Volume 27 Issue 3 - December 2021 / January 2022

Holiday Inn
Immersive Nutcracker
Another is the longed-for Canadian premiere of the musical stage
version of Emma Donoghue’s Room at the Grand Theatre in London.
Cancelled in March 2020 the day before its official opening, it will
take place at last in January at the Grand, followed by a longer
run in Toronto, starting in February at the intimate CAA (formerly
Panasonic) Theatre on Yonge Street. Room is a dark story with a
redemptive theme that many will be familiar with from the bestselling
novel and film starring Brie Larson. This (newly revised) stage
version which had its world premiere in London, England, in 2017,
is also a musical with songs co-written by director Cora Bissett and
Scottish singer-songwriter Kathryn Joseph. Word of mouth reports
from the previews in 2020 say that Alexis Gordon leads a wonderful
cast in a brilliantly constructed show that explores the triumph of
the human spirit over an unbearable situation.
The Mirvish slate is full of other shows I want to see, but the one
that goes on my calendar first is the main stage debut in January of
Canadian Jake Epstein’s autobiographical Boy Falls from the Sky,
a show I loved at the Toronto Fringe back in 2019. This show is a
musical theatre lover’s treat, as Epstein takes us on his unexpected
journey: from singing along to Broadway show albums on family
road trips to New York; to appearing in Canadan TV hit Degrassi; to
finding himself starring in Broadway shows such as Spider-Man and
Beautiful. The Mirvish season also includes the return in the spring
of 2 Pianos 4 Hands starring its creators and original stars, Ted
Dykstra and Richard Greenblatt.
One of my favourite recurring events at Soulpepper is the series
of concerts masterminded by director of music Mike Ross. Year over
year it inventively combines story with song, incorporating many
different styles of music along the way and showcasing some of
Toronto’s most exciting talent. This coming February, for example,
Soulpepper launches its season with a new concert, “The Golden
Record”, conceived by Ross and inspired by a recording NASA sent
out into space to explain Earth to extraterrestrial life. “The Golden
Record” will feature the talents of Divine Brown, Beau Dixon, Raha
Javanfar, tap dancer Travis Knights, Andrew Penner, Mike Ross,
Sarah Wilson and Strays star Frank Cox-O’Connell, who also directs.
And leaping ahead to June, I am looking forward – at last – to
seeing how Karen Kain will reimagine Swan Lake for the National
Ballet. As a longtime fan of the Erik Bruhn version that featured a
female sorceress as opposed to the traditional male sorcerer (von
Rothbart), who returned in the current James Kudelka version, I am
particularly interested in what Kain will do with this role.
All this, and it’s early days still! The Musical Stage Company, for
example, has not yet announced anything official for the new year
other than continuing development projects, but I am still hoping
to hear that Sara Farb and Britta Johnson’s musical Kelly v. Kelly
(based on a real life story of the mother and daughter court battle
over tango dancing) will get its world premiere soon, perhaps later
this year? In the meantime, I am intrigued to excited to see what
new musicals will be nurtured through First Drafts, the Musical
Stage Company’s new musical theatre development partnership
with the Canadian Musical Theatre Project at Sheridan College in
which final-year students at the college will have the opportunity to
thewholenote.com December 2021 and January 2022 | 13