BOOM ties personal stories to history
One- man show taps history’s greatest hits, from the A- bomb to Apollo 11
Considering that for the past several months, Rick Miller has been performing more than 100 voices nightly, including throat raspers like Janis Joplin and Louis Armstrong, his voice is holding up pretty well. Talking over the phone, Miller comes over loud, clear and full of enthusiasm for BOOM, his touring one- man show, which arrives at the Segal this Sunday, reaches its 200th performance on Tuesday, covering just about every significant global event and hit song between 1945 and 1969.
The BOOM of the title has several meanings. First, it’s the sound of the atom bomb that marked the end of the Second World War. It’s the population explosion set off by the coming of peace. Somewhat less obviously, it’s also a nod to Apollo 11, which, according to Miller, had an aphrodisiac effect across North America.
“There was a certain mini- baby boom that happened after Apollo 11,” explains the Montreal- raised Miller ( who was last seen here performing in Venus in Fur at the Centaur). “Bobby Kennedy had just been shot, Detroit was on fire, Prague was burning. It was a messy time. Then with the moon landing, it felt like perhaps communism was not going to win, and there was an element of hope.”
One of the results of that NASA- inspired baby boom was Miller himself, which provides the show with a neat cut- off year, 1969. “Yes, it’s all about me, isn’t it?” he laughs, ironically acknowledging that this epic 25- year history all leads up to his own nativity.
But this personal aspect to the show also stops it from being a mere nostalgia trip and provides connective tissues to the wealth of impersonations and the blizzard of news clips projected onto the “time capsule,” as Miller calls the remarkable cylindrical edifice that spirals around him throughout the show.
“I use three main characters to connect the material. One of them, Maddie, is more or less the story of my mother, though I should note, for when she reads this in the Gazette ( she still lives in Montreal), it’s been adapted. Then there’s my father, who lived through World War Two in occupied Vienna. The other is an African- American draft dodger who comes across to Canada.”
Miller explains that it was his father’s stories that inspired the show. “He was telling me stories that I’d never heard before, because he’s been archiving a little bit of his story for his family. I asked myself how come I don’t know this stuff, these stories of having a swastika in his Grade 2 classroom or being made to be part of the Hitler Youth. And he said, well, you never asked or you never listened. So, I thought I’d ask and listen more.”
Miller is hoping that BOOM will inspire a similar curiosity about the past in his audiences, especially those at the younger end. The stage component, he insists, is only a part of the experience. His close involvement in the Kidoons network of websites and the educational website Encyclopedia Canada is allowing him to involve the audience in a two- way flow of information.
“We now have around 150 stories that we’ve recorded from audience members after the show. They’ve expanded on things that I’ve only touched upon. I love it because it makes BOOM feel like an ongoing conversation as opposed to a piece of entertainment that you consume.”
Clearly, Miller has more lofty ambitions than attracting yet more applause for his remarkable skills in mimicry: He first found fame through his rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody (“25 of the most annoying voices in the music industry”), as well as his worldwide hit MacHomer, which saw Macbeth retold through Simpsons characters. In fact, he bristles ever so slightly when, after he references the current U. S. political circus, I happen to ask if he has added Trump to his repertoire of voices.
“I tend to use imitations in the service of my plays,” he insists. “Not all my plays have them. I make, I think, interesting imitations in the theatre, which help me create the experience. But, overall, it’s not my job to be an impersonator.”
If at first sight BOOM looks like a cross between a “jukebox musical” and a nostalgic news digest of the baby- boomer era, an equally apt comparison might be the work of Robert Lepage — who mentored Miller from the time he was an architecture student in Montreal — not least in the way it uses personal stories to explore patterns in history and geopolitics.
“I’m always trying to make sure the audience is hearing not just yesterday but today,” Miller says. “I’m interested in looking at the way politics and culture merged together at that time, where every cultural gesture — how you wore your pants or your skirts, how you cut your hair — almost became a political act. It had to do not only with the number of baby boomers coming of age, but also technology that at first was distracting them and then connecting them to deep issues. I see that link now when I see my kids with their screens all the time. They’re amazing tools of distraction, but they can also connect and empower, just as TV brought people together against the Vietnam War.”
There’s docudrama coming to Centaur later in the year, too. The newly announced 48th season has Annabel Soutar ( whose Fredy is still playing at La Licorne) bringing the English première of her ecological show, The Watershed. Speaking of La Licorne, two recent hits from that most adventurous of francophone theatres are also getting anglophone premières at Centaur, with François Archambault’s You Will Remember Me ( Tu te souviendras de moi) in April, and Chlorine ( Chore) guesting in the Brave New Looks slot in October.
Tableau D’Hôte’s multi- METAwinning production of Tremblay’s Hosanna will also make a welcome return in a guest spot next year. Other highlights of the season include the Broadway hit Constellations, directed by Peter Hinton, Pulitzer Prize- winner Clybourne Park, and the “is- itreally-a- Jackson- Pollock?” art comedy Bakersfield Mist.
Bobby Kennedy had just been shot, Detroit was on fire, Prague was burning. It was a messy time. RICK MILLER