RUSSIA VIA CANADA
Canadian director brings more Canucks aboard Broadway’s Doctor Zhivago,
NEW YORK— When the new musical of Doctor Zhivago officially opens on Broadway Tuesday, the Russian Revolution is going to have a decidedly Canadian feel.
The show’s director, Tony Award winner Des McAnuff, has always been proud of his Scarborough roots and trumpets his Canuck background wherever he goes.
Many of the cast and creatives on Zhivago are Canadians from McAnuff’s years as artistic director of the Stratford Festival (2008-2012).
You could call it Eight Degrees of Des McAnuff; that’s how many of his fellow countrymen are involved in the show.
Paul Alexander Nolan, Kira Guloien, Julius Sermonia, Ericka Hunter and Denis Lambert are in the cast, while Sean Nieuwenhuis is production and video designer, Guy Kwan is production manager and Rick Fox is the conductor
“I like to find people who are good team players and work with them over and over again,” says McAnuff.
Based on the 1957 novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author Boris Pasternak and David Lean’s Oscar-winning 1965 screen adaptation, the stage version covers Russian history from the final years of the Tsars, through the First World War and the Russian Revolution, all the way to an epilogue set during the Second World War.
It’s taken McAnuff a decade to bring it to Broadway, including two earlier productions at the La Jolla Playhouse in California and the Lyric Theatre, Sydney, Australia, not to mention workshops and readings too numerous to mention.
“Some shows, like Jersey Boys, almost leapt onto the stage after they were written. This one took time,” McAnuff says. “It was different. It’s based on a massive and very important novel, so we’ve tried to smother it with love and work very hard to get it right.”
McAnuff’s Gang of Eight help keep him on track. At the head of the list he puts Nolan, who’s playing the role of the tortured revolutionary Pasha Antipov, which Tom Courtenay created in the film.
Nolan zoomed to Stratford stardom as Tony in West Side Story. McAnuff then made him Jesus in the production of Jesus Christ Superstar he brought to Broadway. Nolan remained in New York to take on the lead in Once.
“I think Paul is the greatest power tenor working on Broadway today and he also has all that classical training that Stratford can offer. He’s a huge package of talent,” says McAnuff.
Nolan is grateful for the chance he’s been given. “It’s a character with a giant arc. He’s the one who changes the most in the play and not necessarily for the better.”
The other four Canadian cast members are in the ensemble.
Guloien made her mark at Stratford in Tommy as Mrs. Walker and reached out to McAnuff 18 months later, telling him she wanted to work in New York. “He gave me this giant opportunity.”
Sermonia first worked in McAnuff’s Stratford production of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum “and we’d always compare notes about how we grew up on the same block in Scarborough,” he says.
Hunter got into the show through McAnuff’s choreographer of choice, Kelly Devine, who had worked with her on Rock of Ages. And Lambert has been working mainly in America since his 2000 professional debut at the Charlottetown Festival. “I’m covering12 different roles and my brain has never worked so hard,” he says.
Conductor Fox worked with McAnuff on Tommy, Caesar and Cleopatra, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Jesus Christ Superstar.
McAnuff, he says, “puts together a top-notch group every time and I enjoy the collaboration.”