Tag: Patrick Street Productions

It’s a Wonderful Life in music

Erin Palm and Nick Fontaine reprise their roles as Mary and George Bailey in Patrick Street Productions’ musical It’s a Wonderful Life. (photo by David Cooper)

So ingrained in popular culture is Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life that many Jews probably make it an annual tradition to watch the 1946 film. This year, there is also the chance to see a musical adaptation of the classic, in which the angel Clarence is assigned the job of trying to save Bailey Building and Loan owner George Bailey from committing suicide on Christmas Eve, after there is a run on the bank and George faces the possibility not only of financial ruin but of believing his life has been a waste.

Patrick Street Productions presents the musical version by Peter Jorgensen, with arrangements and orchestrations by Nico Rhodes, at the Anvil Centre Theatre in New Westminster from Dec. 19 to Jan. 5. The show is the only ticketed event of Winter Celebrations, free daily performances by professional artists, singers and musicians at the Anvil Centre until Jan. 5.

It’s a Wonderful Life features a few Jewish community members: Erin Palm as George’s wife, Mary; Andrew Cohen as Ernie, who Cohen describes as “everyone’s favourite Bedford Falls cabbie”; and Stephen Aberle playing, in his words, “the ruthless, cold-hearted capitalist Mr. Potter, as well as the Sheriff, and hero George Bailey’s father, Peter.”

“Mr. Potter is the antagonist of the piece,” explained Aberle. “He owns practically everything in the small town of Bedford Falls, other than the little Bailey Building and Loan Society that George Bailey’s father founded and that George continues. Potter hates the Building and Loan and does everything he can to crush it because it helps working people to save and buy their own homes instead of having to rent from him and live in the slums he owns.”

While Cohen and Aberle are new to the show, Palm played Mary in the 2018 Patrick Street production at the Gateway Theatre. As an aside, she said, “I also auditioned for the original production in Chemainus so many moons ago. I am so happy it all worked out the way it did. I truly believe it was the right fit for me at this time in my life. I have so much more personal growth and experience to bring to the role of Mary.”

Never wanting her acting to be a copy of someone else’s work, Palm said she has not seen the movie in its entirety. “I have seen some clips,” she said, “but not enough to develop a multifaceted character. Peter has written a great script and all I need to bring Mary to life is in the text. The musical aspect is completely different from the movie, and I think a beautiful addition.”

About her character, Palm said, “I appreciate Mary’s faith in community and her love for her family. She’s really strong and an anchor for George. When she wants something in her life, she goes after it. She’s the matriarch and heroine of the story. She comes through for her family and for her community when times are at their worst.

“I also appreciate her love of the simple life. In complex times like ours, and when I find my ambition too great, it’s people like Mary that remind me I can be happy and grateful for what I have, what I have worked so hard to create.”

One of Palm’s favourite scenes is “the moment right before we meet Clarence,” she said. “George is on the bridge and he’s deciding the fate of his own life, the same bridge where so many of his life’s highlights happen. It often makes me weep backstage. It’s difficult to think of people who carry the weight of the world with them, feeling isolated and alone, especially around the holidays, but the reality is the troubles of the world do not stop around those times and are in fact amplified for people who are struggling with depression and financial hardship. It’s a beautiful reminder how important it is to reach out to those around you, be a light in their lives. It only takes one person, one gesture to change the outcome of the lives of many.”

For her part, Palm is grateful to be working with the cast and especially Aberle, who happens to be her father-in-law. “Working on a show that has to do with family makes me long for family during the holidays and it is a gift to work with him,” she said.

Of the Christmas aspect of the show, Palm said the story is based in community and, “while we sing some Christmas carols, the heart of the piece is a very human story of how communities can overcome hardship by coming together around the holidays to help those who need it most, to support each other and to celebrate life. It touches on how faith can be a guiding light, but, ultimately, it’s in our own hands. Our daily work, prayer and decisions can change our own lives and people around us.”

While acknowledging that the story “seems to be somewhat synonymous with this season,” Cohen said it’s “the story of a stalwart man who continually puts the needs of his community members above his own. He learns that the value of life is not determined by monetary gain or ambition but rather the positive impact you have made on the lives of others. Even though we like to watch this story around Christmas time, it is not a story about any one holiday, but rather a family man who learns how to be a mensch.”

Aberle echoed his co-stars’ comments, adding more context and noting some Jewish connections.

“It’s a Wonderful Life is about the importance of family, fairness, justice, courage in resistance to oppression and people sticking together in hard times,” he said. “It celebrates the human spirit and the importance of individual action and responsibility. While it’s true that the climactic scenes of the story are set at Christmas time and that our production (like perennial TV broadcasts of the film) is coming out at that time of year, I’d say (with director Frank Capra himself) that it’s not a Christmas story. To quote Capra: ‘I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea.’ In a 1946 interview, Capra described the film’s theme as ‘the individual’s belief in himself.’

“It happens that several of the writers who were involved with it were Jews, or of Jewish descent,” Aberle added. “The original short story, The Greatest Gift, was by Philip Van Doren Stern, whose father was of Bavarian Jewish extraction, and the writers who contributed to the film screenplay included Clifford Odets and Jo Swerling, both Jewish, and Dorothy Parker, whose father was a Jew.

“A heck of a lot of the music in this adaptation – like a heck of a lot of American musicals in general – is by Jewish composers and librettists, including George and Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, Kurt Weill.”

For tickets to It’s a Wonderful Life, call 604-684-2787 or visit patrickstreetproductions.com. The show is recommended for ages 9+.

Podcast evolves into musical

Left to right: Playwright Vern Thiessen, composers Anton Lipovetsky and Ben Elliott and novelist Terry Fallis, whose The Best Laid Plans will see its musical première at York Theatre on Sept. 19. (photo from terryfallis.com)

It’s going to be a busy fall for author Terry Fallis. Already working on his sixth novel, his fifth is due in bookstores this October. And his first novel – which saw a CBC television adaptation in 2014 – will have its première as a musical at Vancouver’s York Theatre Sept. 19-Oct. 3.

For anyone who has dreams of being a successful author, Fallis is a beacon of hope. While the best laid plans of mice and men may often go awry, or “gang aft a-gley,” as wrote Scottish poet Robert Burns, Fallis’ rise in publishing is a tale about the good places to which awry can lead you. Many in the industry point to the internet as the main cause of publishing’s demise, yet that’s where Fallis’ The Best Laid Plans (McLelland and Stewart Ltd., 2007) – and his novelist career – got started.

A public relations professional, Fallis and a colleague created a podcast in 2006 called Inside PR. It occurred to him, he said in a phone interview from his office in Toronto, that, “in this emerging world of social media, where we are our own program managers … I would try that in the publishing world. When I couldn’t find anyone to take an interest in my first novel – I didn’t even get rejection letters, I was greeted with a deafening silence, perhaps because I’d written a satirical novel of Canadian politics – I decided to try and build an audience for it on my own. That’s when I decided to podcast the whole thing for free and give it away on iTunes and on my blog, just as a way to gather some kind of a following and to see whether or not I had written a novel because I honestly didn’t know whether I’d written a novel, so I was looking for objective feedback from anybody I could interest in listening to it.”

McLelland and Stewart Ltd. have since published every one of Fallis’ novels, all bestsellers, critically acclaimed and award nominees or winners. He remains loyal, he said, “to the podcast listeners and blog readers who were there right at the very beginning, who gave me that feedback and were encouraging. Without that support, it’s an open question of whether or not I would have self-published the novel. And, if I hadn’t self-published the novel, none of the rest of these wonderful things would have happened.”

In his continued appreciation, Fallis still shares content for free and listens to what people think of it. “Now, generally the book is finished by the time I podcast it,” he said, “so, to be clear, when I’m looking for feedback, it’s not so much that I want advice on how to change the novel, it’s more that I think it’s important for authors to be accessible to their readers. When the reader’s interested, you can actually have a contact, and I find that an important part of being a writer.”

Fallis said he loves both the “isolated solitude that comes when you’re in writing mode” and also gets “a charge out of traveling around and meeting readers and talking about the books, and talking to other writers. And I teach as well,” he added, “at the University of Toronto, in the writing program, and I like all of that stuff and I feel lucky that I happen to have both sides of that working for me.”

With more people reading these days than ever before, Fallis has hope in the publishing industry’s future. Acknowledging that people are “finding their content in many more places than were available 20 years ago,” he said, “I think this new world opens up a whole bunch of opportunities for writers and for publisher alike, and the ones who are surviving have embraced that which is new…. So, I think there are real opportunities, and writers can get their work in front of more eyes than ever before, even if they’re not published. There are websites and apps available, and communities online that will welcome new writers, and it’s sometimes a route to traditional publishing as, in a way, it was for me.”

When Touchstone Theatre’s Katrina Dunn contacted him and his agent about the possibility of adapting The Best Laid Plans into a musical, Fallis said, “We were really quite impressed with Katrina and Touchstone and Patrick Street Productions and what they had done in the past, and their vision for the musical, so it seemed like the right way to go – and we’ve been thrilled ever since.”

While he has yet to see the show, he has heard a few of the songs and read a portion of the script. Last fall, at the Vancouver Writers Festival, Fallis participated in a session with Dunn, playwright Vern Thiessen, composers Anton Lipovetksy (a member of the Jewish community) and Ben Elliott and director Peter Jorgensen of Patrick Street Productions. “They had a singer as well, and Anton and Ben both sing,” said Fallis. “And, for the first time ever, while I’m sitting on stage in front of this packed hall, I was hearing the songs for the first time, at least a few of them, and that was strange. I was very conscious of – people are watching you now as you’re reacting to the song, make sure that you’re polite, and I loved the songs, there was no need to be concerned, they were terrific. It was a great experience, and quite surreal to hear someone singing about characters I had created and carted around in my brainpan for so many years.”

While many of Fallis’ characters do indeed face challenges that arise from plans gone wrong, his novels are humor-filled and uplifting. He said that he is, by nature, an optimistic person.

“I think I see the world through relatively clear eyes,” he said, “but, I figure, if we have some choice in the matter, of crying or trying to find the thin, little sliver of goodwill somewhere in the story, I will go there. I don’t usually have much trouble finding humor in it. I grew up in a family where humor was just a daily staple.

“I think there’s a certain engineer’s logic in how I think about things, as well,” added Fallis, who got a degree in engineering before being lured into politics, where he worked in various capacities before entering the PR world, eventually co-founding Thornley Fallis. “If something happens and it can’t be changed, and we have no control over it, I don’t spend a lot of time wondering why it happened. You just move on, and I try not to dwell on it.”

Fallis credits growing up with an identical twin for helping form this positive attitude. He also has a younger sister – “We all get along wonderfully,” he said, “It’s rather an idyllic little family” – but “having someone you’re exactly the same age as and [who is] exactly like you, there is always someone to goof around with … having a twin brother to trigger that at every moment of every day was part of that, for sure.”

As is his innate curiosity. “I’m fascinated by so many things,” he said. When he was interested in something as a boy, he “would read every book around” on it and his mother would say, “’Terry’s on one of his kicks’ … you can’t imagine how many things I was interested in for short bursts of time, and I’ve maintained an interest in most of them, but not with the same intensity. The library became my friend and I find it stimulating and fulfilling.”

Curiosity is something, he said, that he and his wife have encouraged in their sons, now 23 and 20, who will be joining them on the trip to Vancouver for the première. “Curiosity is a wonderful gift,” said Fallis, “and I feel sorry for those who don’t have it in the same amount that I do.”

Now in the midst of plotting out his next book, which is going to be about twins – though the protagonist “doesn’t know he’s an identical twin until some ways into the book” – Fallis explained his creative process. Describing himself as “a heavy outliner,” he said, “The last thing I ever do is write the manuscript, and that’s right at the tail end of the process. The last four months I spend writing the manuscript, the previous year I spend thinking about it, mapping out the story, plotting it, developing the characters, and then doing a chapter by chapter outline. That’s the engineer in me – I need a blueprint for my novel before I can build it.”

For tickets and more information about The Best Laid Plans: A Musical, visit tickets.thecultch.com or call 604-251-1363.