Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Our town's "killer" actors
Our town’s “killer” actors
Since their fathers are fairly modest types, it’s up to me, I suppose, to trumpet the accomplishments of a couple of Uxbridge’s foremost theatrical talents, currently on display down in the Big Smoke. Actually, though, both of them are pretty fair trumpeters themselves, as you’ll hear if you venture down sometime in the next ten days to take in the ravely-reviewed production they’re starring in down on Queen Street (and I’ll tell you how to get tickets by the end of the column).
One of the duo just happens to be the daughter of the fellow next door, columnist/author/MC Ted Barris. Her stage name is Whitney Ross Barris, and I’ve known her almost from the day I arrived in town, since she’s a close friend of my step-daughter Alida. Although she’s best known in Toronto these days as a jazz singer (and her most recent Uxbridge appearances are in that mode), I got to know her best as a musical actress. If you cast back your audience memory 16 years or so, you might remember Whit as Belle in the Uxbridge Youth Choir’s production of Beauty and the Beast. In the first two productions mounted by Uxbridge Musical Theatre (both of which I directed) in 1997 and 1998, she was a tragic Lily in The Secret Garden and a dastardly and hilarious Miss Hannigan in Annie, amply demonstrating her considerable dramatic range. After that, it was off to theatre school.
Her co-star this week is a few years younger, and is the progeny of local businessman Andy Fiddes, a pretty fine actor himself. His son Alex, after appearing in such local productions as Oklahoma, The Wiz and Once Upon a Mattress, also went on to theatre school at Sheridan College, a musical theatre program which has turned out stars like Chilina Kennedy. The only time I actually got to direct Alex was in a short play I wrote for the Trails Festival in October of ‘09, when he showed up to our one and only rehearsal with his script on a laptop computer (a first for me!).
I’m not sure if Whitney and Alex ever met on the streets of Uxbridge, but I know they had never performed on the same stage before they showed up at the first rehearsal for the Birdland Theatre production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, which explores the world of the various men and women who killed (or tried to kill) presidents of the United States. It sounds like a rather curious subject for a musical, but it’s a fascinating, thought-provoking (particularly in light of the recent shootings in Tucson) and often darkly humorous play, and the Birdland production has won numerous awards, and unanimous accolades from Toronto theatre critics.
In the show, Alex plays Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who murdered President William McKinley in 1901. Whitney plays Emma Goldman, the woman he revered, and who was briefly and wrongly imprisoned as an accomplice in the McKinley assassination. Because their characters are so closely linked, Alex and Whit have one moving scene together which is a highlight of the production, and Whit also sings the lead in the show’s closing number.
For Whitney, the show may be a strong step toward finally make performing a full-time career (it’s hard to make a living as a jazz singer, even in Toronto). For Alex, Assassins may be his big acting break (although he’s also becoming known as a musical producer). To do Assassins, he turned down a better-paying gig in Saskatchewan, rightly assuming that this show would pay off better in the long run. In this production, both of them more than hold their own against some pretty big names in Canadian musical theatre.
One of the best things about this Toronto musical is that it’s not playing in some huge venue where you can barely see the stage and where every actor has to be miked. At the Theatre Centre on Queen Street West, there are only half as many seats as at the Uxbridge Music Hall, and you hear the voices pure and unplugged, and can see every nuance of expression on the actor’s faces.
The down side of such an intimate venue, of course, is that tickets are hard to get, particularly for a show which has garnered great reviews and even better word-of-mouth. So if you’d like to see a truly memorable musical, featuring marvellous performances by two of Uxbridge’s best young talents, call Toronto’s Arts Box Office now at 416-504-7529, and I hope you’re not too late.
Assassins runs until Feb. 20.
