THIS PLAY IS MUSIC TO THEIR EARS
GCTC production reminder of what Canada and U.S. have in common
Last week, in the Great Canadian Theatre Company ’s black box studio theatre, actor Gab Desmond was rehearsing — and admitting along the way that he had yet to master the material.
“It’s one thing to memorize, but if it’s not connected to the intention, I f--- it up,” the Chelsea-based actor said.
Complicating matters was the fact that the vast majority of Desmond’s lines were sung. He’s one of four actors starring in Ordinary Days, a musical that officially opens at the GCTC Thursday. (The play previews Tuesday and Wednesday.)
With his lyrics sheet in hand, Desmond launched in the hearton-sleeve ballad Favorite Places, accompanied by pianist Wendy Berkelaar, who is also the play’s musical director. A mellifluous tenor, Desmond confessed his character’s vulnerability with the kind of emotional force that brings goosebumps. When he was done, there was feedback.
Director Eric Coates, who is also the GCTC’s artistic director, told Desmond that he could be a little less dramatic at points during the song. Berkelaar, a veteran of musical theatre in Ottawa, was a bit more concrete, suggesting that Desmond not push the volume on certain lines. She gently mentioned that he hadn’t fully memorized the lyrics. “You made a few up,” she said.
Desmond ran through the song again, investing himself again in a poignant, powerful performance. “Very nice, really great, really great,” Coates said.
Coates has directed other musicals before, but Ordinary Days is the first of them that is “sungthrough” — with scarcely a line of dialogue spoken. “I’m really enjoying it,” Coates said in an interview. “It’s fantastic to be able to direct text that is almost exclusively the inner lives of characters is really interesting,”
The nature of the play “gives you all sorts of freedom in the way you ask an actor to access the emotional content of the piece, when it’s clear that it’s the inner life that’s being expressed.”
He was sympathetic to the task before Desmond — to put the technicalities of singing behind him and delve into the character’s intentions.
“That’s always the goal,” Coates said. “You want it to be just as present as it is in any piece of theatre, whether it’s Shakespeare or whether it’s Sondheim. The performer needs to have a very strong emotional tie to the words and a clear understanding of why they’re being spoken.” Or, on the other hand, sung.
The play, with music and lyrics by American playwright Adam Gwon, debuted in London in 2008, and has been staged off-Broadway in New York and in Australia, Scotland, Israel and Brazil. It tells the story of four New York-based characters — two men and two women in their 20s and 30s — exploring the connections in their lives.
For Desmond, the play’s particulars resonate. He’s Toronto-born, but graduated years ago from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City.
“There are definitely parallels to draw on from my own life experience,” he said.
Desmond, is making his GCTC debut with Ordinary Days. But over 20 years, he’s sung and acted across Canada and beyond, including featured roles in the European tour of Fame and the world tour of Notre-Dame de Paris. He calls Ordinary Days “a modern musical ... in more of a pop style.”
Berkelaar, a University of Ottawa music grad, has been involved with musical theatre since the late 1990s. But Ordinary Days is the first musical that she’s come across written for a cast and a pianist. Coates has configured the play so that Berkelaar is, if not a character in the action, not hidden backstage or in a pit either. “It’s really beautifully small,” she said of the production.
When rehearsals began in mid October, the actors at first read through their lines to appreciate them as text. Then, under Berkelaar’s wing, they learned the material as music, grasping the melodies and rhythms of songs. Then, Coates, who had stepped back a bit, became involved again to shape the play’s dramatic aspect.
Ottawa actor Jennifer Cecil, who plays Claire, the girlfriend of Desmond’s character, Jason, says it’s no mean feat to internalize the play’s material and do justice to Gwon’s work. But she added: “Once I feel I’m comfortable with the music, and my character’s mindset, and the intention of every moment ... it can make for exciting acting moments.”
Coates says that oddly enough, the seeds of his decision to stage Ordinary Days were sowed on the night that Donald Trump was elected U.S. president.
A colleague brought YouTube clips of the play to Coates’s attention on the very night of the election, when it was becoming apparent that Trump would be victorious.
“I was pretty discouraged, to put it mildly,” Coates recalled. But he was struck hard by the video and “fell in love with its simplicity.
“Ultimately, what it said, to me, at a time when we’re about to have a radically different relationship with the U.S., it’s really important that we remember how closely we’re tied to them, how heavily influenced we are and the positive aspect of that influence.
“New York City, to me, is the prime example of what’s fantastic about that country,” Coates said. “There’s so much beauty that’s easy to ignore when we’re focused on the negative side.” phum@postmedia.com twitter.com/peterhum