After four decades, actor still hits new heights
From Gollum to Scrooge to Grand Hotel, the stage keeps actor on his toes ... and in the air
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONT. Michael Therriault’s performing career began when he played a dancing dog at the age of five in his hometown of Oakville, Ont. That’s when he discovered he liked being on stage.
He’s now been doing it for four decades — not just in Canada but also in London, England, where he defied his fear of heights to win rave reviews for his gravitydefying performance as Gollum in a $27-million musical version of Lord of the Rings, and on Broadway, where he appeared in Fiddler on the Roof as Motel the tailor.
His CV also includes Shakespeare’s doomed Henry VI at the Stratford Festival and a brilliant TV portrayal of Tommy Douglas, Canada’s father of medicare.
Yet, after all this success, he remains a perpetual worrywart who keeps fearing that his current job will be his last.
“I always find something to worry about,” the 40-year-old says. “I’m always stressed that if I don’t succeed in something, people won’t like me any more.”
It’s late afternoon and he’ll soon be on stage at the Shaw Festival for an evening performance of the musical Grand Hotel. Therriault received universal acclaim for his portrayal of Otto Kringelein, the fatally ill Jewish bookkeeper who decides to spend his life savings on a final fling as a guest in Berlin’s most elegant hotel.
Once Grand Hotel ends Oct. 14, Therriault moves into rehearsals for A Christmas Carol, the festival’s pre-Christmas show, reprising his performance as the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, an assignment that was also a winner with audiences when he did it last year.
One of Therriault’s favourite moments in Grand Hotel, set in the late 1920s, comes when the ailing Kringelein cuts it up on the dance floor in an exhilarating musical number.
“Kringelein is interesting because he’s the one person in the show who knows his end is approaching — yet he’s also the happiest,” Therriault says. Shaping and defining a character fascinates him.
He arrived at the festival last year when its new artistic director, Tim Carroll, starred him in the vintage musical, Me and My Girl. Therriault tap-danced his way into the hearts of audiences with his exuberant performance as an uninhibited Cockney who discovers he’s a member of the aristocracy and heir to a vast estate.
He’s amused by the fact that 24 hours before starting rehearsals for Me and My Girl, he was in Winnipeg working on Cult of Chucky, the latest film in Universal’s lucrative horror franchise about a diabolical doll. Such, he says, is the eclectic life of an actor for hire in Canada.
But he’s fallen in love with the Shaw Festival which draws up to a to a quarter of a million theatregoers annually.
“It’s an amazing company,” says Therriault, who’s also appearing this season in C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.
A big attraction is its sense of community.
“When I did Fiddler in New York, I was so excited to be on Broadway and then surprised how lonely I was. People didn’t hang out. They did the show, got on the train and went home. And in London, the community is so large that you can work with somebody and never see them again.”
Canada is different.
“Our Canadian theatre community is so small that everybody knows everybody. And in a rep situation like the Shaw, it’s like working in a little village. There’s all this creative energy in one tiny hub, all these creative people contained in one area for nine months.”
Still, he treasures his time in London appearing in Lord of the Rings at the historic Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Critics may have been divided on the show itself, but not on Therriault’s spectacular performance.
Night after night, Therriault would have to conquer his fear of heights. As Gollum he was frequently 30 metres up and upside down.
“It’s hyperventilation central,” he says, looking back. Worst of all was hanging motionless above the audience during intermission. “The harness was really tiny because they wanted it to look invisible so it feels with every minute that you’re going to be let go.”
Therriault admits he’s a chronic workaholic.
“I get emotional about it, but I really like doing this for a living. So many other people want to do this and never get the opportunity,” he says. “I don’t ever want to retire. I want to work until I drop. That would be the dream.”
But there’s one thing he has to come clean about: “I’m still terrified of heights!”