Aubrey Dan is back in the Toronto theatre

Aubrey Dan is back in business.

The Toronto financier, philanthropist and impresario is reviving his efforts to bring a bit of Broadway to Canada’s biggest city, first with a run of The Jazz Singer, which had its first public preview this past Tuesday.

The Jazz Singer will be coproduced with the Harold Green Jewish theatre, a fact he credits to his relationship with artistic directors Avery Saltzman and David Eisner.

“The two of them are real mensches, they’re fabulous people. One day they came out and we had coffee, and they said, ' We’d like to do a little bit of a larger musical. Would this be of interest to you?’” said Dan.

After five years out of the game, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse. The run will mark his second attempt at breaking into the scene following the demise of Dancap Productions, which ran from 2007-2012. Dan said he learned “many, many lessons” during that time.

“Going into a show you can have the best creative team, you can have the best actors — you never know what’s going to happen until you pull it all together,” he said. “If somebody four or five years ago gave me a script and said, ‘ Why don’t you invest in a show called Hamilton? It’s a show about a US treasurer, they’re all white guys, and it’s done in rap.’ Who would’ve believed that that’d be a sensation?”

This time, Saltzman and Eisner aren’t Dan’s only supporting cast. He’ll also be working with David Mirvish on 2018’s An American in Paris. Mirvish and Dan last appeared in the headlines together in 2008, when a court battle ensued after Dancap attempted to block the sale of the Canon and Panasonic theatres to Mirvish. Dancap had argued that its 12.5 per cent stake in the company that owned the theatres entitled the production company to a role in management, and that the sale would cause “irreparable harm,” freezing Dan out of the downtown theatre scene.

Mirvish prevailed, now the two seem diplomatic and united in their goals.

“We both get it. We are both theatre fans that want to bring the best of broadway to Toronto,” said Dan. He said the two are committed to “moving forward, working for helping people to really enjoy theatre to its best potential.”

To do that, says Dan, it all comes down to quality. He gamely drew a Leafs analogy.

“Compared to the year before, they played amazing, people loved them,” he said. “When you have a team that’s down in the dumps, nobody really wants to go to the same degree. So when you have great shows that impact people, they all want to go. To a certain degree, you have a bandwagon effect, in a positive way.”

“I believe the investment that we create with the jazz singer, in bringing in a local Toronto writer, with a Canadian cast, with a Canadian producer team, is exactly the direction to help make Toronto a great theatre city.”