Vance Avery coming home
Edmonton Musical Theatre alumnus Vance Avery brings big voice to show
In its distinguished 37-year history, Edmonton Musical Theatre has done its spirited best to let triple-threats loose on stages across the country, the border, and beyond. And sometimes they sing, dance, and act their way back — witness the special guest in The Ultimate Book Show, EMT’s 40-performer season finale on the Westbury stage.
Vance Avery was an eager Grade 10 dancer when he got the news he’d have to wait a year to get into EMT. He’d just made a profound discovery, thanks to an all-star high school version of Anne of Green Gables: “Wow! I can sing!” Avery laughs. “I’d only ever been in choirs before that.” And he was savouring the new knowledge that “a natural mover and showman, lots of jazz hands!”, his teenage self, could dance, sing, act — simultaneously. And he was revving his showbiz engines to continue.
The training at Edmonton Musical Theatre was tailor-made for a kid like that; it’s where Avery met other Broadway-bound triple-threats, Susan Gilmour, Danny Austin and Tim Howar among them. At 18, Avery would find himself in L.A. on scholarship at the DuPree Dance Academy where so much of the Flashdance dance flash got honed. “An amazing experience ... But I might possibly have been a little too young to be doing that,” he says with a rueful laugh.
Back in Canada, Avery literally catapulted out of Edmonton Musical Theatre — into the first Canadian production of Cats. He made his debut as Mungojerrie, Rumpelteazer’s partner in petty crime and mischief. “All those double-cartwheels scared the crap out of me!” says Avery, who also played Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat and other specimens of the breed. “Hard work. It took such stamina dancing on a raked stage; terrible on the knees and back.”
Then came three years in the first Canadian and U.S. touring productions of Les Miz. “I played Marius 1,260 times,” says Avery of the romantic young hero with whom Cosette falls in love. “I really loved singing that show!”
In The Ultimate Book Show, he’ll be singing from Les Miz once again; this time, though, it’s Jean Valjean’s anthem Bring Him Home. And he’ll sing, as well, numbers from The Secret Garden in a show that samples “book musicals” taken from actual literary books, Into the Woods, My Fair Lady, Oliver! among them.
Avery lived the theatre life in New York for 15 years. He sang in concert productions. He was a Kit Kat Boy in the Broadway revival of Cabaret at the time fellow EMT alumnae were doing shows just blocks away, Gilmour in Les Miz and Howar in Rent. When star Alan Cumming left Cabaret, Avery went in as the emcee for a time. He was in Gwen Verdon’s Sweet Charity, he was in the first U.S. tour of Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. The last time Avery played his home town, it was in that show. And star Donny Osmond graciously ceded the lead role to him for two performances. “I invited all my friends, and Donnie came and sat with them. So sweet.”
These days Avery has re-written his own definition of triple-threat — to include songwriting, inspired by hanging out with Tom Waits’ band when he starred in Robert Wilson’s L.A. production of The Black Rider, and filmmaking.
And he’s back in his home town creating another kind of theatre,
‘I played Marius 1,260 times. I loved singing that show’ vance avery, on his first role in les miz
turning state-of-the-art science into live performance at the Telus World of Science. “It’s all about communicating ideas,” he says of work that puts a premium on interpretive creativity. “Inspiring people to make changes isn’t just a matter of ‘Hey! recycle!’,” he says. “Being an actor is the science of humanity.”