This is a blog post that I wrote for Theatre Passe Muraille this week, so I decided to share it here as well:
The first professional show that I ever saw was The Phantom of the Opera. Frankly, this is true for most children of my age bracket from Eastern Ontario. If your choir didn’t take a trip to the Pantages, then your school did, or your parents did, or your chess club did. (For the record, I went with my school and my parents. Only losers play chess.) And then I was hooked. Something about the combination of sing-able melodies, dark subject matter that I didn’t entirely understand, and theatre magic (falling chandeliers, magical mirrors, etc.) just completely captivated my attention like nothing else had before. Subsequently, I spent lunch recess dominating the inside of the tube slide with my friend Kathryn, singing the entire score from the tiny libretto that came with the tapes. Though we used to fight over who was to play Christine, we agreed that the acoustics in the tube slide were perfect, and we used our Grade 6 power to ensure that no one else tried to actually slide during lunch recess.
And now I work in not-for-profit theatre in an urban setting—largely deserted of musicals. The musical theatre community in Toronto is either lumped into commercial theatre tours (often with American actors), independently-produced cabaret, or community theatre-style productions. There are, of course, notable exceptions: Acting Up Stage, Angelwalk Productions and the newly-minted Theatre 20. Things are changing, but the communities are still divided. It’s rare to find true crossover artists working in both straight drama and musical theatre.
This is why Ride The Cyclone excites me. First, it’s a musical representative of a new Canadian voice. Musical Theatre composers are present in this country and we are on the cusp of some big developments—after trailblazers like Leslie Arden and Jim Betts first made waves. But it’s exciting that this piece has transcended those traditional barriers, playing in huge houses that are used to musicals and in smaller ones that aren’t. Just the fact that it sold out during its SummerWorks run (“ Toronto’s Indie Theatre Festival”) speaks strongly to the fact that musicals can be less obscured from the contemporary theatre scene.
Musicals are sometimes hokey, often cheesy. They can be considered “fringe fluff” and “light entertainment”. And yet, I still love them. However, there are musicals that tell real stories, that challenge the form, that avoid cliché, that make audiences uncomfortable, that question. These are the musicals that excite me the most, and they’re not the Phantoms or the Wickeds. They are the unknown composers who are responding to the world that they live in. Theatre heightens real life; musicals heighten it further. The fact that musical theatre can respond to contemporary theatrical principles is not only exciting, but essential if it is ever to be released from the bonds of summer stock.
So I suppose I love musicals for what they do and for how they make me feel. But for those who claim to hate musical theatre, I think you just haven’t found the right musical for you. And I dare to say that Ride The Cyclone might just be it. But I’m still going to listen to my Phantom cassettes every once in a while. Everything in moderation.