Evangeline the star of Citadel’s 50th
Dykstra musical will mark first collaboration
An epic new Canadian musical, with a Canadian pedigree, characters, and story, will be a highlight of the Citadel’s upcoming 50th anniversary season, 2015-2016. As announced Thursday, Evangeline will be produced jointly by Edmonton’s largest theatre company and the Charlottetown Festival in a landmark collaboration. And here’s the capper: its creator is originally from here, St. Albert to be precise.
The playwright/composer/ lyricist is multi-faceted Canadian theatre star Ted Dykstra. And his original musical, a decade in the gestation before its $1.5 million 2013 debut in Charlottetown, will be directed by the Citadel’s Bob Baker, who thinks “it has the potential be a Canadian classic ... with its huge epic heart, its tragic romance inside a historical adventure.”
Evangeline is inspired by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1847 narrative poem, set during the expulsion of the Acadians by the British in the mid-18th century. And, says Dykstra, neither the poem nor the Canadian history it embraces were familiar to him when the idea took hold 10 years ago.
His reaction was immediate. “I was startled the Acadian Expulsion wasn’t part of my education,” Dykstra says from Ottawa, where he’s directing The Importance of Being Earnest at the National Arts Centre.
“I knew Cajun, the music of Louisiana, from being a musician; nobody knows that it’s a form of ‘Acadian’. ... The British took 10,000 people, burnt their houses and barns to the ground, put them on boats, and shipped them down the coast of the U.S. They cleansed the area of French people.”
Evangeline and Gabriel are separated on their wedding day, exiled on different ships. “The couple is ripped apart, and vow to find each other. Sixty years later, against all the odds, they finally do,” says Dykstra, co-creator of the hit comedy 2 Pianos 4 Hands.
“It’s a powerful epic love story, a natural for a musical: French, English, freedom, slavery, the historical sweep of a Les Miz ...”
Baker concurs. “In its sweep of time, the comparisons are Les Miz and Cyrano. OK, Wuthering Heights. And based on a Canadian story!”
Originally, Dykstra had pitched Toronto theatre impresario David Mirvish with his idea for an Evangeline musical. “And they commissioned me, which is amazing!” says Dykstra. “At one point we were ready to go into production, and then a Broadway writer was brought in to work with me for a couple of years. ... They wanted more edge, but it’s not a piece with edge; that’s not what it is. I wanted mythical not modern psychology. For me it was losing its heart. Then musical director Bob Foster said, ‘Go back to what you had!’ ”
And that’s what Dykstra did. The result was the Charlottetown Festival première, which Dykstra directed. This time, “I wanted to step down from that. And Bob (Baker) is really the only director in the country who can both create spectacle and understand the heart of the piece.”
For his part, Baker says he was “intrigued and moved by Ted’s script. And then the music completely sold me. ... It doesn’t sound like some Broadway derivative; it has its own voice. But, yeah, there are power ballads and big lush ensemble numbers; Celtic, the feel of Acadian folk mixed with Broadway ballads and melodies.”
And the $100,000 full-orchestra cast recording knocked Baker out; Citadel executive director Penny Ritco describes the music as “goosebump time.”
The debut production, which played in rep with Charlottetown’s signature musical Anne of Green Gables, starred Chilina Kennedy and Adam Brazier. Neither is available for the co-production, Charlottetown’s first. Kennedy will be on Broadway, starring in Beautiful, the Carole King musical; Brazier is now the artistic director of the Charlottetown Festival.
In any case, Baker plans to start from scratch with casting; he expects auditions will attract talent from across the country for Evangeline’s big, juicy, challenging roles.
“This is a show that should be given another shot. And the only way to do a show without a Disney title on this scale (24 actors, 10 kids, 12- or 14-piece orchestra) is to coproduce. Ritco adds, “There’s a risk involved in doing any new work with an unknown title. But this is a large, lush, rich musical about our history. ... I’m proud that two organizations are willing to put their expertise together like this.”
Evangeline will open in Charlottetown next August, and move to the Citadel, where previews begin Oct. 31.