Musical tribute
Power of Terry Fox’s story brought to the stage
ST. JACOBS — Drayton Entertainment has long been known for creating musical tributes, but with its latest show the company is venturing into territory that tugs at the Canadian heartstrings.
“Marathon of Hope: The Musical” is the story of Terry Fox, a story that has been told in film and books but never as a musical.
For Nathan Carroll, the actor cast as Fox, the role could be intimidating although he insists it’s not.
“I feel hopeful,” he said of the role. “Terry was super determined, disciplined and hard working. People say that of me and I can be hard on myself.”
Carroll knows all eyes will be on him, particularly Terry Fox’s family who have been part of the play’s development. Everyone involved wanted to make sure Terry was portrayed as he really was: not a hero with a big ego, but a young man with a challenge to overcome.
The musical was conceived by John Connolly, who also wrote the music and lyrics while a student in Sheridan College’s
theatre program. That original version bears little resemblance to what audiences will see when it opens Oct. 5.
Drayton’s artistic director, Alex Mustakas, saw the play at the college and so began a series of events that took a simple student production and developed it into a full-blown musical.
Carroll, a Simcoe native, said “before Alex picked it up in 2014, I saw it at Sheridan. I was weeping on the ride home. It was Terry Fox, it was his story, so devastating and so inspiring.”
Connolly, a native of Prince Edward Island, was interested in Fox’s story because it was so Canadian. He had been exposed to such Canadiana as a youth attending the Charlottetown Festival.
“When I got to Sheridan, I saw everyone singing American musicals,” he said. “I was very disappointed.”
A friend suggested he could write a Canadian musical and like all young, enthusiastic writers, Connolly agreed. There was one small problem.
“I had no idea what I was doing,” he admitted. “We first workshopped the show in 2007.
“Then Alex came to see a production at school in 2014. He said it was really good music inside a confused script, but he saw there was something here.”
Connolly said that with Mustakas’ business sense and “incredible knowledge of musicals,” the show was reworked and made bigger, all under the watchful eye of the Fox family.
“In looking for any story for the stage, the stakes have to be high,” said Connolly. “Terry was always talking about hopes and dreams and passion.
“In scenes when emotion can’t be contained in words, it became a song. So presenting this as the Terry Fox musical made sense.”
The music has a decidedly homegrown sound.
“His father loved Johnny Cash and I came from a roots tradition,” explained Connolly.
On April 12, 1980 Fox began his odyssey in Newfoundland and ran full marathons every day for 143 days, a total of 5,373 kilometres until he was forced to stop when the cancer returned.
Associate artistic director and the show’s choreographer, David Connolly (no relation) is a double amputee and understands more than most what Fox’s achievement meant.
David was born in Nova Scotia, his lower legs deformed by a genetic disorder. Doctors believed he would never walk but his mother, a feisty fireball named Maureen Connolly, refused to accept the prognosis. Determined to get some help for her son, she convinced the Shriners Hospital for Children in Montreal to take in her baby, even though they didn’t accept infants.
“They cleared out a broom closet and turned it into a nursery for me.”
For the next five years, he underwent numerous surgeries, some which corrected problems caused by other medical interventions. His lower legs were eventually amputated and he learned to walk using prosthetic limbs. In the middle of all this, he also survived a plane crash while travelling between the hospital and home.
Like Terry Fox, he was determined to create a fulfilling life for himself and after seeing a production of “Carousel” at Centre in the Square, a light went on. He wanted to be on that stage, singing, acting and dancing even though he’d be a dancer without feet.
“My ankles don’t bend so I had to develop more expression in the rest of my body to distract audiences: look up here, not down there,” he said.
As a kid, he put on productions in his garage, charging five cents admission and he took dance lessons as well as performing in numerous local shows. After high school, he auditioned for Sheridan College’s theatre program.
“They didn’t know I was an amputee,” he said. “I didn’t want to be hired because of it and I didn’t want to lose a job because of it. I wanted to be judged as me.”
Terry Fox had the same attitude, only he wanted people to see the amputation, to see the prosthetic leg which is why he wore shorts even while running in rain and snow and cold.
“I’m so grateful to be part of this, to be exposed to parts of the story I didn’t know,” said David Connolly, an ardent War Amps supporter who has appeared on Broadway and Stratford Festival. “I knew he (Fox) shattered the stigma of being an amputee.
“I was always aware and grateful to him.”
He learned how Fox’s stump shrunk to half its size from all the pounding and how he had been running on a prosthetic limb designed for walking.
“The indomitable spirit; he was inspired by the children with cancer,” he said. “He was an ordinary man in an ordinary family and an ordinary upbringing. There was no indication he was going to change a nation.”