Fantastic Frosting and Decent Cake

Last year, I wrote a post about why we need to follow a pattern for writing musicals, in which I compared the message of the musical to a cake, and the artistic craftsmanship to its frosting. I might have said some dismissive things about musical productions that seem like they’re all frosting, and very little cake.

This week, I want to moderate that position a little because there was so much good going on in local productions that I would have earlier dismissed as just frosting. And at the same time, I want to reiterate the point of the original post – which is that ideally, musicals that aim to build the beloved community combine both a solid message (or cake), and delightful production values (or frosting).

I’m proud of our musical theatre scene here in Cardston Alberta. Not egotistically proud, because my contributions to building it have been minimal. But in a town of just over 3700, not only do we stage musical productions about every other month, but we also have a Summer Theatre program that employs college-bound youth and provides stellar entertainment with three shows, going on all summer long.

This year’s shows are Clue (a non-musical play), and the two musicals Nice Work…If You Can Get It; and Tuck Everlasting. Most of the directors, stage managers, choreographers, and light and sound technicians were young people who have honed their skills, season after season, on the Carriage House Theatre stage. I’ve watched them grow their talents over years of joyous onstage expression. And I was floored by what they’ve proven they can do.

I didn’t have high expectations for Clue or Nice Work. I knew that Clue’s plot revolves around a number of compromising adult situations, I had a suspicion that Nice Work would be similar, and I’m not a fan of bawdy humour. But it turns out that Clue Director Levi Mason is not only an extraordinary actor, but also a director with a particular gift for comedy. He managed to lean into the hilarious without amplifying the salacious and milked every scene for comedic opportunities, some of which were brilliantly unexpected. The sets were ingenious. Each actor managed to be convincingly in character while never demanding to be taken seriously. I laughed the entire time. There was no message to think about as I headed home except for this – that there is something beautiful about young people working together and honing their craft to produce masterful work.

Nice Work…If You Can Get It pairs the masterful comedy of Clue with stunningly-performed songs and choreography. Like Clue, it offers a story that is not to be taken seriously. It’s a prohibition-era romp through the songs of the Gershwin brothers that manages to celebrate genuine love in the middle of hijinks over bootlegged gin alongside accidental bigamy and muddy morals leading to declarations something like, “How can you blame me for being already married to two women when I hadn’t met you yet?” But it’s all in the context of parody, which makes it an opportunity to laugh at human frailty without activating a need to defend a more grounded sense of morality. Director Maxwell Gilchrist, Music Director Heather Seear and choreographer Macy Torrie did fantastic work here. Every performance was solid. Kelsie Ehlert as Duchess Estonia Dulworth’s transformation from uptight and scandalized to thoroughly drunken, besotted, and table-crawling, was not to be missed. And Molly Lewis Russell’s depiction of Billie Bendix was simply brilliant.

Then there’s Tuck Everlasting, directed by Josh Creason who also has a genius for stage design. I loved how he demonstrated that with beautiful set pieces and backdrop, including a climbable tree onstage, a water tower, and strips hanging from the ceiling that looked like birch trunks and signalled that we were in the woods. The main role, Winnie Foster was played by 21-ish Zoë Lewis Russell with such childlike wonder and exuberance that she was convincingly eleven. Meanwhile, Lexi Toone, who’s just a little younger than Zoë, seemed very much in her 90s as Winnie’s grandmother. Maxwell Gilchrist was chilling as the Man in the Yellow Suit, Jack O’Neill and Anson Toone brought down the house with their “You Can’t Trust A Man” number, while Everett Cornish, Mark Matkin, Braelynn Ehlert, and Zac Thomson each won our hearts as the Tuck family. And yet, despite the fact that this was the one show with a message to carry home and muse over, it was also the one where the house wasn’t packed. It wasn’t because of any deficiency in the cast and crew. I think it was because the musical itself was not quite as tightly written and the score was more uneven. Some of the songs completely won me. Others, particularly the opening number, weren’t tuneful. I’m sure it was deliberately written that way. It was probably intended to quickly convey a sense of things being unsettled, and the cast demonstrated significant skill in singing it. But I experienced some of the music as jarring instead of winning, which interfered with my enjoyment.

I come away with a deep appreciation of the reality that sometimes just the process of putting on a polished production together, has far more merit than the story you’re telling. And also, that the more skillfully we write and compose a meaningful story, the more power it has to win our hearts.

All of which is a little ironic, given that for the next two weeks, I’m leading an experimental mini-musical production that’s all about process instead of production values, most of which will be improvised. I’m excited about the process and, well, praying mightily that it will come together. I’m looking forward to reporting on that in a couple of weeks.