Brantwood is a time machine of a show
Immersive musical shows immense talent, creativity in Sheridan theatre program
The normally dense traffic along the QEW could get even more congested between now and May 3, thanks to adventurous theatregoers heading to Sheridan College to see Brantwood.
This is undoubtedly the most ambitious, adventurous, boldly staged show to hit this area in many years. And the fact that its dazzling cast is made up of the 2015 graduating class of the musical theatre program at Sheridan is even more cause for celebration.
Once you show up at the Sheridan box office to pick up your tickets, you’ll be fitted with a graduation gown, guided onto a school bus and driven 10 minutes away to Brantwood School, which was an actual educational facility for many years.
You assemble on the lawn and hear speeches from the Rob Ford-like principal and the eerily intense valedictorian, and then magic happens.
The ghosts of students who have attended the school over the past 100 years start to circle around us and move through our midst like young members of The Walking Dead.
Only they’re singing haunting, tuneful music by Bram Gielen, Anika Johnson and Britta Johnson — the first of many great numbers you’ll hear over the next three hours.
Not only is Brantwood an environmental, immersive piece of theatre in which you walk around the action and discover it at will, it’s also filled with exciting song and dance.
It’s Sleep No More meets High School Musical, with just a dash of Carrie tossed in for good measure.
And in case you haven’t guessed, it’s pretty terrific, with more plots than you can keep track of spanning a century of activity, all thrown together in a crazy time machine of a production by Mitchell Cushman and Julie Tepperman.
There are big set-piece moments, like the school talent show and the graduation finale, but there are also intense individual moments you experience one on one.
For example, a young man with blazing eyes and a swastika arm band gestured for me to follow him. We, just the two of us, walked into the darkened school library, where he delivered a neo-Nazi rant that chilled my blood. Or a vixenish young woman who indicated three of us should follow her launched into a musical seduction of her boyfriend in a basement staircase that was almost too hot to watch.
Step into the wrong classroom and you may be there when a teacher decides to kill the student for whom his passion has proved deadly. Or turn the corner and find yourself a willing participant in a game of Spin the Bottle, set to a jaunty tune.
Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time, like one searingly lonely passage in which a sample of all the disaffected teens of the past century stand at their lockers and sing of the pain they feel in everyday life.
Because this is a student production, it’s not getting a star rating and I’ve deliberately chosen not to single out cast members by name but, believe me, these are young artists you will see again on bigger stages. Yes, they’re all that good.
The technical skill on display is also amazing, with the effortless musical direction of James Smith and the haunting lighting of Nicholas Blais proving especially potent.
If the show has a flaw, it’s that the script by Cushman and Tepperman isn’t as inventive as their concept and staging, often relying on clichéd tropes and attempts at period slang that fall flat.
But aside from that, Brantwood is an occasion for celebration. Associate dean Michael Rubinoff, who produced this mammoth effort, should feel justifiable pride at what he and his colleagues have wrought.
Brave the QEW to see Brantwood. It’s worth the journey. Brantwood runs until May 3. Patrons assemble at the main entrance to Sheridan College, 1430 Trafalgar Rd. For tickets, call 905-815-4049.