Volume 23 Issue 3 - November 2017

Beat by Beat | Music Theatre
Storytelling
Through Song
Jake Epstein performing Only the Good Die Young
in Uncovered: Elton John & Billy Joel
JENNIFER PARR
The heart of musical theatre in any time period is storytelling
through the combination of words and music, where the whole
becomes more than the sum of its parts; and when the right
creative team and performers come together the results can be
uniquely satisfying.
October’s musical theatre season started strongly with Britta
Johnson’s Life After at Canadian Stage debuting to rave reviews, soldout
houses and an extended run (so far to October 29). Audiences
were bowled over with the sophistication of the music, the humanity
and wit of the book, and the potential of many more new musicals
to come from such a talent. An unexpectedly welcome addition to
the summer and fall was the classic Euripides drama The Bakkhai
(in the recent Anne Carson adapation) at the Stratford Festival, in
which director Jillian Keiley made the radical and fascinating decision
to have the chorus sing rather than speak and chose Vancouver
composer Veda Hille (of the recent Onegin and King Arthur) to create
their sound, a sultry, disturbing folk-like music. Back in Toronto,
Red Sky Performance continued to assert their strength of vision
with Adizokan (a collaboration with the Toronto Symphony at Roy
Thomson Hall) that will continue with a remounting of Backbone at
Canadian Stage Berkeley Street November 2 to 12.
As October ends and November begins there is even more of a
wide range of music theatre offerings to choose from. Personally, I
have been immersed in rehearsals for Opera Atelier’s production of
Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (October 26 to November 4 at the
Elgin Theatre) which, in Marshall Pynkoski’s exquisitely detailed
commedia dell’arte-inspired period staging, pulls those watching
as if through a window into the 18th century, where words, music
and movement are inextricably intertwined to serve the storytelling,
obliterating the fourth wall and delighting in sharing the space with
the audience.
The Musical Stage Company’s Uncovered concert series goes to the
root of the storytelling concept, deconstructing and reconstructing
the songs of popular singer-songwriters to uncover and share the
stories at the heart of the songs. Artistic director Mitchell Marcus
works side by side with music director Reza Jacobs and the individual
performers, experimenting and exploring the material to create new
uniquely theatrical arrangements that clarify and heighten the stories
they discover.
November 14 to 16 they present “Uncovered: Dylan & Springsteen”
at Koerner Hall with an exciting cast of leading musical theatre
performers featuring Jake Epstein as Bruce Springsteen and Sara Farb
as Bob Dylan.
Wanting to know more details, I approached Mitchell Marcus about
how the series started and his ongoing collaboration with music
director Jacobs.
Here is our conversation:
WN:What was your initial impetus or inspiration to create the
concert series?
MM: The first Uncovered (in 2007) explored the musical catalogue of
The Beatles. We both loved The Beatles and loved musical theatre, and
wondered how the songs could be interpreted with a group of singing
actors. It turned out to be revelatory as audiences started to hear
the stories contained in these iconic songs in a way that they hadn’t
previously. The combination of a great actor and an examination of
the material from the perspective of character and narrative became
something we were fiercely passionate about.
Uncovered seems to have become a cornerstone of your season.
Is there a connection between your choice of singer-songwriters to
feature with the mainstage show(s) that you are presenting in the
season or is there instead (or as well) an arc of experimentation in
the choices from year to year? How do you choose which songwriters
to feature?
There is no specific connection between the Uncovered concert
selections and the mainstage shows, except for the hope of always
presenting exciting work of the highest quality. The choice of songwriter
is a strange combination of intuition and zeitgeist. Sometimes
it’s an artist that one of us loves and has been waiting to tackle.
Sometimes it’s a circumstance like the death of David Bowie last year
which prioritized Bowie/Queen over Dylan/Springsteen (which we
had [already] been debating). I think we also try to ensure that the
concert doesn’t stay too stagnant from one year to another, which has
frequently resulted in alternating between rock/pop and folk music.
Has the shape of the show or your approach to the material
changed since the series began?
When we first started, the concert was thrown together much more
quickly, so what was onstage was really the version of the song that
the artist wanted to try out. Since then, we spend a lot more time in
rehearsal and really try to shape the overall evening into something
whole rather than feeling like a cabaret. On the musical side, this has
meant a more rigorous dramaturgical process of diving into the lyrics
of the songs and making clear decisions around whose story we are
telling and what story is being told. This becomes the foundation from
which all musical decisions are made and the lyrics of the songwriter
serve as our guide. Dramatically, we also started integrating text into
the concert to serve as a bridge between numbers. We exclusively use
quotes from the songwriters we are featuring and it has been a very
effective way to capture their spirit alongside their music.
JOANNA AKYOL
34 | November 2017 thewholenote.com