The last few weeks, Toronto has been home to one of the rarest sights in theatre- non-workshop runs of genuinely new musical works. Not only did this rare event happen, it happened three times! All three productions are still running, in fact, so now is a great time to get out and see what’s up and coming in Canadian musical theatre.
Camp, When You Close Your Eyes, and All the Cows are Dead share a lot- small casts, small spaces, contemporary viewpoints, urgent themes- but they represent a wide range of approaches within the shared landscape.
The most polished of the three is undoubtedly All the Cows are Dead, produced by established company Talk is Free Theatre. Staged in a hyper-intimate space at the back of the Soul Provisions (temporarily serving an excellent beef-forward pre-show snacks menu), this cleverly directed show features sustained eye contact, light audience participation, and the visceral and mildly threatening use of balloons. The deliciously constructed book is weighed down by a score that suffocates inventive storytelling with tired Sondheim imitation but it’s delivered beautifully by a pair of knock out turns from Taylor Garwood and Mike Nadajewski (a prolific performer with so many tricks up his sleeves it’s easy to forget he’s got one of the most beautiful musical theatre voices in the country). A small and very capable set of musicians add to the overall effectiveness of the production but William Dao’s thoughtful staging is the real star, elevating the quirk and atmosphere that makes the piece really shine.
Perhaps my favourite of the three new pieces is much shaggier around the edges but has the most distinct musical voice of the trio and has a lot of growth potential. Produced by young company Pepper’s Ghost Productions, When You Close Your Eyes is a spooky cult story set against Gen X-coded suburban ennui using classic mean girl melodrama as a sturdy structure for metaphorical and literal horrors. Writer Jessa Richer (additional compositions by Jason Kokkovas) blends a range of rock musical styles to differentiate character perspective and communicate mindset. A compelling ensemble of young performers take on the tricky score to varying effect, at times needing to push both their energy and their breath much harder to hit the style of the score (admittedly a tricky request to make of any classically trained performer who was taught not to strain). Act two needs a dramaturgical second look and maybe a closing number but there’s already so much promise in When You Close Your Eyes I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.
Slightly less effective for me was Branch Out Theatre’s Camp, returning to Toronto after an initial run in June. Contrasting the experiences of two young Jewish women separated by an ocean and nearly a century, Camp feels like more of a clever concept than a dramatically executable premise. Sharing the stage with her own grandmother Greta narrating her experience in a concentration camp, modern girl Lila’s side of the story- told from a winkingly paralleled bunk bed at a seemingly safe and pleasant summer camp- is bound to feel trivial. Pointedly avoiding the brutal complexity of contemporary politics and the directly related everyday dangers faced by Jewish people in seemingly safe and pleasant places, playwright Naomi Tessler (who also plays Greta) does little until the very last minute to foster the generational trauma connection between her characters, ultimately leaning on (sort of) shared experience unrelated to religious identity to sell the parallel. This leaves a lot of depth unmined within hyper-emotional and sensitive storytelling territory.
Despite the unevenness of the offerings, it’s a boon to see so much ambitious storytelling hit Canadian stages in the form of small-scale original musicals. It’s a hard art form to get off the ground but there’s a lot of exciting work percolating and that’s unquestionably a great thing.