GUMSHOES VS. FEMME FATALES
City of Angels makes Canadian debut
Gumshoes and femme fatales face off with snappy comebacks, all set to an original score, in City of Angels.
The Tony Award-winning musical debuted on Broadway in 1989. Now, a collective of (mostly) local talent is bringing the show’s Canadian premiere to Vancouver.
Christopher Shyer, a Vancouver-trained veteran of Broadway musicals, first had the idea of mounting a production here seven years ago. To that end, he put together Putting It Together (PIT), a pool of talent with credits in local theatre, television and feature films. A successful indiegogo campaign ($40,000 raised) helped launch the production.
There have been a number of changes en route from conception to execution, however. Shyer was originally going to play the leading man role of Stine, but had to opt out when a theatre gig in New York was extended. (He’s now production manager of City of Angels.)
And Jennifer Copping, who has been involved with the production since the beginning, was simply going to act, albeit in two roles. Now, the Vancouver actor/ director is directing as well. (Sylvia M. Zaradic is co-directing.)
“There are way more moving parts,” said Copping on directing City of Angels. The show marks her first time directing a musical. “You have to be thinking about when the music comes in, all the props and the sets moving, which the actors are doing in this piece. I think that happens a lot in
musicals. There’s choreography, there’s music. And then we’ve added film.”
The musical depicts both the “real” life travails faced by Stine (Donal Thoms-Cappello), a New York crime novelist who has come to 1940s Hollywood to adapt his book into a screenplay, as well as his fictional world.
The ( black-and-white) film sequences will depict some of the scenes from Stine’s screenplay, which features a tough private eye named Stone, a femme fatale or two, a nightclub singer, and even a quack doctor — all recognizable archetypes from the pages of Raymond Chandler and other masters of mid-century hard-boiled detective fiction.
Some of the action takes place on a Hollywood sound stage, where Stine watches as bit players go about their business.
“He’s seeing these working tradesmen, these contract players, these contract singers, walking around the lot and he’s imagining their faces in the roles as he writes the screenplay,” Copping said.
Caitlin Clugston, Crystal Balint and Paul Herbert also play dual roles, those in the real world and their fictional counterparts. Michael Lomenda, whose credits include Nick Massi in Jersey Boys on stage and also in the Clint Eastwood-directed film version, plays Stone, the private eye.
The action is interspersed with music from Angel City 4, a vocal group that performs the show’s original songs.
“They sound like the Manhattan Transfer,” Copping said. “They take us through the show with these beautiful four-part harmonies.”
The original production took home Tonys for best musical, best original score and best musical book. That book is by sitcom writer Larry Gelbart, whose credits include the TV series MASH.
“The book is so, so good, so smart,” Copping said. “The one-liners, the quips, the snappy comebacks, the colourful characters — he has written what musical theatre geeks would call a masterpiece. Musically and creatively and the book, they’re all things that make our mouths water basically.”
For his part, Shyer is excited that Vancouver audiences are finally getting to see the longgestating local version of City of Angels.
“It’s a comedy and it’s a sexy show,” Shyer said. “I think people are going to be entertained."