weekly payrolls for the Pit Contractor (Dave Roth) so he would technically know how to do the formatting and create the complicated cell formulae once he took over the job full time when the show opened. Our exchanges were always touch-and-go if only because these mathematical calculations confounded us both at times. With so many little rehearsals being called at a moment’s notice, and constant additional hours and overtime being added on almost hourly, we took some solace in the fact that during rehearsals, which we were still in, the production was paying the musicians a week in arrears. Still, it was incredibly frustrating at times when Sam would forget to tell me about a tiny fee detail and I’d be at my computer into the wee hours making the changes on the spreadsheets and Invoices to send off the following morning. But Dave and I got along extremely well, and I was looking forward to meeting him in person in a couple of weeks at the Opening.

            With everything in order in New York, Sam took off for ten days in China to drum up business and check in on some touring productions that we had a minimal hand in organizing. Naturally, while he was basically incommunicado on the other side of the world, all hell broke loose at home with only my shoulders on which it all could fall! I made the mistake of accepting the contracting for a Tour of “Chicago” coming into Vancouver. It was ten days down the road – short notice, to be sure – but I knew Sam would have had a fit had I turned down the work. In turmoil about my decision, I spent days trying to put a good band together. Fortunately, we’d had a “Chicago” go through Vancouver eighteen months earlier, so I knew who to hire. It took me until the day before the opening performance to pin down the final player. All through this, John Monaco, the supervising Contractor, and the Live Nation Producers kept calling to whine and kvetch about how high the Vancouver Musician rates were, why we (MSI) were getting as much money as we were for contracting the Orchestra, why there were Principal premiums, why were the doubling rates so high and on and on. It drove me to distraction, and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming at the office jerks on the other end of the line and at John who went on and on about how the rates are higher in Canada than they are in New York (they’re not). But this was always the case when “Chicago” came across the line (U.S. to Canada). It all got taken care of and in the end, Vinnie, the Musical Director, had a great band, and that’s really all that mattered!

            Since there are no production numbers in “Sound of Music”, I decided to take on what “choreography” was needed myself. The only dance was The Laendler, an Austrian Folk Dance that is demonstrated for the kids by ‘Maria’ and ‘Von Trapp’ during the Ball Scene. I wanted to be as authentic as possible, so Georgette, my SM, arranged for me and her to visit “The Edelweiss Shoe Plattler Dance Troupe” in St. Boniface to learn the real dance. They were very enthusiastic and happy to have us in their cozy little hall, decorated with Austrian flags and pictures and cuckoo clocks. We discovered very quickly that the real Laendler they were about to teach us was not at all like the slow, elegant waltz-time Richard Rodgers tune in the show.  As the music began, the couples in front of us started whooping and stomping about and clapping to the very quick polka-like music now blasting from the speakers! George and I looked at each other in confusion and surprise but we joined in and laughed and stumbled about, looking like we were learning something. We left after a breathless forty-five minutes of dancing, some refreshments and some small talk.  I had no intention of using what we’d just seen, and when I got home, put the “SofM” video on and started writing down the film choreography that went with the music from the show. Thank heavens there was only one dance in the show!

            The GST audit was giving me sleepless nights and constant heartburn. But we were on the verge of being done. Amber found what is called a “systemic error”, a mistake that had been made years back, and embedded in a teeny, tiny spreadsheet cell calculation formula I’d created for our tax breakdowns for the Accountant, a small typo that I’d never noticed but which had compounded over time. We ended up paying a whopping bill for the tax not paid over the past three year, but, again, a lot of it could be credited back to us through expenses over the same period. I updated my ancient spreadsheet formula which now incorporated the correction going forward. I knew this audit was small potatoes in the great scheme of things, but the mental stress over those months was pretty major and I hoped I’d never have to go through this again. The self-inflicted fear, for it was self-inflicted, was what surprised me the most, that I had allowed myself to feel that threatened and powerless, at least in my head. It still haunts me.

            Then it was off to the Opening Night of “The Pirate Queen” in New York. I had reserved a small suite at the Hyatt in case there were festivities I needed to host at any point and was relieved to settle in by mid-afternoon, allowing payrolls and audits to drain out of me before heading out to dinner with my niece Samantha at Tony’s di Napoli, my traditional first-night-in-NYC meal. I had tried to get her and husband Eric opening tickets but there was nothing I could even buy for the performance. Apparently, half of Ireland was to be in attendance and tickets had long ago been swept up. At least I got to spend a bit of time with her.

To tell the truth, I thought the Opening would be more “star-studded” than it was. Gabriel Byrne was the only person I recognized, and he was there only because he’d narrated a documentary about the show. I’d been keeping my eye on the BroadwayWorld.com postings and was not seeing positive responses from run-of-the-mill folk who had been to previews … no great details, just a disturbing ambivalence. Uh-oh!  I found Sam easily behind the roped off area in front of the theatre. I’d not seen him in quite a while. He’d been in Asia for a time and had then flown to New York for some weeks during previews. Surprisingly, he looked great, rested and was in good spirits. We chattered about all kinds of things non-MSI and non-show related, which we rarely did anymore, and took our seats. There was a tumultuous babble in the house, everyone anticipating the “brand new Boublil and Schonberg Musical”, but I could also sense an apprehension. Maybe those internet postings had something to do with my perception, but it just wasn’t what I thought I would feel.

            The production was spectacular, no doubt about it! The sets and costumes, the Celtic choreo-graphy and swashbuckling, the lights and smoke, all the visual elements let me know I was sitting in front of a lot of money having been spent. The voices were wonderful, the music and most of the lyrics compelling and rousing. But I couldn’t settle into it. For one thing, the many timelines and locales required me to work much too hard to understand ‘where’ and ‘when’ we were at any particular moment. I couldn’t connect. When it settled for a bit during the ballad moments between Stephanie J. Block (‘Grace O’Malley’) and Hadley Fraser (‘Tiernan’, her love interest) I kind of got it. But I kept thinking of those same kind of moments in ‘Saigon’ which served as welcome catch-your-breath lulls in the ever-present chaos of the War. In this case, they didn’t serve the same purpose and felt like interruptions more than anything else.

            When it was over and the audience was going crazy during the bows, I just sat there … until it was de rigeur to stand up. Sam leaned over toward my ear and very quietly asked me what I thought. How was I going to be appropriately enthusiastic and supportive but let him know my honest opinion … which I knew he wanted. “It was spectacular in every way” I said. “Glorious to watch!” And then I stopped for a moment. “But ya know what, Boss? I couldn’t find its heart.” I said it simply, no adornments. I could tell from the look on his face that my words were a confirmation of his own feelings. By then, people were streaming up the aisle and folks were pushing to get out of our row, so we had to join in the flow.

            We stood in the departing crowds in front of the Theatre for a bit, then headed down to Cipriani’s at 25th and Broadway for the Opening Night Party. Cipriani’s is a huge, high-end event center, with an immense main banquet room and smaller satellite rooms. Sam’s Assistant had made all the seating arrangements weeks earlier. It was a very rare sit-down affair, but the Producers had very deep pockets. She had given us our tickets before the performance in case we got separated at some point. We cabbed down together with Mark Cumberland, the copyist for the orchestra music and a good friend of Sam’s. Through some kind of “error”, Sam and I found ourselves seated in one of the small outer rooms with the show’s Dressers and Wardrobe folks, and Sam’s Assistant and Mark had disappeared. I was somewhat pissed off about this. I didn’t care all that much about where I was sitting, but Sam was the show’s Music Coordinator and Contractor and really should have been at a mucky-muck table in the main hall! I walked about for a bit, found some musicians I knew in the main room, and stood chatting with them for a bit. As I scanned the crowd, I spotted Sam’s Assistant and Mark sitting at one of those mucky-muck tables in front of the stage, laughing away and drinking champagne, and my blood boiled. I went back to our table in the outer room and told Sam where his Assistant and Mark were and that I was leaving. He said he was going to stay and find the folks he should have been sitting with. The whole evening was just a little sad and not what I wanted it to be … for Sam. To this day, I don’t understand what happened with regard to the seating. As far as I was concerned, it was an obvious and blatant affront. But to what end? What goes through someone’s head to knowingly create that kind of dynamic, particularly with one’s boss? I never challenged her or mentioned it. And I’ve always regretted not doing so.

            The rest of the week in New York was spent seeing some more shows – “The Color Purple”, “Legally Blonde”, the John Doyle “Company”, “Talk Radio” and, weirdly enough, the reduced version of “Les Miz”, a huge contrast to the bombast of “PQ” just a few nights earlier. By comparison, “Les Miz” is a well-considered, emotionally secure and affecting piece of theatre, and one can only guess how the same creators (and millions of dollars) could miss the mark so fundamentally with another show. Why does it work when it does, and doesn’t when it doesn’t? And if someone could solve that age-old riddle, they would make a lot of money!

            Over the past few years, I’ve been blessed with directing shows that have had a lot of children in them. Well, “blessed” is not actually the right word. “Cursed” would be closer to Truth, but much less “politically correct”. Fortunately, “Sound of Music” required only seven kids and I’d already cast three of them. There were only four to go. So the weekend after returning from the excitement of Broadway, I settled in for two and a half days and a total of 163 youngsters to look at … for only four roles. I decided that I was going to video the auditions this time round. With so many to get through, remembering the details of their performances had always been hard, and this time I was looking for particular “family traits” that would read as “brother and sister” resemblances. I narrowed it down to 24 kids covering all the ages and, the following Saturday, we held “The Von Trapp Kids Boot Camp”, a chance for them to do “stuff”, dancing, singing, readings, generally giving me an idea of how they responded to each other (and me) in a less stressful setting. Yikes!

It seemed that no time had passed since that frigid February night when I’d been asked to consider a role in a new musical called “Head” by Deb Paterson for the Shakespeare In The Ruins Company. Any hesitancy had been dispelled upon a reading of the script and now, a few months later, we were on the cusp of starting rehearsals. The project’s journey had been a long one for Deb, having worked on it for a couple of years before this large step into production. The script itself was well focused and contained. It delved into the deeply fraught time leading up to and during the downfall of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, laying bare the political and emotional turmoil surrounding the event. On that level I was looking forward to starting work. However, I had a problem. As has been repeatedly documented in these pages, I’m rather “old school” when it comes to the subject of Musical Theatre. I am a student of the genre and have spent most of my professional life immersed in its study, creation and performance, and I take it very seriously.  So I was taken a little off guard by the state of the music I’d been given along with the script. While the spoken text had great clarity, the form and precision of the music left, for me, something to be desired. The music I’d been given seemed illogical, changing structure from bar to bar (not as a device, I was sure) and mired in a confusion of meter and form. There was little to hang on to rhythmically and words had been frequently been placed on the wrong beats in a bar resulting in a jolting em-pha’-sis on the wrong syll-a’-ble. I was hopeful that these problems would be solved in rehearsals.

            Not many in the Cast had worked for the Company before. Shakespeare In The Ruins operated as a “co-operative” and, as such, most of us were a bit at sea with regard to the somewhat “loose” approach to the rehearsal process and organization. Some people have that laid back mindset in their blood, I don’t. I’m pretty pragmatic when it comes to putting a show together … something needs to get done, one person makes a decision and it’s dealt with. The “best-idea-in-the-room-wins” approach drives me to distraction and closes me down. I got the impression that Arne (MacPherson) our Director, was doing his best to apply a more “mainstream” structure to the experience, and it was working alright as we got down to business … or a hybrid of it. Winnipeg Guitarist-par-excellence, Greg Lowe and Choir Director Pat Robson were Musical Co-directors and they jumped in with all four feet addressing the problems. I spoke up from time to time, and tried to be as polite and gentle as I could, but endless discussion and negotiations weren’t solving the confusion. There are so many more elements in a Musical not present in a straight play and it took some time for song keys to be adjusted for our vocal ranges, for time signatures to be clarified, for chord progressions to be corrected and for more attention to be been paid to rhyme (an especially touchy subject for me). Slowly, with everyone being specific and concise, we managed to define things before too much more time was wasted talking about it.

            Then, inescapably, we found ourselves facing the dreaded “table work”! Fortunately, mercifully, it quickly became very clear to the whole group that sitting about contemplating navels wasn’t going to cut it simply because of the time crunch. The pace picked up rapidly once we were on our feet. Everything was business. The dialogue had been crafted with a great deal of care and attention and, as such, the passion in the play was wonderfully playable. Marina Stephenson Kerr as ‘Anne Boleyn’ was astonishing, and it was beyond joy for me to have most of my scenes with her. This was one of those rare connections, sharing a stage with someone to whom you find yourself drawn, someone so present, focused, in control, at ease … and beautiful. A very young Samantha Hill (now “Samantha Jeanne”) was ‘Jane Seymour’, possessed of an incredible voice and an accessible vulnerable quality. She subsequently went off to Broadway to play “Christine” in “The Phantom of the Opera” for a number of years. Cory Wojcik (of late ‘The Cowardly Lion’ at Rainbow Stage) was the spit of ‘Henry VIII’ and with Miriam Smith, Melanie Whyte and Nancy Drake dynamically filling out the other women in the show, everything settled in to a smooth and relatively calm trek toward Opening.

            Our days in the Rehearsal space at Prairie Theatre Exchange came to an end and by the time we moved into our performance space – the converted Reception Court in The Conservatory at Assiniboine Park – we had all formed a tight bond. And that was a good thing because now we were basically starting over again having to literally “build” our environment in the large raw space which would contain the production. The set was a series of wide open levels for the grander scenes with smaller satellite areas for the intimate scenes. The “Theatre” looked marvelous with great arrays of potted botanicals hanging from the ceiling and placed strategically throughout the space. The only downside was the fact that it was high summer on the Prairies and the Reception Court turned into a fancy, very big, very hot and humid greenhouse. During rehearsals it was almost more than we could bear as the sun beat down on the glass roof day after day! That bond of support and sympathy we’d created served us extremely well as we sweated toward the first public performances.

            The Opening was packed to the gills with 120 people occupying a space meant for 90. All these bodies made the room even more uncomfortable, and with all our furs and finery on, it was hell whenever we were on stage. My character, ‘Thomas Cranmer’, religious advisor to the King, comes into his own at the end of the first Act and throughout the Second. By that time of the evening, things had cooled down a little in the room and I could concentrate a bit better as the sweat stopped running down my face.

            From my various perches on stage, I could always see how beautiful the production looked. It was otherworldly, as if it had been plucked whole from another time and set down whole in the middle of wherever it was we were. It seemed to envelope all of us, audience and actors, in a smothering of leaves and vines and moss, protecting us from the unpleasantness of jail cells and executioner’s axes. The injustice of politics and greed combined with venal desire seeped into every moment leeching away hope and possibility. But it also ate away at our surfaces, leaving us just a bit strafed by the end of each performance. I resisted it as long as I could, but it eventually wore me down. I guess that was the cost of relinquishing oneself to the intensity of such drama. As is often the case with new work, there were still some things that continued to need attention but, with only ten chances to play at it, we stayed in our lanes, trying to deepen the relationships as we could, and took great solace when they worked. There was never a time to relax into our rhythms, some of which came spontaneously, surprisingly, and provided a momentary reward to buoy us along. By the time it ended, I was ready, albeit a touch disappointed that I’d not completely conquered it. There was talk of touring the production which came to naught, but Greg decided that at least a Studio recording of the score should be made for posterity and, on an afternoon shortly before closing, that’s just what we did. There is a song between ‘Cranmer’ and ‘Anne’ called “What Must You Think Of Me?”, a beautiful, gentle duet that ebbed back and forth between Marina and me and made me long for more. But, as always, everything that had fused together for those weeks disappeared in an instant of hugs and goodbyes, and the world came flooding back in.

            It came to my attention, and surprise, that I’d been awarded a place on the Rainbow Stage “Wall of Fame”. This would be the third year since its inception and I was honored to be numbered among those who had made contributions to the Company over the years in a variety of categories – Creative, Performer, Technical, Volunteer, Administration, Musician and “Builder”. I was being named in the Creator and Performer categories and was asked to give a speech at the Induction Dinner in a few weeks, and had to put my mind to setting down something more than just a “thank you”, deciding how far I was going to take this opportunity. Should I just be “nice” or come out with both guns blazing? I didn’t hold back.

            The event took place at the Norwood Hotel and about 275 people turned up, having forked out a hundred bucks each for a Prime Rib Dinner and a “Show”. I went with Teresa, and as we looked about the room, neither of us could figure out who all these folks were! There were a few Rainbow Board Members there in “official” capacities, but these “suits” certainly weren’t from the Arts Community. And they certainly didn’t know who I was. I wandered around trying to find a familiar face to chat with or get a nod from, but I was an unknown, a cipher, a body in a suit and tie with no connection to anyone. That was somewhat disconcerting. Usually at least someone would come up to me and mention that they’d enjoyed this show or that show, and we’d have a little back-and-forth and then move on. This time, nothing.

            The food was second-rate hotel fare. The “Show”, by some of the younger Rainbow Chorus Kids looked minimally rehearsed, which drove me nuts, and I found it difficult to get overly enthused about their work. As soon as they finished, they disappeared into the night, our last vestige of energy and any trace of “showbiz”. I felt depressed.

            Ron Meyers, an old Board stalwart around since the beginning, had been tagged to introduce me. He spoke for much longer than I thought I deserved but was incredibly generous in his remarks. I thought I might be an anticlimax to such a wonderful speech. After some thanks to a variety of folks I’d worked with over the years, I got into the thoughts I’d honed over the previous days.

            “It’s been twenty-three years since I began my association with Rainbow Stage playing ‘Dick Deadeye’ in “HMS Pinafore”. I think back to those days when I would arrive for the show and note Jack Shapira’s Silver Phantom Rolls Royce parked beside the Stage Door Entrance and wonder what kind of set-to I was going to get into with him that evening over some Union infraction because I was, unfortunately, the Equity Deputy.

            “I think back to the “Camp Rainbow” days when the roof leaked (both on stage and off), when a musician who’d had too much to drink before the show was hauled out of the orchestra pit by his arms by stage hands during a performance.

            “I think back to the sweat pouring from us as we departing from a pretend-winter Anatevka in “Fiddler On The Roof”, dressed in heavy woolen coats with the stage lighting making our little Russian shtetl a tropical 40 degrees Celsius!

            “I think back to the tears in my eyes as I watched those kids finally get the jobs they were trying out for in “A Chorus Line” and forming that glorious golden kick-line at the end of the show.

            “I think back to our last performance of “42^nd Street” when all our lives, cast’s, crew’s and audience’s collided and intertwined in love and respect in the overwhelmingly emotional final curtain call.

            “And I think of a so-very-young Jeremy Kushnier as ‘Oliver’ and sweet Jayne Paterson as ‘Dorothy’ in my first “Wizard”, of an earnest Kevin McIntyre as ‘Hero’ in “Forum”. And I know why I love Rainbow Stage.

             “But my perspective is much different than it was twenty-three years ago. I now look for challenges and possibilities beyond the tried and true – beyond the “Brigadoons”, the “South Pacifics”, the “Oklahomas”.  As a performer and director and even as an audience member, I see Rainbow Stage on the cusp of uncharted territory, and I realize that the status quo can keep bums in the seats for only so long.

            “Take this into consideration: a few years ago, during a production of “South Pacific”, my friend Robbie Paterson, who was playing the role of ‘The Professor’, had to make an exit from the stage through the audience each night. He then had to wait near the concession booths at the back of the house before returning to the stage. During those breaks, Robbie would usually stand and gossip in the dark with the genial Ron Meyers, one of Rainbow’s most watchful and perpetually present Board Members. In the course of one of those breaks, Robbie happened to comment on “the amount of yellow that night”. For those who don’t know, “yellow” refers to the 2,600 yellow fiberglass seats in the house. When those seats were empty, they were painfully obvious to us from the stage every night. Ron pulled Robbie over to the side for a slightly more expansive view pointing to the back half of the theatre. “There should be people in those seats! Do you know where they are?” he asked. Robb said he didn’t, and without a breath, Ron said, “They’re dead!”

            “Funny though his words were, they pointed to an unavoidable truth. Rainbow’s traditional audience was disappearing. The folks who always came to see the Old Chestnuts were dwindling. It meant that this Theatre’s life blood was now to be found only in a younger audience. And you’re only going to get a younger audience by putting on shows a younger audience wants to see. I can tell you it’s not “The King and I” It’s “Les Miz”! It’s “Rent”!. It’s “Hairspray”! It’s the most recent show that has the buzz. And it’s no longer a case of “put it on and they will come”. Those days are gone. Competition for the entertainment dollar is brutal. It’s a case of turning something into an event. It’s taking a step outside of the comfort zone, creating a desire and spending money to see it through. It’s the business.

            “I’ll be blunt. Forget the status quo. Fourteen dollar seats are a thing of the past. So are the shows we’ve honoured as a part of our history. It’s great to fly the Wicked Witch of West over the stage every now and then, but please … it’s time to move on!”

            The speech got them going. Even Ron Meyers’ very conservative wife, Estelle, who was seated beside me, gave me a big hug when I returned to our table. I received a standing ovation from the folks which kind of surprised me. It struck me that maybe I had said aloud what a lot of people had been thinking. A couple of days later I got a long e-mail from Board President Campbell McIntyre asking me if I would be available to come and brainstorm with the Executive Committee in the next month or so. I said I’d be happy to but reminded him that I wouldn’t be pulling any punches. He said that’s why they were asking me.

            It was all a little sad upon reflection actually. I was sorry that the folks who should have been there to celebrate their own work and each other couldn’t afford the hundred bucks to attend. As it turned out, that all changed the following year. The event became free to everyone and was held in the Lobby of the Pantages Theatre with drinks and appetizers on the house. It became a Party! And it was wonderful!

            “Pirate Queen” (AKA “Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas”) had started its Previews in Chicago. There was still an incredibly long way to Opening Night … months, in fact. The road even to this point had been incredibly hectic for me. The orchestrations were a huge component of the production. Since the story was based in Ireland, the score that Claude-Michel and Alain had created was heavily steeped in Gaelic tradition, steeped to the point of absolute authenticity in every aspect of the music. At exceedingly great expense – transportation, accommodations, per diems, all amenities, essentially anything they wanted – professional Irish musicians had been imported from Ireland at the very beginning of the rehearsal process. There was no reliance on electronics or synthesizers for those particular sounds. These were the real instruments (Bodhran, Gaelic Harp, Irish Pipes, Uilleann Pipes, Irish Fiddles, etc.) played by musicians who had played them all their lives. The orchestrations had been created for them and by them and, of course, they were constantly changing. As a result, my budget and payroll spreadsheets were also constantly changing, daily in fact, as another new musician would arrive from Ireland to take up a new part of the score that had been added for a very specific effect. Of course, there was a compliment of the usual players – the winds and strings and brass – but it was creating this “sound” that took up an extraordinary amount of time which meant an extraordinary amount of money. And my head was in moment-by-moment-tension for fear of making a mistake … just like the old Manilow, “Bourne’s “Swan Lake”, “Chitty” New York/Broadway days. The show wouldn’t open until April of 2007 and had already been in rehearsals for four months.

            It was amazing to watch the frenzied activity from a distance. One of the base points of the publicity was something called “Castcom”, short behind-the-scene clips of creators and cast members talking about the show, designers talking about the sets and costumes, about rehearsals, five-minute PSA’s which came out every couple of days, keeping the show’s name front and center on social media. It was my only connection to what I was a part of, but not, and I watched these short shots religiously to get a feel for what was happening in Chicago. A lengthy, long-planned hiatus took place over the Holidays and then the behemoth geared up full-throttle in the New Year as “we” made the massive transition and settled in at the Hilton Theatre, formerly the Ford Center where “Chitty” and “Ragtime” had begun.

            In the meantime, I’d cemented some of my up-coming season with a “Sound of Music” for Rainbow. A possible “Importance of Being Earnest” for MTC that Fall seemed to be dangling, and a few other things were lurking in the shadows trying to find the light. It’s always those “other things” that throw spanners into the works. Getting the year set puts my mind at ease, but I guess two tentatives at this point were better than nothing.

            It had been a long time since I’d auditioned for someone I didn’t know. James Dodding was a highly regarded British Theatre director and teacher with whom Stephen (Schipper) had worked in the past. He was being brought over to direct the “Earnest” for MTC. Robbie had called me the day before he was dropping into town and suggested that I should at least come in and “meet” James. I didn’t think it was going to be an audition, so I wasn’t particularly anxious about a few minutes for a chat. But that’s what it turned into – an audition! He was a very pleasant chap, an elderly man, steeped deeply, at least to my ear and eye, in a great British theatrical tradition, precise, accessible and very funny. Robbie was very taken with him because he was, as Robbie said, “so smart” … and I also got that impression right off the bat – not pompously smart, just subtly and obviously so. He asked if I had anything I could read for him. Without a beat I asked if I could read ‘Lane’ and ‘Merriman’, the two household servants – one young and one old … or at least the way I did them. “Both?”, he asked. “Yes”, I replied simply and, with Robbie as my scene partner, I was off. It had been 25 years since last doing those two roles at MTC and it all came flooding back to me – how wonderful these parts were and how much fun I’d had doing the show back then. Why would another kick at that can be any different now. At least I ‘grown into” the parts a bit more. I read well and James actually laughed a couple of times during the very short scenes. That was a good sign, but perhaps he was that accommodating for everyone. I’d just have to wait and see.

To tell the truth, by the end of the first week at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki, I was tugging at the bit to get home … and there was still another week-and-a-half to go! Mom had come and gone, and friends Scott and Leslie Drewitz had also been in town for a few days but had also moved on. I usually looked upon these long-cherished sojourns as down time, replenishing- mental-health escapes; but something had changed. I didn’t know if it was guilt that had set in – being away from my desk and all the “stuff” I had to do. I had brought my technology with me and paid T-Mobile a whack of dough to be connected through the hotel’s internet, so payrolls and new budgets were being taken care of. Or perhaps it was boredom. That possibility surprised me. I think I missed the moment to moment action of my office phone, never knowing what was going to be demanded of me and how fast it had to get done. Maybe it was a combination of the two, but I would just have to suck it up and suffer through being so far away from the reality I’d become alarmingly used to. And I was missing Morgan!

As usual, once back home I hit the ground running. Top of the list was the MSI Annual Budget meeting with Sam and getting the Company ledgers in order for the year-end wrangle with our accountant. We were doing pretty well financially. We would top a million in Revenue and if we could keep spending in line, Staff bonuses would be substantial. That depended on Sam of course. His generosity was problematic at times. He would think nothing of dropping a couple grand for drinks and dinner with an entire orchestra someplace. Often our Amex bills would take my breath away! But he thought that rewarding a great bunch of musicians went a long way toward building our brand and maintaining good relationships with our hires. That included the Staff!

One development since I’d left was that Sir Andrew (Lloyd Webber) had signed off on the “New Gospel Version” of “JC Superstar”, and Sam was now in the process of getting the licensing done with The Really Useful Group, Webber’s producing Company. As might be expected, over time, Sam had established and nurtured connections with a variety of folks, many of whom I knew nothing about. These were social liaisons he thought might be of value down the road and had, on many occasions, produced fruit. One of these friends, Louis St. Louis, had been working in the background with Sam in getting “Superstar” secured. I’d never heard of him, but his resume was impressive. He was a songwriter and Broadway Musical Director for shows like “Grease” and “Smokey Joe’s Café” and was now thickly involved in the project. Outside of a very small group of people, Sam had told no one of Garth’s (Drabinsky) involvement in the project. But at this point, it was apparent that GD’s financial and legal problems were becoming dramatically more serious, and since he was the one bringing a lot of   up-front money with him, the prospect of “Superstar” was beginning to fade. Over the years, I’d seen Sam’s initial enthusiasm for a project wane if they became too complicated and yet, at the same time, provide a momentum for the next “thing”. I never figured out how he could let things go like that. It was probably part of an entrepreneurial armor, the innate self-protective coating off of which the bad stuff slid and to which the good stuff stuck. It baffled me and, at the same time, impressed me.

There was some other news that greeted me upon my return. Rainbow had somehow managed to regain some financial footing and the still-very-trepidatious Board had decided to go ahead with a summer production of “The Wizard of Oz”. While I’d emotionally let go of all the long-term plans for my involvement there, Ken (Peter) now confirmed that I would direct the production. While in Hawaii, I had found myself standing on my balcony looking out over the ocean and fantasizing about who I would have cast in the show’s various roles had it been scheduled. It was academic at that point but now, it wasn’t. And, of course, my mind went into overdrive as I found myself, once again, scrambling to solidify people for the major roles. Surprisingly, upon issuing the offer, Ken had mentioned a couple of the same folks I’d come up with in my little daydream – Jeff Kohut for ‘The Scarecrow’ and “Tim Gledhill for ‘The Tin Woodsman’. ‘The Lion’ needed a bit more thought. As did ‘Dorothy’ and the ‘Witches’. Ken had actually approached Nia Vardalos (an ex-Winnipegger) to play ‘The Wicked Witch of West’ and was waiting to hear back. For me, the only downside was that, in order to save money, all rehearsals would be held out at the Stage rather than the Korol Rehearsal Hall at the Pantages Theatre downtown. The Stage was a thirty-five minute drive from home. The good news was that I could take Morgan with me. There was lots of peeing grass, lots of free parking and the rental set would arrive from Wichita Music Theatre a week after rehearsals began. Despite these positives, I knew this would be a pig to put together and that I would have to steel myself emotionally because it was going to come on faster than I thought!

One small diversion took place in early February. My dear friend, Teresa Lee, had become General Manager of the Shakespeare in the Ruins Company. To begin her tenure, she decided a Fundraiser for the Company would be a good opening gambit. Over her time teaching music at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School, she had firmly connected with many of the city’s high-rollers and sent out 160 exclusive invitations for them to partake in an “Extraordinary Evening of Elizabethan Games and Amusements” at The Conservatory in Assiniboine Park. Teresa never did anything by halves and this event was no exception. Partnered with Arne MacPherson and dressed in outlandish period costumes, I manned the front door greeting arriving guests with “Hail!” and “Well met”, setting a quasi-Shakespearean tone for the hours ahead. The “rooms” of The Conservatory were done up with theatrical lighting and gaming areas tucked away in the bushes and foliage, and food tables were scattered throughout the spaces ladened with piles of catered delectables. It was a sight to behold.

In the course of standing at the entry doors in what quickly became a momentary polar vortex for the guests but a perpetual deep-freeze for Arne and me (this was February in Winnipeg!), he asked if I would be interested in playing the role of ‘Thomas Cranmer’ in a new musical by Deb Paterson (Arne’s wife) called “Head”. It concerned the relationship between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn and was being mounted by the Company in late Summer-early Fall fitting into my schedule perfectly. I asked if I could read a script and went off into party mode considering the offer my bonus for supporting the very profitable (for the Company) evening. They made a LOT of money that festive night!

By now, we had pretty well settled on the “Wizard” casting except for a ‘Dorothy’. Through MSI, we’d secured the great Don Horsburgh as our MD, a wonderful, easy-going guy with a boatload of experience, dispelling any qualms about the musical aspect of the show. Then, all too soon, it was time to brace myself for the Ensemble auditions. Practically speaking, “The Munchkins” would have to be “small” people and the only humans who could fill that bill were, God help me, kids. Seeing 66 young girls over the course of the first four-and-a-half hours was no mean feat. The vast majority of them were predictably pitiful, but thankfully there were a few bright lights. The auditions had been organized so the kids got older as the week went by and, consequently, they got a bit better … not much, but a bit. By the end of the week we were moving on to the adults which didn’t yield a much better crop. Why people who can’t sing insist on auditioning for a musical is completely beyond me. I had no compunction in stopping them before they got too far down the path of no return and sparing us further pain. I probably could have cast most of the show without any auditions at all, but “being open to anyone and everyone” was part of Rainbow’s mandate and my hands were tied. By the final day, we’d seen 262 people!

The Equity folk were also a mixed bag. My big concern was still ‘Dorothy’ and none of the ladies who came out had the whole package. It might be that we’d have to go down East for the role. We locked in Cory Wojcik for ‘The Lion’ and cast Brenda Gorlick as ‘The Wicked Witch of the West’ (Nia Vardalos had conflicts). But why was getting this done so difficult? Maybe it was just the nature of the show itself … the characters are so particular, so specific, and, hanging over everything were the iconic film performers. Ray Bolger, Burt Lahr and Jack Haley had left massively indelible marks on their roles and there really was no other way to “do” them. I kept telling myself that over and over again!

After another go ‘round, I found my ‘Dorothy’ in the form of Chelsea Duplak. A good singer with a wholesome look about her, she could act well and “played” young”. We lost a few folks I wanted to other gigs, among them Rob James, a good-looking talent who, it turned out, had been selected for the final 22 in the “Canadian Idol” competition that year. He’d been in the “Saigon” Ensemble, and I held out some hope for him down the road, but sadly it wasn’t our Yellow Brick one. And then we chanced on Roy Smith, a dance teacher in town who was a fusion of Paul Lynde and Jerry Colonna and mercifully unaware of how funny he was. We hired him as our blustery “Emerald City Gatekeeper” and my casting saga was pretty well over.

Then “Fiddler” finally evaporated. My disappointment knew no bounds. Music Theatre International had been on Ken’s neck to decide if Rainbow was doing the show or not … and they made sure to explain, not because MTC wanted it. The Board had decided to be “prudent” and to wait to see what business “Wizard” would do before committing any further down the road. To my mind, “Fiddler” was a slam-dunk – it had packed houses the last two times we’d done it – so why not bank on it? I couldn’t figure it out. I drowned my sorrows in another little jaunt to NYC to see some new shows.

Starting on Monday, my first day in New York, a lot of my time was taken up with an MSI crisis. Usually, Sam took care of crises – he thrived on them – but he was in Southeast Asia so I had to deal with it. Thank God for cell phones! The initial call was from John Monaco, Music Coordinator on the North American Tour of “Chicago”, informing me that their travelling keyboard player needed a sub for the Saturday Matinee. They had just landed in Ottawa where we were the local Contractors, and it was our job to find one. I started the wheels in motion only to be told by our rep in Ottawa a day later that the sub would now be needed for the Sunday matinee as well! Ottawa is a small town with scant quality players available at the drop of a hat for a major production like this! The only name that came to mind was of a great Ottawa keyboard player who’d worked for us years earlier and who’s number I happened to have with me. But we couldn’t connect! I must have put in ten calls to him over two days leaving messages about the urgency of the matter! At one point we did speak, but he wanted three times the money I was authorized to pay him, and I had to tell him that wasn’t going to happen. Once off the phone, I thought about it and decided that this bird in the hand, no matter what the price, was the only choice I had. I called back and left another message acquiescing to his higher fee. All the while, I was in and out of theatres afternoon and evenings, deking out at intermissions to see if any messages had been left. Another day went by. Then he called me back leaving a message with an even higher fee demand!  I couldn’t believe this was happening, but he had us (me) over a barrel, and he knew it. Finally out of steam, I left the last message okaying the fee and gave him all the details for the engagement. I got in touch with Monaco, told him the sub was all arranged (I didn’t mention the ransom) and gave him the address to overnight the score so this brigand of a musician would have a few hours to look over the music. It was now Friday, and this had taken five days to lock down. Some days I earned my salary!

It was right into the relative safety of “Wizard” rehearsals once home. The day before we began, Don Horsburgh and I had sat for four hours going over the music in great detail and getting to know each other better – a meeting that paid off in spades once into rehearsals. We each knew where the other was coming from. As usual, we began with the Principals singing all their material. It was another case of some trepidation on my part as I’d cast the show without having Don available for auditions. But my casting choices had worked out for “Miss Saigon”, and I hoped for the same response here. I was slightly miffed that some of the Ensemble folk had not looked at my assignment sheets I’d sent out weeks earlier and let them know it. But the kids knew their material and were spectacular. Don was pleased with the quality and told me so, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Since Rainbow is an outdoor Theatre, there was no air conditioning, and the July heat was bad and getting worse. Fans had been set up all over the place but only served to move the hot air around. Morgan wasn’t having a good time either. He was pretty clingy, sticking close by me during chaotic rehearsals and sleeping in the car all the way home. Since we had the actual stage and set at our disposal, ‘Flying By Foy’ was brought in early to do the system set-up and get cast and crew preliminarily familiar with the dynamics of “flying”. Some high-end performers told me they had decided to take Ensemble work only because it involved a lot of flying as members of the Witch’s Monkey Army. With every space being used for dancing, scene work, music sessions and with the heat as our constant companion, I was back in the thick of Summer Theatreland!

Time seemed to speed by, but there was little upheaval or challenge. The cast was having a good time and even Morgan had grown used to the routine. When not in my lap watching (or sleeping), he would stand between my legs while I directed. The first run-through on the scene deck with some costume pieces had him very involved. Whenever Brenda as the ‘Witch’ came out in her black dress and pointed hat, cackling and in “commotion mode”, Morgan would go nuts, skittering across the floor toward her barking and growling which sent everyone into gales of laughter. Then, having issued his warning, he’d run back into guard position between my legs. Everything went incredibly smoothly from the beginning of rehearsals to almost the end.

When we moved to the stage, the Foy became the problem. Well, not the Foy set-up itself (that was perfect) but, rather, the crew who was operating it. As I have mentioned elsewhere in this Blog, IATSE, the Stage Hand’s Union, issues a call to its members to work a show and anyone can accept that call. Anyone. Aside from being a member-in-good-standing, no parameters, no requirements, no specific abilities are required. Just “you’re hired”. It’s one of their shortcomings. In most cases, it works out, but Foy Flying needs guys to do more than just pull ropes. They have to be able to think on their feet, make adjustments in the moment, finesse a movement and, above all, maintain focus. It’s dangerous work with people whizzing around twenty feet above the stage. Two of the four guys on the system could only be classed as “grunts”! There are two main controls. One set of wires allows for travel left and right above the stage. The other set operates the up and down motion of the performer hooked up to the wire. As the runs progressed and despite constant corrections from the Foy technician, the two pea brains on the “travel lines” never did it the same from one run to the next! It drove me to distraction. There was one run-through when they took two performers completely off the wrong side of the stage leaving the crew no way to get the flying mechanism back to the other side for their next cue… and that was after rehearsing it for almost a week. That was also the night I lost it and went ballistic. As soon as the last scene was over I raced up the stairs onto the stage and started screaming “Bullshit! Bullshit!” at the top of my lungs. The terrified cast parted like the Red Sea as I stormed through them toward the backstage left area. “Are you guys insane? I yelled. “Have you completely lost your minds?” “Do you know what crap that was?” I went on a tirade that lasted for two minutes. I don’t know where all the words were coming from, but they kept pouring out of my mouth. I could see Mark, the Lead Tech, standing off to the side nodding his head. He told me afterward that it was the best thing I could have done at that moment.

My tirade sort of made a difference for a couple of nights if only because Ken, who was also acting as Production Manager to save some money, stood beside them backstage watching what was going on. They had instruction sheets for each specific fly. All they had to do was read the directions, wait for the cue from the Stage Manager, and pull the wires. But even after we opened there were strange things going on which, for the life of me, I could never understand. Couldn’t they see what was happening? Flying at Rainbow? For me? Never again!

As for the production, I was very proud of it. The pacing was great, even at two and a half hours. Even though I’d watched it dozens of times, I never got bored. I told this to the cast in my “farewell to the troops” speech the night before we opened. I let them know that their story was clear and that they looked comfortable and at home on stage. Chelsea was my little hero in all this, leading the cast despite being a wee bit scared of the challenge of carrying the show on her shoulders. The audiences loved her. Jeff, Tim and Cory all had personal qualities that defined their characters, kept everything real and never (well, rarely) went beyond the boundaries of good taste (read “playing for the laughs”).

The show did so well that it was decided late in the run to add three extra performances in the week following the scheduled closing. Once that was announced, ticket sales surged. Everyone was on board, but the extension was a no-go for Chris Sigurdson, our ‘Wizard’, who had other obligations. To everyone’s delight, there was a natural choice to take over the role. Me! I had done the part years before at Rainbow and, sitting through rehearsals and runs and performances, the lines were pretty easy to cram. The cast seemed to re-charge with a new face on deck and it put a new zing into the final shows. It felt very comfortable to step into the role, sort of a full circle in my experience with “Wizard”.

Another major project had fallen into our laps a few months back. Well, actually, it hadn’t “fallen”. It was urged, seduced and enticed onto our roster by Sam’s relentlessness and our growing reputation. It was a new musical called “The Pirate Queen” by the writing team of Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Shonberg, creators of “Miss Saigon” and “Les Miz” and we were now the Music Coordinators for the production. This was huge! The show was in staging rehearsals in New York by now and Sam was madly back and forthing between NYC and Chicago, trying to establish the final orchestrations for the production in order to start lining up the best musicians for both cites. Following the current rehearsals, the whole company would then move to Chicago for a couple of months to build and develop the show before opening on Broadway. And that’s where Sam and I came in … in spades!

Things surprise you from time to time. Just before the New Year, I received a large package in the mail. I hadn’t ordered anything and didn’t recognize the return address … some company in the U.S. I tore open the brown paper and found a cardboard box inside. Still not understanding what this was, I sliced open the tape and found a fitted Styrofoam box inside the first box. I managed to get that out and eased the top of the box off with that familiar squeaky sucking sound when things are held in tight and firm. Taped-up bubble wrap surrounded the still-mysterious contents, and, with more squeaky sounds, I pulled out what I could tell was a 3-inch-deep wooden box. I cut through still more tape and released the bubble wrap. This was King Tut’s tomb protection! I pulled back the last layer of wrapping and took in a deep breath of wonder as I realized what it was.

It had been well over two years since I’d been in Los Angeles at the (then) Kodak Theatre overseeing the Orchestra for the recording of “The Ultimate Manilow” Album. (That saga is set down in Part Sixty of this Blog.) It seems that things move very slowly in the recording business as “product” works its way through calculable sales landmarks. And this was indeed a landmark! Barry’s album had reached sales of more than a million units in those two years, and this was, as the presentation plaque inscription noted, “commemoration” by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of that fact. I didn’t know what to think. There was also a card from Barry taped to the glass on the front of the shadow box exclaiming “What a year!” I felt part of something special, and the fact that Arista Records had included me in this way, of being a small part of making this industry milestone happen, was a big deal … at least to me! I found out later in the day that Sam had also received one. We congratulated each other in a phone call, and I made note of the fact that not a lot of people would know that this acknowledgement had even happened … it was sort of “in-house” … but we would! It hangs in my studio to this day as a reminder of that wonderful, slightly fraught experience.

Kayla Gordon and I were off on another of our Escorted Tours to New York. Spring is the perfect season to visit the City and this time, thirty-eight people had decided to join us. CAA had provided us with a New York Staff person to deal with all the scheduling and hotel details, so we were a great deal freer than we had been in the past. I took part of the group on a Tour of the Upper West Side, a two-hour Walk About I’d developed after the success of the Lower East Side Tour the last time, and we did some dinners and saw a couple of shows. I even managed to sneak in a little MSI business It was a wonderful week, but it was back home before I knew it.

I knew the summer was going to be quiet for me. Rainbow had decided to do two shows – “Good News” and “Smokey Joe’s Café” – and there was nothing for me in either of them. However, over the course of the previous couple of months Ken had approached me about directing “Urinetown” for the Fall and “Wizard” the following summer. He hinted at me doing ‘Tevye’ in “Fiddler” in the Fall of ’06 and then directing “The Full Monty” the following Summer. Things seemed secure for all of them … until they weren’t.

 I really never understood those show choices for that summer. Neither of them had struck me as Rainbow fare. I didn’t know where the titles had come from or who had suggested them. I only knew they would be hard sells because they weren’t familiar names to the Rainbow audiences. While the casts for both shows were excellent, sales were disastrous! There had been minimal advertising and no media hype for either show and the result of this misstep became painfully obvious as soon as the season ended. “This is the end of Rainbow! We’re done!” Ken yelled at me over the phone at one point. I took it all in with a very large grain of salt because he was prone to this kind of knee-jerk reaction to financial struggles, but apparently there were things coming down on him from other quarters. The performance rights for “Fiddler” had been secured by Rainbow well in advance of the Fall mounting. It was ours! It was the policy of Music Theatre International, the Licensing Agent, that allowed for only one professional company in any region to do a particular show during a certain time period. So I was amazed when Ken told me that the Manitoba Theatre Center had been in touch and wanted Rainbow to release the show’s rights to them because they wanted to do the show! Seriously? I think because of the summer’s poor ticket sales, they had smelled blood in the water and were taking their shot. I was at a loss for words! Ken told them that Rainbow had already made commitments to performers (me among them) and that he wasn’t willing to release the rights. To me, it was incredibly presumptuous of MTC to make this approach, pushy and very disrespectful. I wondered what the response would have been had the shoe been on the other foot. I knew that MTC had had this show on their want-to-do list for some time because I’d costed out a “Fiddler” Orchestra for them a long while back. The impasse stayed in the air.

At least my “Urinetown” contract had been signed and I began preliminary casting about for an ‘A’ List of performers. I knew who I wanted, but kept running into problems about scheduling conflicts and, unbeknownst to me, some ongoing-behind-the-scenes antagonisms that took some good folk out of the running. I was confused and getting pissed off. It’s a complicated little show and needed solid character performers with inventive approaches to the roles. Even though I kept at it, there was an odd feeling lurking deep down inside about the whole project. I had been focused to the point of even having designed the set myself, which apparently surprised Ken, but I kept passing along names of folks to approach. We had managed to pin a few folks down, but still needed a few major roles to be filled. I persevered.

Music Services continued to bulk out my days. We had tours happening all over the place. Sam was even drumming up business in China! “Les Miz” and “Chicago” were still on the road as was Petula Clark’s Concert Tour. We had a show called “Rat Pack” out and a bunch of regionals to payroll. I was desperately trying to get things taken care of before heading into “A Christmas Carol” at MTC. This was a project that had been on the docket for a long time, and my involvement was deep and all-encompassing long before rehearsals began.

The adaptation of the Dickens short story was being done by Bruce McManus, a prolific local playwright. Since Stephen (Schipper, the Director) had cast me as ‘Scrooge’, I felt emboldened to the point of putting in my two cents worth with each draft Bruce produced. Actually, it was more like ten dollars’ worth. I had been giving my input via Robbie (Paterson, our Assistant Director) pretty much since the start, and I’m sure my “observations” drove Bruce crazy. It was almost too bad that Dickens’ words had seeped their way into my very core over the 16 years of readings at Dalnavert. I couldn’t let them go. This was also my third production of the show at MTC. From the initial draft, I found myself resisting the approach of a Narrator telling the story rather than the characters, and felt that the odd little subplots that had been created obscured the through-line of the tale … Scrooge’s journey to redemption. Happily, Robbie and his diplomacy prevailed, and changes were made. By the time we started rehearsals, most of the Dickens language had been restored and I was off script.

It was a large cast (23), all local, all very comfortable with each other. There continued to be some conversation concerning the original and the adaptation, but I managed to settle in to Bruce’s script and felt more and more at ease with each staging session. Table talk was mercifully minimal and getting the script on its feet was sheer joy for me. After so many years of being held captive in the chair during the Dalnavert readings, this was a huge release and I reveled in it. But I was also a little bit scared. I had all my words down, but between the extensive flying and the pyro, costume changes and moving scenery … well, it was a tad overwhelming. I was never off stage except for a quick change or two, or to be frantically harnessed and hooked up to wires for the running leaps from the wings into the air above a scene on stage. It was exhausting. There were a few minutes in Act One when I got to “rest”, albeit dangling twenty feet high watching characters play out of a scene below me, but I talked non-stop for the rest of the show. Fortunately, my castmates were spectacular and incredibly supportive in every way. The production had a great feel to it because everyone was so committed and at ease.

After a couple of ‘Wizards” and a “Peter Pan”, I knew that getting the flying right would take time. A guy named Mark was our “Foy Boy” this time around. “Flying By Foy” is the Company out of Las Vegas that is universally accepted as the standard of the industry and has been around since the days when Mary Martin first took to the air as ‘Peter’ on television in the early ‘50’s. Mark had been with us for five days and the delicate finessing of the ropes and wires and pulleys and rigging was coming along under his irritatingly patient but eagle-eyed guidance. Our local flying crew still had a ways to go and it took a lot of practice to get me into the right position at the right height in one smooth go. But I didn’t mind the sometimes gut-wrenching lifts being done over and over again. I wanted it to be perfect. And I was thankful that the crotch harness was heavily padded and relatively comfortable.

Then, just before we opened, they closed Rainbow! In a phone call one morning, Ken told me that the Board had decided that “the audiences of Winnipeg didn’t want Rainbow any longer” and they were “ceasing operation and liquidating the assets!” Mercy! While I’d listened to Ken go down this road before, this time there were no histrionics, and I could tell he was dead serious. My mind immediately leapt to all the projects that I had agreed to do with Rainbow, in particular “Urinetown” and the casting we’d done as well as the contract that I’d signed to direct the show. I gingerly mentioned it to him, and his response was “Yeah, I know, I know” and I let it rest at that. But he was in a dark place.

I was in the Rainbow office a few days later and things seemed to be in a holding pattern. The Staff had been let go and volunteers were now manning the front desk and answering the phones. Ken’s thinking had altered somewhat as well. Now “suspending” was the word being used, not “ceasing” and to his mind productions were being “postponed” rather than “cancelled”. But that wasn’t the way I was thinking. Nor was Equity! Word had spread very quickly, and Equity had called me to let me know that I was entitled to half the contracted fee for “Urinetown”. They were taking that amount from Rainbow’s Security Deposit and sending me a cheque. They also told me that they had let Ken know they’d be doing this! Oh Lord! I was on the phone to him mere seconds after the conversation with Equity. He wasn’t too happy about having to fork out $6.5K to me. He had thought maybe a couple of thousand dollars would be the pay-out at most, so this was a jolt.  He said it was “my call”, what I took as a hint that I might consider a “donation” to the Company. I angsted about that for a few days. Knowing they were in financial straits weighed heavily on me and I decided that $3K would be good for a tax receipt. Ken was very surprised at the amount and told me it was way beyond what he’d expected. I was glad our relationship hadn’t been dampened because of money.

It seemed that this crisis had also spurred the Board into action, something they hadn’t been known for during my time at the Theatre. Among other things, they’d come up with a major Fundraiser in the form of a Raffle, the top prize of which would be a package of Season Tickets donated by every performing Company in town. It appeared that this Goodwill came as a surprise to the Rainbow Board. They had no idea how important they were in the Community and this largesse on the part of the other producers was a shock to them They had also initiated plans for a Fundraising Concert in the Spring. But by far, the best step they took in the right direction was bringing Campbell McIntyre back in to head the Board. I now held out some hope, but it was all in a wait-see mode. I told them I would do anything they wanted me to do to help … despite the fact that I’d lost two shows in all this.

“A Christmas Carol” opened to great notices and the audiences were huge, engaged and wonderfully responsive. But it was mercilessly exhausting, especially on two-show days. As we settled in, I managed to feel pretty good about my work, but there were niggling little things that bugged me, particularly in some of the kid’s performances … not paying attention or making each other laugh on stage and generally being bratty. I had some “curmudgeonly moments” with them and cleared things up in short order, but it rankled that I had to do that. On the positive side, the flying settled in nicely, smooth and “artistic”, if that’s the right word for what the deck crew ended up doing. I never quite knew how fast I was going to be hoisted up or brought down, but I got the feeling that the guys were trying to “enhance” my movements above the stage, and it was always interesting to see (and feel) what was going to happen. To my chagrin, I found out early on that my flying about had an unexpected “bonus” for the people who were sitting in the theatre’s front row. While suspended so high for extended periods of time, those lucky few down front could see right up my nightshirt! There was no way the flying was going to be altered, so it was quickly arranged that my very contemporary boxer-briefs would be replaced with period-authentic underwear. Ain’t showbiz grand?

Sam and my MSI life would fill the days again once we opened. We were now up to five of us in the Winnipeg Offices with dozens of local reps and subcontractors all over North America. We were truly a going concern. But it was the China trip Sam had taken that now presented me with a myriad of challenges. I was handed a list of potential shows in the Chinese/Asian market for which to create budgets. I hated hypotheticals! I considered it busy- work with no return, and I was already busy enough! Then, added to the mix was our renewed involvement with a “resurrected” Garth Drabinsky! This baffled me no end. As the year passed into 2006, Garth, who had been criminally charged with fraud and conspiracy by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US and Security regulators in Canada with regard to his producing entity, Livent, had somehow managed to procure and develop projects that would keep his head above some very deep waters. He was now producing a series of Christian-themed films and had pulled Sam into his on-going quest to produce “Jesus Christ Superstar – The New Gospel Version”. I don’t know what power Garth had over him, but Sam thought this could be a major money project for us and, combined with the Chinese potentials, had decided that we now needed to expand and create an Off-Shore Company! Oh, Lord!

We met with a couple of very reputable high-end accountants to investigate what the pitfalls and positives might be in creating this new company. It seemed that the biggest hurdle would be finding someone to head an office in a yet-to-be-decided location – Barbados, The Bahamas or Bermuda. Guess who unthinkingly said, “I’ll do it.” The reaction in the room was immediate. “Are you serious?” they all asked me. “Because if you are, it would be very easy to set up a Company!” Um. It was duly noted, and we left it at that. As I was leaving Sam in front of our building following the meeting, he said that the idea wasn’t so far-fetched. I was turning 61 soon, loved a warm climate, knew that aspect of our business in spades and it would be a good life for me. Mercy, why had I opened my big mouth? Now that it was in Sam’s head, he wasn’t going to let it go. The potential of all that money coming in from those foreign projects coupled with his desire not to have this new income taxed at 45% in Canada … well, I knew these wouldn’t be the last words on the subject.

Once home, I went to a couple of websites just to see what living in one of those places would be like. How much would I be giving up from a quality of life point of view? Would I buy a house? Would I sell my still-new house in Winnipeg? Could I live in a small town on a small island with nothing to do but keep the books and look at the sea? How quickly would island fever set in? Could I take Morgan? (Not to Bermuda, it turned out.) We’d both love the hot weather, but I’d be loathe to consider anything less than my current lifestyle. So another trek had begun, and I didn’t have any concept of where it would settle except in remembering all the planning conversations and details surrounding the “New York move” and where that had ended up – nowhere!

“A Christmas Carol” closed on a high with a 95% attendance record. Thousands came to see us, the show ran like glass after a while, and the audiences ate it up. But I must admit to being happy it was over. I was exhausted after each performance and two-show-days were killers. Perhaps I was getting to old for these larger, more physically demanding roles. While I was doing good work and there were performances when I enjoyed myself tremendously, there were nights I’d get to the middle of the Second Act and could only think about getting home to the recliner, my TV and a Diet Pepsi!

There was only a day off before diving into “A Christmas Carol” again, this time for five nights back in the chair for an hour and fifteen minutes at Dalnavert. Unfortunately, my body decided that after the MTC run, my ‘Scrooge’ was ready for a shut down. My energy waned and I developed a nasty cold in short order. It was only the fact that I was doing half the usual number of readings in the Museum’s new performance space that kept me going … and the money I was making. It was an adjustment to say the least, discovering how loud to talk to fill a space three times the size of the Attic packed with a hundred people. All the performances had long-been sold out and I discovered that the audiences were a lot more responsive than they had been in the old space, mainly, I realized, because they knew I could see them. The lighting was brighter than it had been upstairs and there was no place for them to “hide”. No one fell asleep. Surprisingly, I found out that some people really missed the intimacy of the Attic, so the suggestion was made that we do a couple of shows “up” and the rest “down”. We’d see where that idea went in time.

All of this went out of my head very quickly as the final “God bless us everyone” came out of my mouth for the season, and it was just a matter of hours before a great big plane would wing me off to Paradise, away from Christmas, ‘Scrooge’, budgets and payrolls and into 16 days of sun and sand at the Hyatt on Waikiki Beach!

My feelings about getting into “Miss Saigon” were so positive after that first music rehearsal with the Ensemble. The work they’d done in advance had paid off and hearing their sound put me in a great head space. My cast was primo, and we began staging rehearsals hell-bent on making this production something of which we could all be proud. Ah, the best laid plans.

            A lot of pressure was on Rick (Fox), our Musical Director, Vocal Coach and Main Rehearsal Pianist. Nothing could happen without him. Since the show is sung-through – no spoken dialogue – he was at every rehearsal and basically set the tone for the approach. Because there were a lot of huge production numbers involving the Ensemble, we focused on that element for the first few days. It was then I realized that dividing the work load had only been a dream and, practically, was not going to work. We both had to be in the room at the same time. On other shows I could go off with Principals and do scene work while something was happening elsewhere with the Ensemble or secondary characters. But with everything tied securely to the music, I had to change my thinking and it became obvious that time was our enemy. We managed for a while. I would stage a scene physically without the music and then Rick would come in and we would run it. That worked adequately with the lead characters but not with the Ensemble numbers. It was imperative that another rehearsal pianist was required, and once Ken (Peter, our Producer) broke down and decided to spend the bucks, the burden eased … a little. Kimberley Rampersad was our Choreographer and managed to put the wonderful dances together in short order, but I still had to do the staging for the many crowd scenes. And my head started spinning.

            As had been the case with “Joseph”, also a sung-through show but nowhere near as complex at “Saigon”, the stop-start approach was irritating and frustrating. A physical pick-up mid-way through a song was easy enough, but the emotional arcs and story development tracks of sometimes very long numbers would get lost unless we went back to the beginning. I tried my damnedest to make this simple for everyone, but I found folks getting confused by my rushed explanations and by my running around side-coaching as the number was happening. Tensions mounted, and Bobby (Martino, playing ‘The Engineer’) was the first to break. You have to remember that Bobby had played the role all over the world and could probably do it in his sleep.

Late in the schedule, we were upstairs in the theatre taking another stab at the “Bangkok” number near the top of Act Two. Being on the stage gave a better feel of the space we had to fill, and I was happy to take advantage of any time I could get up there. The number has a lot of moving parts – the Tourists, the Hustlers and Street Vendors, the Girls. At center stage, ‘The Engineer’, now in a state of desperation, is trying to earn a living selling the girls with a lot of competition from the ‘Hustlers’. The music is burlesque in nature, rather slow with a lot of instrumental music space to fill visually as he tries to attract ‘The Tourists’ with sporadic sung lines here and there. Giving the Ensemble folks “things to do” and getting them to hit their marks on a certain word during the number was not working and I was running out of ideas. The girls were not giving the right vibe as they tried to be sexy in the doorway of the club. The Tourists and Vendors and Hustlers seemed to be wandering around aimlessly … all my fault for not being more specific in the blocking. It was a mess! And, worst of all, I was starting to get scared.

I have to say that during rehearsals, Bobby was magnificent. His generosity, adaptability and good humour had buoyed everyone, including me. He’d offer suggestions when asked and was always at the ready to try something new. But, as time went on and my imagination wasn’t giving me the words to explain what I wanted to happen, my fear started to affect everything in the scene. The sporadic nature of the lyrics confused the Ensemble. A word or two sung here, little phrases there, all meant to keep them involved and responding, were being missed. The blocking wasn’t helping, and Bobby, playing mostly down center was getting frustrated by those dropped cues mainly because they prompted what he was singing and where his focus was supposed to be. Time and again, someone wouldn’t be in a particular place, and we’d have to go back, over and over again without much, if any, improvement. I was getting angry, and I would scream out “Now!” for someone to make a cross and it didn’t happen. And then Bobby lost it.

I could see it coming as he looked to engage with someone who wasn’t there.

“Stop, stop, stop! I can’t! There’s no one there. There’s no one to work with”, he yelled.

He was getting louder and pacing about aimlessly and getting more upset. His voice was cracking, and I felt helpless.

“Everyone … five minutes”. And I went over to Bobby. “I’m sorry you’re having to go through this”, I said.

“We do it over and over with no results” he said, and began to cry.

I moved him off stage and into one of the box seat enclosures just beyond Stage Left. He broke down, the culmination of many days of a building tension and railed at me, not holding anything back. I felt terrible and guilty and inept, but kept trying to comfort him.

“It’s my fault”, I said. “I’ve not attended to the details, and it’s put you in an awkward place.”

He was calming down, but not enough to continue. I said he should go downstairs to the Green Room and take some time and I’d get things in order for him. He left the box seat area, and I went back on stage. I knew most of the Ensemble had been trying not to listen to what was going on just a few feet away from them, but it was apparent they were affected by it too. I told them I would stand in for Bobby and, little bit by little bit, repeating each section over and over again, I patched it together so that it matched what was in my head and, most importantly, what was in the score. It took a while and by the time we finished, I could see Bobby was standing in the wings watching.

I walked over to him. “Should we try it?” I asked him, and off we went. It was a bit ragged, but everyone was where they were supposed to be. We never talked about the episode. It was as if it hadn’t happened, but I was painfully aware that it had, and it preyed on me.

A few days later, in a rehearsal with Stephen (Patterson, playing ‘Chris’) and Trish (Magsino, playing ‘Kim’) I again found myself in another awkward situation. Ground-zero in this show is the fact that it is a “Big Sing”. There is no hiding for anyone. The music doesn’t stop. The singing doesn’t stop. It is the foundation of the piece, the raison d’etre, and the only form of communication. We had been working on the scene called “This Money’s Yours” which leads into “Sun and Moon”, a beautiful duet. But the start of the scene, after a night that ‘Chris’ and ‘Kim’ have spent together, is combative, fraught. ‘Chris’ offers her money, to which she takes offence and to which, of course, ‘Chris’ angrily responds, and it builds into a tense back and forth.

There is a thing, mostly in the Opera world, called “marking”. It’s when a singer holds back vocally to protect or “save” the voice for the “real” thing. It usually happens late in rehearsals and is reluctantly accepted … up to a point. Marking has a tendency to deflate energy, blur intentions and is very hard to work through. We still had a long way to go in solidifying the emotional arc of their exchanges as well as the blocking. Steve had sung full out for most of this work but then started to mark for some reason. I let it go as we were still stopping and starting to get a section set, but once running the scene I needed him to be full bore to see that it all was working. He continued to mark. I finally had to stop. “Steve, I need you to sing out”, I said. “We’re spinning wheels if you don’t give out with ‘Chris’s’ retaliation to ‘Kim’s’ accusations. He took great umbrage at this and went on a saved-up rant that took me by surprise. “I can’t keep doing this!” I said just one more and he did it full voice but with an unsubtle pissed-off edge. It wasn’t quite where I needed it to be, but I didn’t want to upset him further and I let it go. He stomped out of the room without saying a word, and we were done. These altercations were piling up. This wasn’t the last.

Things continued to take shape, very gradually but securely, and we finally moved up to the Theatre. With the set now being in place, another element was taken care of. The work we did with the cast moving set pieces as well as the huge bamboo wall sections paid off. The transitions were flowing smoothly. Lighting was gradually being added and the effects were wonderful. Even the most complicated scene in the show – “The Fall of Saigon” and “The Evacuation” – was done, but it had taken forever to detail. There are few things more difficult than trying to get a riot scene look like a riot. Everyone has to be on the same wave length, thinking and feeling the same thing and being aware of each other, where they are on-stage, where they are in the music, when to sing and when, as a group, to rotate the huge chain link fences from “outside” to “inside” the Embassy grounds, from being “in front of” to being “behind” the barricades in a matter of seconds, all the while maintaining the fear and desperation that propels the scene. But they did it! We’d worked on it forever in the rehearsal hall and, once on stage, had taken a lot of time to confirm every moment. The only things missing were the Orchestra and the full soundscape for the scene.

Rick had continued to do a super job getting all the music prepared and I was so grateful to have such a collaborative and patient partner in this process. It was always a highlight of the schedule for me to sit alone in the house and listen to an Orchestra play through the score for the first time. I thought back to the first “Les Miz” Orchestra rehearsal all those years ago just before the show’s Winnipeg engagement and subsequent Tour. Like that experience, hearing the “Saigon” music played by an Orchestra after weeks of only a rehearsal piano was utterly thrilling. Sam had assembled the city’s A-list musicians (and some folks from out-of-town) and they were all challenged for the three hours, totally focused and responding to Rick’s baton. The following evening, the Sitzprobe (sitting and singing with the Orchestra) had taken the Cast to a new level of excitement. The sound was incredible!

Like the falling chandelier in “Phantom”, the helicopter in “Saigon” had become emblematic of the show itself. I wasn’t going to let that be dumbed down and at the outset had insisted to Ken that he spare no expense in making the prop as realistic as possible. So I was over the moon when I saw it for the first time. In a test with the lighting effects as it descended from high above the stage I couldn’t have been more excited. It looked real! All that remained was to add the propeller sound and we would be done.

The first time through was without the cast. I wanted to get the sound cue organized from the start of the helicopter’s arrival to the landing. We began timidly. It worked alright but the volume was much to low. I wanted the audience to feel the “whump” of the blades in their chests, so we did it again. The Orchestra took off with the filmic, gut-wrenching underscoring, symphonic, grand, expansive, using the “Why God, Why” aria as its thematic foundation; the helicopter descends and the sound got louder and louder as I kept stabbing at the air indicating to Greg, the soundman, that he should increase the volume; I was in the middle of the house looking toward the stage, feeling the sound pounding in my chest just as I wanted when suddenly I saw Rick gesturing wildly from this conductor’s podium at the front of the pit; I could see his mouth moving but couldn’t hear him. I gestured to Greg to cut the sound and as that happened Rick’s screaming voice cut through the sudden silence “… hear the Orchestra!!” I immediately knew he couldn’t hear the 20-piece Orchestra arrayed in front of him.

“Shit, Richard! That’s too loud. I can’t even hear the Orchestra!!!” He was still yelling, angry. I ran to the aisle and down to the pit.

“Sorry! Sorry!” I said as I arrived at his position. “I just wanted to hear what it sounded like. We’ll take it down, but it needs to be loud for the effect.”

“If you can’t hear the music, what’s the point of us playing?” he said, still a bit breathless from trying to get my attention. So we did it again, this time with the cast, and managed to get the right balance. The combination of the passionate music, the Army guards yelling orders and the desperate Vietnamese screaming to make their escape, the physical chaos, the music and the sound of the ‘copter blades was almost overwhelming and incredibly real. It all worked!

But now I had pissed off Rick in the process. There would be one more.

The tech runs, while tricky from time to time, were pulled together and the show started to sound and look magnificent. There were some lighting effects that took my breath away and the Ensemble’s Production numbers were as I’d pictured them in my head. Our Principals, once the Orchestra took the place of the rehearsal piano, were stunning in every aspect of their performances. I was approaching The Beyond in my admiration for and pride in their work.

Near the top of Act Two, there is a number called “Bui Doi”, a Vietnamese phrase meaning “dust of life” and refers to the children the American GIs had left behind when they returned to the States. ‘John’ (Kevin Aichele), now back in the U.S. has organized a group of veterans to raise money for those abandoned children and he sings this gripping anthem with the men of the Ensemble. It’s a Big Sing for all the guys but in particular for ‘John’ with some stratospheric notes for a Baritone – Ab’s and a strike at a Bb at one point. Kevin’s glorious sound anchored the song throughout the rehearsals, and it always brought a lump to my throat whenever he sang it. During the tech runs, I noticed that he was having some issues with being consistent in getting to those upper notes. While I wasn’t too concerned I kept an ear on it.

During a break in one of the final tech rehearsals, I went outside for a smoke. It was warm for a February evening in Winnipeg, comfortable enough to be standing outside without being bundled up. I was in a great mood because the show has settled in and there was little more I needed to do – it was looking and sounding incredible. After a few minutes by myself, Kevin came out for some fresh air. We chatted back and forth exchanging some observations, and I asked him how he was feeling about his work. “Pretty good” he said. “Still a few things to work on”. I don’t know what possessed me, but I said “Yeah, but your approach to those Ab’s in “Bui Doi” needs more support”. As soon as it was out of my mouth I knew it had been the absolutely wrong thing to say. There was a moment of silence. He looked at me and said, “Go fuck yourself” and walked back into the Theatre.

How could I not have registered his vulnerability at that moment. Kevin and I went way back to the days of “The Wave”, and we’d become friends over those years. I knew very well what a great voice he had, it’s rich tone and faultless vibrato. This was a major blunder on my part. We didn’t acknowledge it that evening. In fact, we never acknowledged it and I bore the weight of not apologizing for years. I don’t know why I never apologized. I was profoundly embarrassed by my lack of compassion in those few moments. He was struggling and I ignored it. Our exchange had fallen deep down inside me, landing like another rock onto the pile of my insensitivities over the previous weeks.

The production opened to great praise, and the Cast was justifiably lauded for their work. I was happy for that. “Miss Saigon” would be one of my proudest yet saddest experiences. And the sadness lingered.

It was still with me as I headed off to New York for the Opening Night of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” which we were contracting (yeah … MSI was still anchoring my day-to-day life) and I was dazzled by it. The car (“Chitty”), which was the signature of the show, was a marvel. As in the movie, the musical features an old jalopy that can fly. How they were going to do that on stage was anyone’s guess and I was excited to see the effect. It didn’t disappoint. I’d taken my niece Samantha and her boyfriend Eric with me, and we were sitting in the third row on the right side of the center section. In the show’s Finale, the car, now loaded with the lead characters (Raul Esparza and Erin Dilly and the kids) singing out “Chitty’s” praises, miraculously sprouts wings and lifts off the stage floor! From my vantage point – and I was close – I couldn’t see how it was being done. The stage was dark (it was a night scene) and I kept looking under the car to see a gimble or hoisting arm of some kind, but there was nothing there! The audience went nuts as ‘Chitty’ floated out over the orchestra pit and then over the front five rows of the house before turning and heading back above the stage and off into a starry night sky as the lights came down. Truly astonishing!

I caught a few other shows – “Wicked” for the first time, in the front row of a life-changing production of “Glengary Glen Ross” with Alan Alda and Liev Schrieber, and “Hairspray” which included a role I vowed to play at some point down the road. And then it was back home.

As I sat watching those great performances, my mind kept flashing back to “Miss Saigon” and those moments mentioned above. Over the years, by using life experience or an imagined connection, I’d always found my way into most of the shows I’d either acted in or directed. My sense of organization and structure had always kept most doubts at bay, but “Saigon” found me increasingly floundering, and I couldn’t understand why. I can remember standing in the middle of staging that crowd scene in the “Bangkok” number, feeling lost, and it frightened me … really frightened me. The complexity of the material and its structure, in particular the music, had subliminally overwhelmed me. The limitations of a time signature turned counter creative and, for the life of me, I couldn’t find my way back to the performers. Bobby paid for my ineptitude, just as Stephen and Kevin and Rick eventually did. I will always regret those moments and still, after all this time, I continue to offer my apologies.

Every now and then, unbidden, unprompted, those memories bubble back up to the surface as they have here, reminding me that they happened … and can never happen again. We all have things to keep us humble.

The saga of casting “Miss Saigon” dragged on for what seemed like forever! Folks came and went, some said “yes” then said “no”, and I was getting more and more anxious! There was nothing to do but wait … and wait. As the summer came and went we managed to get the design team confirmed and that settled me down a little. The show is huge – physically, emotionally, musically … no matter how you look at it – and coming to grips with it conceptually kept me awake at nights. I knew it had to move along, like a film, segueing smoothly between the past and present, visually interesting but never taking focus from the story. After meetings with designer, Bob Ivey, we decided that building our own set rather than renting one would address my concerns. We came up with a system of huge bamboo screens on tracks at various depths on the stage which would allow me to create “dissolves” from one preset scene to the next. Some elements would fly, and cast members would move set pieces on and off as required. With the adventurous Billy Williams willing (and happy) to design some really off-the-wall lighting, I was feeling comfortable and getting excited about the possibilities. At least the minimalist look I had of the show had been shared with some very inventive and imaginative people. This could work!

            We held a couple of sets of Ensemble auditions in the late summer that were encouraging. But while it seemed that there were women aplenty, the men, particularly tenors were once again in short supply. I needed folks who were musically adept and had big voices. There are points in the show that are vocally massive, operatic, and very demanding, and I knew it was going to be a monumental task to find 26 people to fill those ranks. The Filipino population in Winnipeg came out in force and there were some great voices, both men and women. We hired them right away. Many of them had done Ensemble work before in Rainbow shows so we seemed to be getting ahead of the game. But still there was a ways to go! Then there were the lead characters. I would sit at my desk, taking offence at each minute that ticked by without my ‘Kim”, my ‘Chris’, my ‘John’, my ‘Engineer’ in place. Finally, we landed on Trish Magsino for our ‘Kim’, the main character in the piece. Oddly, I had coached Trish 12 years earlier when she was putting together her audition for the first Toronto Production. Even after all that time, she still had the look and vocal chops for the role. It would be a heavy lift for both of us, but I was up for it. One down!

            In short order, I put together the entertainment for the 50^th Anniversary Gala together with stalwarts from the theatre Community – Debbie Maslowsky, Stacey Nattrass, Stephanie Sousa, Quyen Raceles, Nick Matthews, Chris Ryan, David Smeltzer, Tim Gledhill, with Celoris Miller as our MD. The format was straightforward – a chronology of Rainbow’s Greatest Hits with some patter weaving it all together – and as we rehearsed there was something soothingly organic about how it flowed out of the performers. The fact that they were enjoying each other and that all the very familiar musical numbers were second nature to them made for a no-pressure experience all around. Some simple staging and lighting, a small combo and everyone in formal wear gave the evening a classy feel. The show was well received and, a moment later, I was into “Beauty and the Beast”

            We bonded quickly and promisingly right from the outset. It was again a case of knowing and enjoying each other, and with Robbie at the helm we were feeling secure and well-taken-care-of.  However, there was one element of this production which, for almost everyone, caused some problems – the Costumes. While recreating the Walt Disney cartoon characters for the Stage, the designers of this particular set of rented costumes seem to have paid very little attention to the fact that human beings were going to have to wear them and move about in them. I felt sorry for the dancers who would have to dress up as knives and forks and whisks and dishes and dance up and down stairs on the set. However, I was nowhere near as sorry for them as I was, in very short order, for myself!

            Early in rehearsal I had decided that I wanted to get used to ‘Cogsworth’s’ somewhat unspecific “Clock” costume. It comprised a large casement with a stationary pendulum, a large key which fit into a slot at the back, and was topped off with an ornate finial in the form of a “hat”. Surprisingly, there was no actual clock anywhere on this outfit, so I ended up gluing clock hands to the end of my nose each night to at least let folks know I was indeed a “Clock” (you can see the hands in this photo if you look closely). The box casement consisted of a complex inner structure of two by twos covered with half-inch plywood overlaid with a thick tapestry cloth and a cloth fringe around the bottom. The key to “wind me up” was also of plywood with painted canvas as was the “hat”. Altogether the ensemble weighed just under 40 lbs. There were holes on each side through which my arms could protrude, albeit with very limited movement. The whole arrangement was internally suspended on my shoulders with wide canvas straps.

            The only way into the contraption was from the bottom. It either had to be lowered over my head by stage hands, or set on two chairs so I could get down on the floor and shimmy my way up into it. It was the latter access upon which we eventually settled because there were rarely folks about to help and I could set it up myself. The weight took some getting used to. I quickly discovered that getting the straps into a comfortable position on the outer part of my shoulders took some maneuvering because my arm limitations. The first few times I wore it during rehearsal were a novelty. I quickly found out how great a walking stride I could take as the front of the box kept smashing my shins and it would sway back and forth with each step. On rest breaks, I could lower myself into a sitting position on a chair with two more chairs on either side taking the weight of the box. My head was down inside the box and my arms up in the air resting on the arm holes. I felt like a huge turtle. People would walk by and look down through the head opening and ask me how I was doing or knock on the front of the box and run away laughing. I was a captive in my costume and could tell this was going to be the bane of my existence for the run of the show. That “bane” took a dark turn before we opened.

            Early on, while waiting inside the box during my breaks, I noticed messages scrawled on the inner walls by, I assumed, previous ‘Cogsworth’ performers – “Courage!” “Suck it up!” “You’ll get through it!” “It’ll be over soon!” There were dozens of them, all signed and dated. This costume had been used for years! Supportive though the notations were, I began to get somewhat concerned about their subtexts … all hinting at impending doom!

            The other “transformed” members of the cast (those of us who had become pieces of furniture or other objects … Brenda Gorlick as ‘Babette’, Debbie Maslowsky as ‘Madame de la Grande Bouche’, Donna Fletcher as ‘Mrs. Potts’, insanely funny Chris Sigurdson as ‘Lumiere’) were also confined by the costuming. Debbie was incarcerated in a huge ornate dresser. At one point she and I were in a freight elevator travelling up to the stage. My hat fell off and try though we might, neither of us could bend over to pick it up. When the doors opened at Stage level, the stage hands found us leaning against the elevator walls in hysterics, helplessly gesturing at my hat on the floor in front of us. The quality of the cast was evident as we progressed. Even though this was a cartoon fantasy, everyone took their roles very seriously. Kevin Aichele was magnificent as ‘The Beast’, Mairi Babb incredibly appealing as ‘Belle’ and Peter Huck was a truly authentic ‘Gaston’. The story was clear, wonderfully staged by Robbie and choreographed by Scott Peter (in his first “real” choreographer job) and we were excited to move up to the stage.

The set was a Pig, huge, ungainly, and presented problems from the outset, mainly because of the disorganized stage hands. For some reason, Rainbow shows at the Pantages Theatre, were not “first-choice” Crew Calls for the IATSE A-Listers – the best and most experienced guys in town. As a result, our tech rehearsals were a shambles. Cues were constantly missed, sets got stuck or missed their marks and the hands would just stand around staring at their printed cue sheets not knowing what to do! The fact that there was a different crew at almost every call didn’t help matters. The disorganization made us all nervous and ate away at our enthusiasm. Meanwhile, I was struggling. An old knee injury from years earlier (falling into an orchestra pit in Portland during a production of “How To Succeed”) was flaring back to life, exacerbated by the extra weight of the costume. The pain in my left knee got worse and worse and by the morning of Opening, I could barely stand up. I called Robbie and told him that we’d better get me to a doctor, or I wouldn’t be going on that evening. He immediately drove over, and we rushed to the hospital.

Robbie is very calm in crisis mode. In this case, all I could do was sit (literally) and watch. He jumped out of the car at the hospital, ran in, commandeered a wheelchair, whizzed it over to the car, helped me into it, spun me around and pushed me through the Emergency doors. If only to break tension, he also gets a wee bit theatrical in situations like this. “Coming through, coming through” he yelled at the top of his lungs with a Colonel-Mustard-in-the Waiting-Room-with-a-Wheelchair-like English accent, scattering people in our wake as we charged into the room filled with seated patients waiting to be seen. All heads turned. He careened the chair down an aisle to the front area where some interns and nurses were standing. “Do you know who this is?” he shouted, pointing at me in the wheelchair. “This is Richard Hurst and he’s opening in a show tonight! There’s something wrong with his leg and he needs attention right away”. All during this commotion I was trying to sink as deep into the wheelchair as possible, trying to be invisible and getting more and more embarrassed. Robbie was reveling in his performance! A doctor rushed over, conferred with us, took the wheelchair and steered me into an examination room.

Now away from the drama, I relaxed a little and explained the pain I was experiencing, telling the doctor what had happened with my knee years ago and what was happening now. Since there was no way I could take time off in order to rest it, and short of arthroscopic surgery, there was nothing to be done but get a knee brace. He also wrote a prescription for oxycodone which would relieve the pain and some of the inflammation. (It wasn’t until much later that medical authorities became aware of the addictiveness of this drug which eventually prompted a global health crisis. At this point (2004) everyone was in the dark about the dangers of this medication.)

We left the hospital, got the prescription filled at a nearby pharmacy and found the doctor-recommended medical supply store just a couple of blocks away. I limped into the shop with Robbie helping me and we explained to a very sympathetic clerk that this was Opening Night, and we needed some assistance right away. Within minutes I was pulling a flexible brace up my leg and over my knee. Somewhere above my head, a chorus of angels began to sing! I was in the middle of a miracle! The pain immediately and utterly disappeared, and for the first time in weeks I could stand and walk normally. I felt liberated, ready to run a marathon. The pain killers were starting to kick in, so Robbie dropped me off at home and I rested for the afternoon. It felt so good to be able to move properly again.

We were all up for the Opening and it went well. Amazingly, the set (and I) actually moved acceptably that night. But it never did settle in. With changing crews, there were mistakes constantly, but the cast maintained, and I actually ended up enjoying the experience now that my knee was on the mend. Chris made it fun with the crazy under-his-breath-ad-libs to me. I would be blown away every night standing in the wings listening to Kevin’s ‘Beast’ singing ‘If I Can’t Love Her’, drawn in by the beauty of his sound. He had to do ‘John’ in “Miss Saigon” for me! That’s all there was to it. And I redoubled my efforts to get the show completely cast before the end of the year.

Time was against us so, as I had done with “West Side Story”, I created charts breaking down every “Miss Saigon” Ensemble number, detailing what people would be singing what part at any particular point in the show. I also assigned all the non-Principal solo lines which pop up relentlessly throughout the score. Endless note plunking sessions would take up valuable time, so I mailed the package well in advance to everyone in the show, reminding them that this was a very Big Sing and “suggesting” that they get “very familiar” with their parts before rehearsals began. While Equity wouldn’t allow learning material to be mandated prior to a contract starting, everyone understood my subtext. I think I scared away a few of the men I’d approached in the “Beauty” Ensemble after they saw how much they were being asked to learn on their own, so I was back a bit closer to Square One than I wanted to be.

            Right after “Beauty” closed, I headed off to New York to meet Bobby Martino. We had cast him based on a trusted agent’s recommendation, on a great reputation, and the fact that he had played ‘The Engineer’ in London and in professional productions around the world. I needed to find out if he and I were going to be on the same page. We met at the Hyatt where I was staying and hit it off right away. He was incredibly affable, maybe slightly deferential but very open and funny, with a bit of irreverence about him that appealed to me. We agreed that “The Engineer” is living moment to moment, by his wits, and that there is a desperation and dangerous edge about him. We talked over each other in our enthusiasm and confirmations, and I left our meeting feeling totally at ease, tugging at the bit to start working with him. There was, however, a niggling feeling that since he’d performed the role so many times there could be a bit of the “I-do-it-this-way” syndrome which might pop up somewhere along the way. It turned out that we would both be tested.

            Disappointingly, dear Nick Matthew, my first choice for ‘Chris’, had opted for a much longer gig touring in another show, but he had suggested that I take a listen to a Toronto performer named Stephen Patterson for the role. Stephen had done ‘Marius’ in “Les Miz” on Broadway and after listening to a CD he sent me, I was sold, and he was signed.  We pinned down “Joseph’s” Stacey Nattrass for ‘Ellen’, convinced Kevin Aichele to leave a Disney job in Los Angeles to be our ‘John’ and I was set … at long last, finally, set! I escaped to the Palm Springs desert to clear my head, hunkering down at a Hyatt for two weeks. It rained for 11 of the 13 days I was there! Not what I wanted; but in the course of those two weeks, I learned the show! And when I say “learned” I mean that by the time I left the un-desert-like damp, I could sing any part from any point in the score. With my headphones jammed in my ears and the score in my hands for every waking hour, I paced my hotel room or sat behind some plants in a corner of the hotel lobby or used the walking machine in the gym, viscerally absorbing the full-length recording of the show I had acquired. Each listening would present something new musically, little emotional nuances that underpinned the storyline, that gave dimension to each character’s journey and, at points, would reduce me to tears as I visualized the staging. Every page in my score was covered with jotted thoughts and observations, with slashes of yellow highlighting, reds arrows defining recurring themes and embedded orchestral emotions. I returned to Winnipeg anxious to get started.

            The first day of rehearsals was incredibly exciting. The buzz in the Korol Studio was electric. I walked about greeting everyone, meeting the few out-of-town folks, welcoming back people with whom I’d just spent weeks in “Beauty”, and took a few minutes with Rick Fox, our Musical Director from Toronto, to chat about this big first step we were about to take. Since MSI was now contracting the orchestra and was responsible for hiring the Music Director as well, Sam could come up with no better choice than Rick. He’d worked for us a number of times back East and had proved to be very efficient, totally prepared and, above all, patient, wonderfully calm and encouraging. We had three days of music scheduled so we could approach it however he wanted. “Shall we start with some of the Ensemble music?”, he asked. I told him that, in theory, they all knew what parts they were singing and had, hopefully, learned all the music. “Let’s find out”, he said.

Shaking with anticipation I made some minimal remarks and introduced Rick. My heart was pounding as he got up in front of the group and told them that since he’d not met them before he wanted to hear what they sounded like. So did I … and the Principals who were sitting around the room. He took them through ten minutes of warm-ups, and they sounded pretty good. But that wasn’t a real test. The only way to find that out was to have them “jump into the deep end”, as Rick put it, and have them sing the ending of Thuy’s Death scene – “This Is The Hour”. The Ensemble comes in immediately after the gunshot as ‘Kim’ kills ‘Thuy’. It’s a short but complex and demanding sing, full bore at a double forte, starting off in unaccompanied, declarative unison. I held my breath. Rick gave the starting note then the downbeat. “This-is-the-ho-ur … this-is-our-land”. There were only 26 people in the group but the wall of sound they produced was unexpected. I think it surprised them too, this being the first time they’d ever sung together. I could feel them physically rise up a bit, everyone clenching their glutes and leaning into the emotional proclamation they were making. “We-found-the-po-wer … in-our-bro-ther’s- hand” … more unison, getting bigger and bigger and more secure, each person being vocally fed by the person next to them. “And-from-the-storm … pierced-with-light” … and I could feel them getting ready to break into two part harmony, all in their upper vocal ranges .. ‘fierce-and-white- the-Light-ning-came … a-bright-ning-flame-to-end-the-night”. Then three huge chords leading into a key change up a step and acappella … “One-man-to-heed-us” … I thought my head was going to pop off as the four part harmony bombarded the walls of the Studio … “each-girl-and-boy! One-voice-to-lead-us … in-a-song-of-joy” … five part harmony now … “This-is-the-ho-ur” … getting even louder and slowing down … “this-is-our” … the massive single-word-climax now, the two assigned sopranos hitting their high ‘C’s’ with utter clarity … “Land!!”  … and held and held … and, when it seemed that the sound had filled the entire world … Rick’s cut off. Perfection!

            The moment that followed was filled with complete astonishment at what had just happened. This once-only experience hung in the air for just a second and then, in an uncontrolled rush, release of held breath, as the room erupted in celebratory chatter and applause. I wanted to start cheering at the top of my lungs. It sounded like they had been singing this music together for years, so attuned to each other, so aware of the sound they were making. Every eye had been on Rick as he urged them upward, taking his hand cues. I watched him as he conducted, his head down, turned to the side, his eyes closed, assessing, breathing with the group.

In this noise that followed, I looked at him and he smiled and nodded. What a start! This bode well!

The “Christmas Carol” readings at Dalnavert Museum had been going for fourteen years and this year would be the last in the Attic space. The Manitoba Historical Society had decided to add a purpose-built “Visitor Center” to the complex just behind the Mansion which would accommodate large public events. I was of two minds about this expansion. On one hand, I’d grown very used to the cozy space at the top of the old house where we could jam in about 45 people, and the intimacy suited both me … and the story. We’d grown to nine performances which were usually sold out in October, so I knew there was little chance of the new space not being used for the shows the following year – more people, more dollars. I didn’t know if they would be able to re-create the same ambience in a large multi-purpose room with space for 100 people, so I wanted to savour the last of the “olde-tyme” performances.

On the other hand, there might be more control over some of our audience members! The advertising had always warned parents that the reading was suitable for children 11 years and older. But some folks march to their own drummers and, of course, these “suggestions” didn’t apply to them. After all, their kids were “mature for their age (4!)” and “very well-behaved”. Mom and Dad would arrive early and ensconce themselves and their little ones just a few feet from me in the front row. The room was very dim, lit only by my reading light. Over the years, I’d basically memorized the script and could “play the house”, making some contact with the shadows. But once the squirming began – normally about 12 minutes into the reading – it was hard to ignore. No amount of glaring at the parents could relay my displeasure at the distractions … for everyone. I wouldn’t miss those oblivious parents, gathering up their kid in mid-show, navigating the short aisle in front of me to the back of the little room and snow-boot-clomping their way down the creaky stairs to the bathroom one floor below. I would always get to the end of the reading, the audience would always applaud generously, and I would always walk out of the room, across the hallway into the office and once again complain to Tim, the Museum Director, about the interruptions. But it was the nature of the beast up there and I took some solace knowing that the following year we’d be able to isolate the little ones somewhere out of, at least, my line of vision. I still looked forward to doing it. The Museum was now selling the CD recording of the reading (my cash cow) in the tiny Summer Kitchen Gift Shop and I was usually mobbed when I’d poke my head in to see if anyone wanted me to autograph their purchase. That usually put me back into a better mood and I would leave the event knowing that I’d at least touched most folks with the Christmas Spirit.

It was my fourth kick at the “My Fair Lady” can and my second go at ‘Pickering’. I loved the guy. No doubt about it. I just loved playing his addled, accommodating obliviousness and the resulting laughs he would get for the silliness he infused into the show. This MTC production was pretty spectacular right from the outset. The fact that most of the Principals had played our parts before gave us a leg up from the outset. Robbie (Paterson) was at the helm and, aside from our ‘Higgins’ (American James Brennan) pretty well everyone was from The Peg. Jennifer Lyon was doing ‘Eliza’, David Warburton was ‘Doolittle’ and Thom Allison was ‘Freddie’. Rehearsals were easy and very smooth with only a few “but-I-usually-do-it-this-way” moments getting in Robbie’s way. James had done the part all over the place and brought a boatload of experience with him. Affable, charming and very funny, he obviously knew what worked for both himself and the character. He and I hit it off right out of the gate and I thoroughly enjoyed working with him. Jennifer was glorious both pre- and post-transformation. David ate the scenery and Thom charmed the house every night.

Early in rehearsals, I started tugging at the bit to get in front of an audience – probably one of the few negative aspects of being very familiar with a role. For some reason, living in the ‘Pickering’ reality came naturally to me and I knew what worked, having tested it all out with the Edmonton Opera’s production a few years earlier. He’s in a world of his own, is basically a foil for ‘Higgins’ and has no trouble with that. This time ‘round, I decided to mentally stay within the Shaw World rather than the “Lerner and Loewe Pink” that propels the musical. It seemed easier to play the words rather than the lyrics and with the fact that ‘Pickering’ doesn’t have a lot to “sing” I was able to maintain that “legit” approach and luxuriated in it … until I didn’t.

We began a week of Previews in good form. Everyone was on top of their game, and we were having fun. Until the end of that week. James got very sick but had somehow managed to soldier on until the Friday before Opening. Listening to him talk was pretty painful. His voice had been reduced to a croak, a horrendous sound that made one hurt for him. Rumours of cancelling the remaining Previews began floating about so he could get better before Opening. Early Saturday morning, I got a call letting me know that the matinee, the only show that day, was cancelled. Great! A day off! So I went out for lunch and did some shopping. When I got home, I found my voice mail was filled with messages telling me that the show wasn’t cancelled, and that Robbie would be going on for James as ‘Higgins’!! Holy crap! It was ten past three, and the show was at 4:00! I hurled myself into the car and managed to get to the theatre at the half-hour! There was a buzz in the air!

Robbie was already in costume in James’s dressing room, pacing back and forth and looking extremely nervous as he tried to memorize as much as he could. He knew the show incredibly well, but that was as a Director, with never a thought of performing the massive ‘Higgins’ role himself. That’s another mindset altogether! Having experienced this situation a couple of times myself, I could empathize. He’d be carrying the script so there was a bit of security there, but it was still nerve wracking. Soon enough, the announcement to the audience of the cast change was made and we were off to the races, literally and figuratively. Robbie was astonishing. He hit every moment, knew every line and lyric and brought another energy to the role – something different from James’s now-familiar delivery, but just as right – and charged everyone with great excitement and electricity. We rallied around him from start to finish and at the end of show the Cast AND the audience stood and sang “For He’s A Jolly Good Fellow” with the Orchestra spontaneously accompanying us! It was a beautiful and heartfelt moment so well deserved. Afterward, I asked him how much he remembered of it all. Not much, he said, but he told me he’d locked on to my eyes whenever we were on stage together and took some comfort in that. We had two days off and James was back on Monday evening, still sounding a bit froggy but not too much the worse for wear. And we opened on Thursday to great response.

I encountered something during the production that stymied me. As mentioned above, I luxuriated in the run … until I didn’t. About the middle of week two, I started to get bored. I don’t know why it happened, but gradually I found my mind wandering on stage. It’s a dangerous thing, boredom in a production. Out of a desperation to find a way back in, one tries to fabricate a re-connection, something new to pull you back into the storytelling. But sometimes this manufactured lifeline latches onto things it shouldn’t. In my case it was some particularly large laughs I was receiving. In rehearsals I had ad-libbed a small, very un-Shavian line just before my exit following “The Rain In Spain” number. During the song, ‘Higgins’ has used ‘Pickering’ as a mannequin while trying to get an idea of the clothes that must be arranged for ‘Eliza’s’ Society Debut and has fashioned a sash out of the armchair shawl, draping it over my shoulder and around my waist. ‘Higgins’ then dashes off leaving me frozen in this pose. ‘Mrs. Pearce’ and ‘Eliza’ are standing up stage watching.  I look over my shoulder at them, look down at the drapery, touch it, look out front, hold in silence for a moment, smile and say, “I like sashes”. I don’t remember how it evolved in rehearsal, but Robbie had just let me go with it. The first time I did it in performance, the house roared. I didn’t know why … and that’s what I latched on to. I did know it was a case of the timing, that little moment of what’s-he-going-to-do-tension before delivering the line, but I didn’t know why they were laughing. I knew that it felt good to land a laugh as big as that and therein lay the danger. My immediate next task was to exit the stage. Could I build on that first laugh? Somehow, it all became mechanical, academic, a test each night to discover which kind of exit would get the response I wanted. The thing is it wasn’t ‘Pickering’ any more. It was Richard Hurst. I tried it all. Would it be walking off with a flounce? Would it be gathering up what little dignity I had left and exiting? Or slinking off, embarrassed? It varied from night to night and that’s when I started thinking I was no longer “in” the play.

There was an earlier moment just before “Rain In Spain” began. After trying to teach ‘Eliza’ how to talk properly – the “say rain, not rhine” bit – we had exhausted ourselves and are sprawled out, ‘Higgins’ on the couch, me in a big armchair. I had put a newspaper over my chest and face trying to nap. A few moments go by and then ‘Eliza’ starts practicing again, very slowly saying, this time correctly, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain”. There is another moment as it registers with ‘Higgins’ and me. I suddenly do a little jolt which makes the paper jump. A huge laugh … and another spiral downward into a quest for a bigger one. Over the following nights, the jolt got bigger, and the kind of jolt evolved – hands up, hands out to the side, hands slowly bringing the newspaper down. The laughs sort of stayed but they seemed to get a bit flat as my working at it became obvious. Somehow they could tell it wasn’t honest.

It struck me that this “way back in” by manipulating those laughs was wholly unbecoming and very disconcerting. It was am-dram, actually. In the moment, for a while, I luxuriated in the response, but the more I worked at it, the more technical it became and the more it was based in nothing at all except the thought of getting a bigger laugh. I went back to the original single, small jolt and forced myself to ignore the reactions and stay “in the scene” with no ulterior motive. An audience never knows what is going on inside an actor’s head, nor should they. But of course I did. I could never figure out why I had let myself go there. I was a well-seasoned performer and looking back on it, I still feel regret at allowing the mechanics of a “bit” to override that reality I should have been creating. I let it go, but the innate guilt that surrounded the experience remained. I still cringe when I think back on it. In fact, I’m cringing as I write this. There is a fragility in performance that can’t be underestimated. A performer’s conditioning, all those hours of rehearsal and preparation, lays a firm and secure ground on which to war against interference from complacency, distraction and most of all, self. Ignore it at your peril. A lesson learned indeed.

The run went extremely well. The “Sold Out” sign was hung on the Box Office window most nights. The show had been a good experience all ‘round, but I was ready to let it go. Closing night included the Lieutenant-Governor’s visit so the festivities were somewhat heightened with post curtain celebrations and all. I left the party after saying goodbye to everyone and headed home, ready to move on to the next thing which, thankfully, was a few weeks in Hawaii which had nothing at all to do with Theatre in any way, shape or form.

Rainbow Stage edged its way into my life again, this time in a new way. The Winnipeg Musician’s Association (the AFM Local) had decided that Rainbow must now use an “official” Orchestra Contractor to hire the Pit Band rather than the Producer signing musicians one by one to Rainbow agreements. Ken (Peter, Rainbow’s Producer) called Sam in and offered him this new job. After all, it was what Sam did for a living. It became “interesting” when Sam insisted that he also be in charge of hiring the Musical Directors for the shows. The Rainbow Board approved all the MSI terms of being retained as Music Contractor and that was that. But I don’t think it was the way the Local had pictured this new requirement playing out. I think they wanted to decide who was to do the hiring and Rainbow, acceding to Union’s request for a Contractor, had chosen the “wrong” guy – Sam! It would work itself out in the end, but there were some bruised egos along the way. The thing was that Sam had evolved this contracting business into a science. It always came down to exactly the right combination of “citizens” (as he called the Musicians) with the right temperaments and sensibilities being brought together to make the sound that was right for the style, the period and the “feel” of a Musical’s music. It was never just a case of hiring warm bodies to play and Sam had acquired an international reputation for this “sense of show”. It was the Orchestra sound that was important and always uppermost in mind and, as far as I was concerned, it bode well for Rainbow’s time ahead!

Because I was sitting in on all these planning meetings in an official MSI capacity, I got an inside track on what shows were being considered for the next three years. I had earlier thrown my hat in the ring to direct the fall production of “Beauty and The Beast” but Ken wanted Robbie to take care of that one. He thought “Miss Saigon” would be more up my alley for the following Winter Season and I grabbed it! Naturally, my mind started whirling right away about casting. This was a “big-sing” show and getting A-List folks pinned down right away was going to be essential. There could be no hemming and hawing about on this one and Ken actually made some great suggestions right off the bat.

I’d also been asked to create a 50^th Anniversary Fundraiser Gala for Rainbow in the Fall. This was to be a “big” show but knowing how these things were usually haphazardly patched together by committees, I made it clear at the outset that I was to be in charge and had certain conditions. I discovered that the Board had budgeted considerable bucks for the “Entertainment”, so the script/concept I’d created would work with no compromises and with the cast I already had in mind. It was still a ways off, so I put it on the Project List and went on to other things.

At this point, we (MSI) were up for four more Broadway shows … a show called “Masada”, a new production of “West Side Story”, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, and a musicalized version of “Heloise and Abelard”. We got “Chitty” and “Masada” confirmed for Spring of 2005. With three shows at CanStage in Toronto and two more in regionals, the payrolls were flying out of my computer and the money was pouring in. I can say that we were now a “going concern” on the Canadian Theatre scene with almost every Musical across the country on our books. The energy it took to maintain the flow was exhausting and the days were certainly full. I was thankful I’d not booked any acting work that summer and was “at liberty” by my own choosing.

The casting of “Miss Saigon” began weighing heavily on my mind. It wasn’t moving fast enough for me. Having names in mind is very different from having names on signed contracts and getting to that point was daunting, frustrating and, at times, much too political. The amount of negotiating that went on astonished me. All my A-listers were in flux for one reason or another – “There’s this other gig I’m up for”, “You’ll have to get in touch with my agent again … I think there’s a conflict”, “I don’t know if I can sing that part”, “I’m out of the country at that time” and on it went. I even went down to see the LA production and a Canadian performer (Johann Camat) who was playing the pivotal ‘Engineer’ role. As soon as the curtain came down I called Ken and told him to hire this guy right away. But conflicts prevented that from happening. Kevin McIntyre and Kevin Aichele were also living in LA at the time, so I approached them about doing our production. Kevin M. had played the ‘Chris’ in the original Toronto production years earlier. But it depended on who was going to play the ‘Kim’ role. Ma-Ann Dionisio was on my list – she’d played opposite Kevin in Toronto, – but that was another iffy situation because her doctor had put her on “voice rest” for six months. Kevin A. thought the role might be a bit high for him. See? This was the kind of thing I was up against. I was only thankful that it was happening many months in advance rather than weeks before rehearsals began as was usually the case. Ken kept following my leads and kept making offers to folks I wanted but nothing was really getting solidified. And it went on and on!

That showless-but-busy-Summer quickly disappeared, and I approached Rainbow’s late Fall production of “Beauty and the Beast”. It had been a journey getting there. I’d gone through a bit of personal upheaval as I found myself having to audition for the role of ‘Cogsworth’ earlier in the year. It had rubbed me raw that after so many shows with the Company I still had to go through these paces. It was an ego thing of course, but I thought I’d given everyone a good sampling of my capabilities over the past twenty years in town. At one point I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to do it. My anger had compounded my inability to learn “Human Again”, ‘Cogsworth’s’ song in the show, and I hated everyone associated with Rainbow Stage. I was just happy that I had another job that was paying for my Life and that I really didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. But Robbie was being his usual kind, encouraging and generous self and I succumbed, eventually sucking it up and going in to do my thing in front of the “sitters-behind-the-table”, all of whom knew me and my work in spades. Baffling. I eventually got “Cogsworth”.  Finding out that Kevin Aichele, Chris Sigurdson, Mairi Babb, Debbie Maslowsky, Donna Fletcher, Stan Lesk, Peter Huck and a myriad of other great local performers were also in show convinced me that it would be great fun. And, for the most part, it was. Except for a Big Bump along the way!

The theatrical evolution of “Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” has been extensively documented – from its genesis as a 15-minute “pop cantata” in the late sixties into a world-wide “mega-musical” sensation – and by the time I got my hands on it, thirty-five years had passed since its premiere. While I had no illusions about reinventing the proverbial wheel, I wanted to give Rainbow’s production some kind of relatable contemporary context. So we came up with the idea of our production being the entertainment at a Church Choir Annual Family Picnic. This was also a way of facilitating Ken’s steadfast desire to incorporate a lot of kids to populate the stage during the Grand Finale and Bows number commonly called “The Megamix”. More about that number in a minute.

            As was always the case, and only because Ken loved doing it, the number of kids we should use became a negotiation. I understood his reasoning … the more kids, the more parents, family and friends who would buy tickets … but his number was a frightening prospect. He wanted one hundred youngsters! I had thought forty or so would be more than enough, and we bargained for weeks. We decided that it would come down to how many kids turned up for the auditions and how many were talented enough to be chosen. I was sure my lower number would prevail! The auditions took place over four days – the first two to see kids and the rest for the adults. I arrived bright and early on Day One. There were already a mob of kids and parents in the Lobby of the large Korol Rehearsal Hall downstairs at the Pantages Theatre. As I walked in, Ken was setting up the tables for us and some staff was dealing with an electric keyboard and auxiliary amp. Chorus Director Zane Zallis was there too. I put my stuff down on the table and Ken came over.

            “Are you ready for this?” he asked

            “As ready as I’ll every be, I guess. How many kids are we seeing?” I said. He handed me a sheaf of paper.

            “Two hundred and seventeen, but there might be a few no-shows.” The number had rolled off his tongue like he was telling me what time it was. I almost fell over backwards.

            “What?? You’re joking, right??”

            “Nope. They just kept calling and we kept adding names.” My mouth was hanging open by now. “We figured we’d allow them each two or three minutes to sing”, he said. I couldn’t form words and kept stammering. “I know, I know” he said seeing my response. “It won’t be too bad. We’ll just keep them moving.” The prospect of getting through more than a hundred kids each day overwhelmed me. How would this be possible?

            But there was no time to think about any of that as one of Ken’s Assistants came in and asked “Ready?” And it began.

            I was in the center of the table with Ken and Zane on either side of me. The parade of young talent seemed endless. We never knew who would be coming through the door until the Assistant announced a name. It was a long walk from the door to the middle of the room in front of our table. The Assistant would take their music to the accompanist, and we would chat with the youngster for a moment trying to make things comfortable and “normal”. Even as a seasoned pro, I always found walking into an audition room to be extraordinarily abnormal. The atmosphere was artificial, tense and never “safe”. There was no two ways around the fact that you were being judged like livestock at a county fair. For most of the kids, this was their first time. Some were good, some were terrible, some were happy and excited to be there, but most were terrified, and there were moments that just broke your heart. There was one little boy in a bow tie who came in with his mother. As soon as the studio door clicked shut behind him he froze with fear and began to cry. I came out from behind the table as did Ken and we rushed to him telling him it was alright. No amount of reassurance would stop his sobbing. I said I would sing with him if he wanted, but there was no way he was going to open his mouth. He left as he had arrived, still frightened to death and crying, probably scarred for life by the experience. After that, I stayed in front of the table, relaxed and moving about, trying to be accessible and involved. Every young voice student in town was turning up to sing their party piece. It was then that I made a vow that should I ever be called on to audition kids again (and I would be) I would demand that the Audition Notice make clear that no one was to sing “Tomorrow” from “Annie” as their audition song.

After the two exhausting days we had narrowed it down to 68 kids, all of them talented, high-powered singers, and all of them, God help us, very precocious. That number eventually got whittled down to 64, but it was still too many to my mind. How would I control that number of youngsters? How would we mic them all? Costume them all? What would happen with them when they were off-stage? This did not bode well!

            The adults took up the rest of the schedule. We saw more than 80 for the Singing and Dance Ensembles. ‘Joseph’s’ eleven ‘Brothers’ took some time to cast but we ended up with a great combination of ages, the right number of baritones and tenors, most of them from in-town, all of them inventive and personable. And what a super sound they made together! The total cast was 96! My main three performers were crackerjack! With Stacey Nattrass as ‘The Narrator’ I felt we were well-anchored. She had an incredible voice and sparkling personality, and we took advantage of these qualities, bypassing any “performing” tendencies – the ‘Narrator’ stands apart in the show and guides the audience along, more a motivational speaker than anything else – and settling into a very natural delivery. I was over the moon to have Nick Matthew (‘Tony’ in “West Side Story”) back to do ‘Joseph’ and also Kevin Aichele, too long in the background in Rainbow shows, who suited the Elvis-clone ‘Pharaoh’ to a ‘T’. With the staggeringly inventive Bill Robertson at my side, we would launch into rehearsals with only a soupçon of trepidation. That was on the surface. Privately, I was terrified!

            Just before “official” rehearsals began, we brought all the kids and their parents together to sketch out the process. Thankfully most of the kids had been involved in school shows before so this was just a reminder to everyone, particularly the Moms and Dads, of the fundamental importance of complete commitment from beginning to end. They understood. Then we sang. We took them through “Any Dream Will Do” to get the lay of the land and quickly realized that in the cavernous space that is Rainbow Stage, without each kid being mic-ed they would never be heard … even though there were sixty-four of them. So, as much as I hated it, augmenting their acoustic sound with pre-recorded vocal tracks would have to be the route to go. Same thing would have to happen with “The Megamix” – the huge 9-minute Finale re-capping most of the songs in the show … and certainly the only idea the original Producers could come up with to lengthen the production and justify the Broadway ticket prices. While the rest of the Cast was included in this number we would still have to go to tracks again to get the right sound. I knew that conducting to a click-track through headphones (the sound only the Musical Director hears to keep the live and recorded tempos synchronized) would drive our Musical Director John Miller nuts, but fortunately, the “Singin’ In The Rain” experience some years earlier provided us with a bit of a roadmap for this approach.

            Everything seemed to fall into place over the next few weeks. Much to my amazement, Ken wanted to spend more money on sets and to my further amazement, I was the one telling him that we didn’t need to! I didn’t want a cluttered stage … at least not for the First Act. The Second Act was a bit more complex. We had rented the “Egypt Set” from an American company, and I was pleased with how it looked when we set it up backstage at the Theatre. But Ken still wanted to buy things. I managed to talk him out of it telling him that we could use “found objects”, stuff lying around at the Stage when we needed something. Same thing with the costumes. I wanted the Biblical Costumes to look like they were from the Church’s Christmas or Easter Pageant stock, and the contemporary clothes could be coordinated from the personal wardrobes of the actors. Anything we couldn’t find, particularly the Egyptian outfits, would be built in-house. To bolster the overall look, I told our lighting designer, Scott Henderson, to go crazy filling the stage with as much colour as he could manage!

The recording session for the tracks with the kids went well enough. It took an entire day, but the end result sounded pretty good. The time also gave the group an opportunity to know each other a little better, and it also let me know who among the 64 we would have to keep eyes on – the clowns, the disrupters – and there were a few who made themselves known rather quickly. Thankfully, we had arranged for “wranglers”, a permanent foursome who would be backstage with the kids constantly, maintaining discipline and keeping them occupied when they weren’t performing. I held my breath.

            With only three weeks from the start of rehearsals to the single Preview, we plunged right into three days of music. The show was sung-through (no spoken dialogue) so this focused time would stand us in good stead once I began staging. We had great singers to work with and, while there was the usual push and pull between me and Zane about phrasing choices or blend, the sound ended up being exactly what I wanted. These music days also gave everyone the shape of the show and what happens vocally and emotionally in telling of the story. But even after all those hours, there were still constant ad hoc refreshers that popped up for individuals and small groups with our irrepressible rehearsal pianist, Danny Carroll. Those happened right up to tech.

            Without the kids, I’d taken care of most of the Principal staging over the rest of that first week; but then came the first Saturday morning when we were to stage the show’s opening – the gigantic picnic scene with the entire cast when the production’s environment is set up for the audience. We were working in the Manitoba Theatre For Young People space, a large stadium-seating configuration with a wide open stage area. By the time the call began, the audience area was packed with kids and their parents – almost 200 people. I introduced our wranglers, three girls and a guy in their late teens, all affable and high energy young people who would ultimately make everyone’s life easier. I made some opening remarks, reminding the excited youngsters that we were now in “work mode” and that paying attention was essential. I told them that this process was going to take some time because everyone had to be placed on stage and told what to do. I began with the 32 adults, arranging them in groups around the picnic tables. I worked methodically but maybe slower than I could have if only because I was forestalling the inevitable. When I thought the stage picture with the adults looked right, I turned out to the sea of people sitting in the house. “Okay. I’m almost afraid to say this”. Knowing what was coming the parents and the cast on stage all laughed. I took a very deep and somewhat theatrical breath and stretched out my arms.  “Could I have all the kids on stage, please?”

            Before I finished the sentence, a wall of young humans rose up before me and I involuntarily took a step back. The noise they made standing up filled the room, and then the rapid sidling movement along the rows toward the aisles threw the space into utter turmoil. The chattering and sound of feet on the stairs, the surging tide of arms and legs and bodies that started to fill the stage was astonishing. And they just kept coming. The throng gathering around me grew larger with each passing second, excited, talking at each other, waving at parents who were still laughing at the commotion, and it was all I could do to stop myself from running off the stage and out of the theatre.

“Okay, Okay”, I said clapping my hands, and they settled down … a little. Another “Okay” and I got silence. I scanned the eager young faces staring at me. “I want you all to turn and look at where you are”. Heads turned. “This is home. This is where you live, and these are the people you live with. And there’s one word I want you all to remember”. I stopped just to make sure that everyone’s focus was back on me. “Respect. For the process. And for each other”. I held for another moment and let the silence grow. “Now, let’s get started”.

I had to work fast to get them connected to the already-placed adults. I knew the grown-ups would keep them calm and under some degree of control. I took a quick look at them and just went for it. Five here, seven over there, nine with this group, four more at that table … and on it went. There were only a few “Quiet, please” pleas and before it got too out of hand, I had it done. It looked good, a bit crowded, but acceptable. Now I wanted them to get the feel for how the show started, so we just began. Everything starts with ‘The Narrator’s’ “Prologue”, so they had something to watch and listen to. Danny started playing the intro and Stacey, to whom I’d already given the blocking, walked downstage slightly and began. “Some folks dream of the wonders they’ll do …”. She moved about, playing to the group and to the audience. I just stood and watched. There was nothing for me to do because everyone was hearing Stacey for the first time and responding honestly, rapt by her glorious voice and completely focused on her. She took her instructions from the song’s lyrics and delivered them to individuals as she moved about the space. I got a lump in my throat a number of times because everyone was simply reacting to her. She then brought Nick (‘Joseph’) out of the group as she sings “In the story of a boy whose dream came true” and we were into “Any Dream Will Do”.

            To say I was moved would be an understatement. Except for Nick, I hadn’t told anybody what to do, it was all happening naturally. I was standing at the edge of the stage looking at this hoard of people as Nick began “I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain …”, another beautiful voice filling the room, and I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes. I could also sense the parents in the house behind me having the same reaction. Then the kids joined in, echoing each of Nick’s lines as he started the second verse … “I wore my coat (I wore my coat), with golden lining (ah-ah-ah)”. They were angelic, these young piping voices in harmony, in innocence and perfectly in tune. When the number was finished, the cast and all the folks out front applauded … for a long time. I could see people wiping their eyes. I let all the emotion settle a bit, and then we got down to detailing. That first couple of hours set the tone for the time ahead.

            The days that followed were intense. The hybrid nature of the show – sometimes it’s deep into the Story, sometimes it’s just a Cabaret – presented problems in the “cross-overs”, those murky areas between “Staging” and “Dancing”, particularly in the Second Act. I pay great homage to Bill and his creativity in combining both elements in his choreography, making everyone look good but not dumbing down dance steps too much and still getting the “look” I wanted. But as time went on I found myself wondering why I wasn’t feeling connected to the show. It felt like I was on the outside looking in. I had basically given over a lot of time to Bill and Zane to set the dance and music elements and had yet to put my own stamp onto the show. I realized that getting into the production was, in itself, the difficulty. The show is relentless. There is no dialogue, no conversation, no “down time”. The songs stand by themselves and follow one on top of the other. Trying to direct a bit at a time didn’t work because we would have to go back to the start of a song to re-find the arc and incorporate the change. The stopping and starting was exhausting for everyone, and I found myself resorting to just taking notes and talking people through the bits that needed attention hoping the changes would stick the next time we put the number on its feet. It meant leaving out some details, especially underlying intentions and emotions and, more particularly, defining focus. There was rarely less than a dozen people on stage at any time and trying to discern who was supposed to be the center of attention was very hard to control. But I slogged on.

            Working with the kids took a lot of energy. I was thankful that we’d resorted to name tags for the kids. There were so many of them! But there were a few who’s names stuck with me right away. There was Rori, an eight-year-old girl who had the most wonderful smile that crinkled up her eyes … and she smiled all the time. And there was Brendan, another eight-year-old. He was always just a hair’s breadth behind the beat when dancing but completely oblivious to the fact, in a world of his own and having the most fun ever. Amazingly, it was from the infectious joy of the kids that I found my way into “Joseph”. It perhaps took me too long, but I realized there was nothing cerebral about this show. It was just fun! It just flowed by itself. There was no point in imposing anything heavy or “dramatic” on it; it was what it was – an entertainment and nothing more. And that settled me down a lot.

            There was no doubt that the Adults were having a good time too. They had connected with each other, and with Stacey, Nick and Kevin leading the tone and quality of the performances, everyone was excited to move to the Stage for the final stretch. That’s when it really came together for me. I could finally see the bigger picture. Scott Henderson’s lighting was a miracle of colour and dazzle as I had requested. It was just as I’d seen it in my head once I’d succumbed to the fact that the show was indeed “One Great Big Cabaret Revue”. I kept telling the Cast that I wished they could see how magnificent it looked from out front. Another thing that lifted me was that Rainbow’s historically bad sound had been completely re-vamped with a new state-of-the-art system. It would certainly get a work-out during this show!

In the middle of the final rehearsal week, Ken had come to me with the idea of starting Act Two with what we ended up calling “The Mini-Mix”, modeled after “The Mega-Mix”. I agreed. This would be another concoction of songs in Act One done by the kids alone. It got a lot of attention in those last days – vocal arrangements, orchestra arrangements, choreography. If nothing else, by the end of the night, the audience would know all the show’s songs by heart! The combination of the new sound system, deck mic-ing, the pre-recorded tracks and live singing would served to give the vocals CD-quality sound in the house. It was uplifting all ‘round and I was very pleased.

            The opening was spectacular!! “The Mini-Mix” at the top of the Second Act stopped everything with a standing ovation! I couldn’t believe it … right in the middle of the show. Of course that only happened on Opening Night with parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles leading the response, but it certainly set the bar for the rest of the run. The reviews were ecstatic in the days following. One headline read “Songs So Nice They Perform Them Thrice” referring to the “Mini-Mix” and “Mega Mix” numbers. The Cast maintained throughout the run, although I did have to excise some “improvements” early on. I kept going back because I ended up liking the production so much – it was simply wonderful to watch and hear!

            The kids took the Closing the hardest. It had been Summer Camp for them – great fun, a lot of new friends and a great deal of attention. A lot of tears flowed that final night, during and after the performance. I even found myself getting a bit teary-eyed as I watched the last “Mega-Mix” dance off into the history books. The show broke Rainbow records and ended up bringing in more than a million dollars at the box office, all of which painted a rosy picture for Rainbow seasons ahead.

            The time that followed seemed commonplace compared to the previous weeks. I did some Workshops for NATS (National Association of Teachers of Singing) and then headed off to New York to see some shows. Travelled down to Portland to sing at a Fundraiser for the Portland Art Museum’s “Triumph of French Painting” Exhibit, got musicians hired for a huge U.S. Christmas Concert Tour with Sarah Ferguson and Angela Lansbury, contracted another Barry Manilow Special, this one for A&E, and started preparations for a huge Tour MSI had been hired to contract – “The Music of the Night – The Music Of Andrew Lloyd Webber” with a Kennedy Center start a year away. Then, I finally put myself in a “My Fair Lady” headspace as December began.