Brent Carver was a Stratford star
From Tevye to Jacques Brel, Carver was a stunner
Brent Carver was shy.
I was warned before I met him. He hated doing interviews. Luckily his dog liked me. That dog was my way into Carver’s deeper thoughts. Carver was an actor’s actor. He knew how to find the quiet places between the big moments in plays. He knew how to release a character slowly, so that you gradually grew to know the man he was playing. There wasn’t much that was overtly actorly about him. Yet, audiences went away feeling a depth of drama that stayed with them years later.
We met at The Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto. He brought his dog along, so we sat on a bench outside. He told me his dog was as shy as he was.
Sadly, I don’t remember the dog’s name, but he was a lovely Lab and he was definitely my ally that day.
“I didn’t become a Broadway star until 1993 when I did ‘The Kiss of the Spider Woman,’ Carver said. Playing the gay window dresser Molina, I found an audience that discovered my vulnerability. And my playing Molina was purely by default.”
Carver replaced Richard Thomas who was hired to do the role, but backed out, perhaps uncomfortable with the part.
“I know the show was a big success, but I left after three months. I have a low threshold for boredom. Yes, I won a Tony Award and I suppose that was nice, but I needed to escape.”
Born in Cranbrook, B.C. in 1951 Carver grew up wanting to be an actor. He loved to sing. His dad accompanied him on the guitar.
“I don’t think it’s surprising that I was shy. And yes, I did like to perform.
“But many actors are truly shy. They live for escape in their characters. I think I’m different, I don’t think of acting as escape. I’m still myself when I’m on stage, just as much as I am the character I’m playing.”
Carver’s first big hit was playing in “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” in Vancouver. It was a role he repeated years later in Stratford.
Carver’s big theatrical success at The Stratford Festival was in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” in 1980 with Jessica Tandy and William Hutt.
Twenty years later he played a slim, less mercurial Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” on that same Stratford stage.
“I was frightened of that one,” he shrugs. “It’s mostly played by men who are larger and more bombastic than I am.”
Growing up in B.C. Carver always wanted to be an actor.
“I just always wanted that,” he said. “Some of my friends did too. My first Stratford show was as a sudden replacement in a play John Neville was directing. I didn’t have time to be frightened. I just went in and did it. Sometimes that’s the very best way.”
Carver was a huge success in “Jacques Brel” the musical fashioned from the French songmeister’s trenchant songs about love and Paris and the sadness of life.
‘I don’t know why, but you could say those songs somehow connected with me in a personal way.”
Carver always kept his personal life private. He doesn’t talk about lovers, though he certainly had some.
“They always ended, those romances, no matter how important they might have been at the time. I don’t know why people want to know the details of my life beyond the stage. It has to do with a need to somehow get close to a performer I suppose. For me what happens on stage is all that matters,” Carver said. “Anything else is my private world and no one needs to come inside it.”
Carver never quite survived the loss of his dear friend Susan Wright who died in a dreadful fire while living in Carver’s Niagara-on-theLake cottage home.
“Let’s not talk about it,” he said. “I loved Susan dearly and she was a great friend. Losing her the way I did was devastating.”
Carver could easily have left Canada for the heady success of Broadway, but his allegiance to Stratford mostly kept him here.
He did return to Lincoln Center in New York to do “Parade,” a dark musical in 1998 and again, his time with the Stratford Company playing Edmund in “King Lear” on Broadway.
He became a reluctant star, someone who loved being on-stage but didn’t care for all the off-stage palaver actors must face.
Brent Carver was a private person. When he died Aug. 4, 2020 at age 68, the details of his death were kept quiet by his family. And that’s how Carver wanted it.
I didn’t have time to be frightened. I just went in and did it. Sometimes that’s the very best way.
BRENT CARVER ACTOR