Under the Apple Tree
Brian Morton’s Vaudeville recreation is both homage to the genre and the palatial theatres of its day in Hamilton
THE
DANCERS COUNT the beat to an old Vaudeville tune. Plunked out on the ivories it urges them to dance faster. Standing behind a pop-eyed singer with the charm of Eddie Cantor, they bounce mechanically to the music. As actor Larry Smith’s voice rises to a strident pitch they flutter like frenzied butterflies
“I gotta have, I gotta have, I gotta have, I gotta have the girl,” he screeches.
Going down on one knee like Al Jolson he waves a battered old hat.
You might not know these stage names, but they were big Vaudeville stars and popular later in films and on TV too. In the slightly off-kilter world of stage excess, where songs about sex masqueraded as songs about love, they charmed the punters sitting in theatres like Hamilton’s once grand Lyric Theatre.
“I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time,” may have seemed a pretty little ditty, but in Brian Morton’s musical “Under the Apple Tree” it’s a raucous celebration of female pulchritude.
We’re in a once grand theatre on Mary Street, just off King in downtown Hamilton. Though reduced to rubble in 2010, the Lyric was once a starry home for Vaudeville’s two-aday shows.
In 1921 it was also the place where someone put real bullets in a prop gun and shot pretty little Cecile Bartley. Was she murdered, or did she live to sing and dance again?
That question and many others fascinated Hamilton playwright Morton. That’s why he’s recreated the Vaudeville sketch “Under the Apple Tree” that was performed Nov. 25 1921.
In many ways the show is an homage to vintage theatre, to the old-time Vaudeville palaces where such theatre played, and to the way reality can be more powerful than stage histrionics.
“I’ve woven all the tiny details I could find to recreate the act. I found a 1911 book called, ‘How To Write For Vaudeville,’ and that was helpful too.” BRIAN MORTON Playwright, “Under the Apple Tree”
“I’VE ALWAYS LOVED old theatres,” Morton says, as he watches his cast go through their paces. “As a kid I used to sit in the Century Theatre (formerly The Lyric) and I watched movies. I grew very interested in the theatre’s past. For many years I lusted after that place. I wanted to save it. The theatre’s loss was a classic example of demolition by neglect. Property standards were not enforced, so though the building was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act it came down in 2010.”
Like the Palace, Capital, Savoy and Grand Opera House, all wonderful old Hamilton entertainment palaces, it was destroyed by the fallout of the blight city council mistakenly once called urban renewal.
Watching the bricks and mortar fall to the street, the Lyric became a powerful image that has haunted Morton ever since. Before it was reduced to rubble, he went through the decaying building with a flashlight. He saw the old balcony hidden by a false wall. He saw the remains of the performers’ dressing rooms and the once guilded proscenium arch. He even rescued a vintage theatre arc light, left over from Vaudeville days.
Now, all these years later, he’s been moved to write a play set in that once grand palace of entertainment. The play came from exhaustive research Morton did about the Vaudeville era.
“I first heard of the story of a shooting at the Lyric in a May 1979 Spectator article. Then in 2008, I found a Hamilton Herald story from Nov. 1921 that at last revealed the details of the rumour about a Hamilton murder.”
Most of the facts for Morton’s play have come from trolling through historical newspapers.
“One of the things the play reveals is how news, including false versions of events, get reported and then are never corrected. It was not until last fall that I found in US Census data from 1930 that Cecile Bartley actually survived the shooting.”
Morton says recreating some idea of the actual Vaudeville act “Under the Apple Tree” was difficult.
“I’ve woven all the tiny details I could find to recreate the act. I found a 1911 book called ‘How To Write For Vaudeville,’ and that was helpful too. I also did lots of online searches for period sheet music and I watched documentaries and film clips from the Vaudeville era.”
Using public-domain songs, some of which were in the very sketch Morton is reproducing, lends a whiff of authenticity to the play.
Working with actors who basically knew nothing about Vaudeville posed a challenge for Morton.
“It required discussion, watching old films and immersing the actors in a very different entertainment world.” he says.
“Producing theatre is an act of faith. The fact is I know very little about these characters, so my versions of them are constructs. As a playwright, whatever you don’t know you invent. And the play asks more questions about the real characters than it answers.
“I don’t claim to have much experience in creating this kind of musical theatre, but then that’s the joy of The Fringe, it allows you to work on projects outside your comfort zone.”
Morton is trying to reconstruct a Vaudeville tabloid musical, essentially a “girlie act” within the framing device of a sordid murder, or attempted murder. In some ways it’s both a tribute to Vaudeville and to those old theatres in Hamilton that were smashed down to make parking lots and strip malls.
“I still mourn the destruction of the Century (Lyric) all these years later,” Morton says. “But I couldn’t save it.”
Perhaps at least part of Morton’s new musical rose out of the grief he still feels for that old building. Perhaps too, it helps to celebrate a time when beautiful entertainment palaces dotted the downtown of this city as they still do in Toronto.
Now, all these years later, he’s been moved to write a play set in that once grand palace of entertainment. PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN RENNISON, THE HAMILTON SPECTATOR