NAC WILL STICK TO THE CLASSICS IN NEW SEASON
Beloved story Hockey Sweater opens in December
True stories, plenty of music and some unexpected twists are the hallmarks of next year’s Englishlanguage theatre season at the National Arts Centre.
Artistic director Jillian Keiley, who spends much of the year travelling to see theatre in farflung corners of the country, has assembled a well-rounded season that includes comedy, drama and a musical.
“I usually populate the season with the real highlights of my travels and I’ve noticed a bit of a trend in the past year,” Keiley says.
“Almost every single one of them is a true story, not necessarily autobiographical, but really fascinating stories about people who live or have lived in this country.”
The centrepiece of the season is an all-Canadian musical smash: The Hockey Sweater, based on the timeless short story by Roch Carrier and directed by Stratford Festival hitmaker Donna Feore. It’s the play that will usher in the holiday season with performances in Babs Asper Theatre Dec. 5-16, taking the place of the traditional run of A Christmas Carol.
Produced last year by Montreal’s Segal Centre to commemorate the city’s 375th anniversary, it features a cast of 17, including several youngsters. The music is composed by Jonathan Munro, who also leads the seven-piece band, and there’s a neat twist to conjure up a hockey rink on stage.
But first, the season begins with Silence, based on Trina Davies’ story of the romance between Alexander Graham Bell and his young wife Mabel Hubbard Bell. Directed by former NAC English Theatre artistic director Peter Hinton, it’s a Grand Theatre (London) production. (Babs Asper Theatre, Oct. 17-27.)
From Nova Scotia comes Chasing Champions: The Sam Langford Story, telling the story of an unsung hero of boxing that most people have never heard of. Langford was a Nova Scotia boxer who beat legendary fighters in a variety of weight classes, but died blind and penniless in 1956. (Azrieli Studio, Nov. 13-24.)
Keiley describes the next one, The Wedding Party, as a “complete bowl of foolishness.” Directed by Chris Abraham, the Crow’s Nest/ Talk Is Free production is a wild romp that features a dizzying pace of character swapping by a cast of six in several dozen roles. (Babs Asper Theatre, Jan. 30-Feb. 9, 2019.)
Meanwhile, Toronto’s Why Not Theatre presents Prince Hamlet, an updated version of the Shakespeare classic that casts a woman in the lead role and a deaf performer as Horatio. (Azrieli Studio, Feb. 26-March 9, 2019).
A couple of weeks later, Angelique tells the story of a “troublesome slave” who was condemned for setting fire to the city of Montreal in 1734. Written by the late playwright Lorena Gale, the play examines the legacy of the last woman sentenced to hang in the territory that would become Canada. (March 20-31, 2019, Babs Asper Theatre).
The Pigeon King, produced by the Blyth Festival, is an incredible tale of fraud perpetrated by a Canadian on unsuspecting farmers across North America. It’s about Arlan Galbraith, who convinced farmers to invest in a pigeon-breeding empire that turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. While he serves time in prison, the collectively written story was transformed into an entertaining piece of theatre that’s also brimming with country and western music. How the flocks of pigeons are depicted is also particularly effective, says Keiley. (Babs Asper Theatre, April 24-May 5, 2019)
Portraying pigeons in theatre is one thing, but what about whales? That was the challenge in Between Breaths, written by playwright Robert Chafe and directed by Keiley. It’s about the life of Jon Lien, who came to Newfoundland to study birds, but found there was more of a demand for someone who could figure out how to untangle whales from fishing gear without harming the whale. Sadly, he died of ALS in 2010.
“He ended up changing the relationship between Newfoundlanders and whales,” said Keiley. “It used to be very unhappy, but he single-handedly made it so Newfoundlanders really respect whales. It’s not a big deal, you don’t kill him, he doesn’t get your net. You just figure it out.”
The play also features music and a whale sound-infused score by the Newfoundland folk trio The Once. (Azrieli Studio, May 7-18, 2019). It will also be mounted in Newfoundland, Keiley’s home province, this summer.