Stratford’s music woman
Two musicals this season couldn’t be more different. Donna Feore is directing and choreographing both
What do musicals about a sexually voracious alien scientist who dresses in women’s underthings and a turn-of-the-20th-century con man who falls in love with one of the people he’s trying to swindle have to do with each other?
At the Stratford Festival this summer, they’re both being directed and choreographed by Donna Feore.
If that name sounds familiar it’s because Feore is the person who has guided some of the festival’s biggest musical hits, including last summer’s “Guys and Dolls”, “A Chorus Line,” “Crazy for You” and “Fiddler on the Roof.”
But this is the first season the same person has directed — let alone choreographed — both the musicals.
“It was a little crazy,” says Feore on the afternoon of a preview of “The Music Man.” Really, just a little?
“The Music Man” is the beloved 1957 musical by Meredith Willson known for songs like “Seventy-Six Trombones” and “Ya Got Trouble.”
It opens Tuesday at the Festival Theatre.
The other musical is the 1973 cult hit The Rocky Horror Show, which gave the world “The Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite.” It opens Saturday at the Avon Theatre.
One draws on the music of marching bands, barbershop quartets and show tunes; the other is all sex and rock ’n’ roll. “The Music Man” has a cast of 38 and a 19-person orchestra; Rocky has a cast of 15 and a seven-piece band.
But the differences were a big part of the attraction for Feore when she agreed, at the request of festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino, to take on both.
“From the directing point of view but also choreographically, because I’m a director/choreographer, I really wanted something that was bringing the complete opposite. So those two are a great fit,” she says.
She began working on both Jan. 2, beginning with the choreography — yes, she worked out her version of “The Time Warp” early — then creating the content of the shows through February and March, and rehearsing the actors and doing the “tech,” which involves painstaking details like lighting cues and balancing the sound.
And then there are dress rehearsals and six weeks or so of previews. After each preview, Feore spends more time onstage with the cast going over things like scene changes.
So yes, there have been six-day weeks and 10- to 14-hour days, but Feore credits a couple of things with making her job easier: her production team, which includes an associate choreographer, two assistant directors and two stage managers; and the fact that she didn’t have to negotiate rehearsal schedules with another director.
“I would do a half day of Rocky and a half day of Music Man, and we share a company (of actors) so it worked out really, really well in that way.”
The key to musical revivals, she notes, is to make them feel relevant to modern audiences, which is why she begins her preparation by studying the show’s “book” or story.
Feore sees Harold Hill — the con man who convinces the people of River City, Iowa, to hand over money to put their sons in a marching band — as “a reverse Pied Piper” who leads the children back to their parents instead of away from them, and leads the adults back to their passions in life. And his love interest, librarian Marian Paroo, is every bit his equal.
Rocky Horror is “timeless,” she says, and its “Sweet Transvestite,” Frank N. Furter, with his combination of the masculine and the feminine, has a lesson to teach about freedom and acceptance and nonjudgment.
She adds that the two characters actually have things in common, which seems an odd idea at first blush.
“They are both frauds, but they’re not completely wrong,” she says.
And they both build communities around themselves: “People are attracted to Frank. He’s a magnet. People are attracted to Harold. They’re magnets and nobody could be conned, really, that doesn’t want to be.”
Whether it’s Frank’s sexual attractiveness or Harold’s way with a bit of flattery that’s the lure, the people who really need to be charmed are Stratford audiences.
Beyond the desire of cast and crew to have all their hard work rewarded, there’s the fact that successful musicals contribute a hefty chunk of the festival’s ticket sales.
“The shows, they’re very important and I know they’re important to the festival, but I can’t really think of that, to be honest with you,” Feore says when asked about the pressure of directing two of the season’s potentially biggest money-makers.
“I think my biggest pressure is I don’t want to become dull to the audience. I don’t want to repeat myself …
“I just have to put it out there and everyone has to; we’ve all been together since Feb. 2 and we all believed in that greater goal, right? Which was to produce something that we hope that the audience has enjoyed.”
Doing both musicals has been a privilege and a gift, she adds.
“I mean, that sounds very cliché, but it actually is … This is a great year. I’m really, really blessed this year.”