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Tag: Royal City Musical Theatre

Cohen dusts off tap shoes

Cohen dusts off tap shoes

Andrew Cohen takes on the lead role of Don Lockwood in Royal City Musical Theatre’s Singin’ in the Rain, which runs April 4-20. (photo by David Cooper)

“I’m excited for audiences to see Singin’ in the Rain. The film is a classic, and I hope we’re able to bring that same charm and excitement to the Massey Stage,” Michael Wilkinson told the Independent. “It is on the older side of the musical theatre canon, but I think our production – especially Andrew Cohen as Don Lockwood and Tessa Trach as Kathy Selden – do such a beautiful job at bringing these characters to life in 2019, while still keeping the familiarity and charm of the characters and story.”

Royal City Musical Theatre presents Singin’ in the Rain at the Massey Theatre in New Westminster April 4-20. For those unfamiliar with the story, Don Lockwood and Lina Lamont are silent film stars, dashing and beautiful, but their stars will fade unless they can make the transition to talkies, the new technology of the time. The studio decides to change the couple’s latest silent film into a musical but, the problem is, Lamont has a horrible voice – even listening to her talk is painful. The solution? Have her voice dubbed by aspiring actress Kathy Selden.

Filled with humour, eminently singable and memorable music – “Good Mornin’,” “Make ’em Laugh,” and, of course, “Singin’ in the Rain,” to name a few – and incredible choreography, Singin’ in the Rain is one of the most popular musicals of all time, while also being an insightful commentary on the film industry, the impacts of technology and the nature of fame.

Cohen said he was asked to audition for the role of Lockwood last fall, while he was away doing Fiddler on the Roof in Saskatchewan.

“Gene Kelly made this role, this music, famous. He is in every neuron of this show. But I am no Gene Kelly (though I sure do wish I had his moves),” Cohen told the Independent about making such a famous character his own. “I think any actor preparing to take on an iconic role like Don Lockwood needs to find where the character lives within themselves rather than trying to mimic the character’s originator.”

And Cohen has more than the chops necessary to step into Kelly’s shoes. Since the Jewish Independent featured Cohen and his wife, Anna Kuman, in 2017, when they premièred Circle Game: Reimagining the Music of Joni Mitchell – which they co-created and co-directed – the couple has been working on different projects around the world.

“We were on the mass choreography team for the Fifth Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games opening ceremony in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, that had us work with a cast of 8,000, not to mention aerialists, horses, dogs, camels,” said Cohen. “It was a crazy experience! I then joined the stage management teams for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games and the Sydney Invictus Games opening and closing ceremonies, getting to work at the Sydney Opera House and along the stunning shores of the Gold Coast.”

Cohen also premièred the new musical Les Filles Du Roi, for which he had to sing in English, French and Kanienké:ha (Mohawk). “Last winter,” he said, “I reconnected to my ancestral roots in the shmatta trade by playing Motel Kamzoil the Tailor in Fiddler on the Roof at Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon. Also, being the show’s music director, this production boasted a cast full of actor/musicians and was extended four times due to popular demand.”

While he’s very excited to return home and “dust off” his tap shoes for Singin’ in the Rain, Cohen won’t be in town long. He’s “heading to Toronto, Tel Aviv and Europe this spring for a tour of the new Canadian show Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music that chronicles the life of renowned Jewish painter Charlotte Salomon.”

Singin’ in the Rain marks Cohen’s debut with Royal City Musical Theatre.

“Both my wife and my brother have worked with them before,” he said, “but this is my first time with RCMT, so it’s lovely to get to join the club, especially since RCMT is a theatrical institution for large-scale classic musicals. Seldom do audiences (and actors alike) get to revel in the grandeur of the art form in this town than at the Massey Theatre every April.”

Cohen’s fellow Jewish community member, Wilkinson, certainly enjoys this annual tradition.

“It’s the community that keeps me coming back,” he said. “Obviously performing is very fun, but I’ve also made some great friendships through RCMT. It has become something to look forward to in April, and it’s the people that make it such a wonderful environment.”

Wilkinson is in his final year of studies at the University of British Columbia’s Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, so he’s not sure how long he’ll be able to continue performing with RCMT, but he feels “very fortunate to have been a part of five productions over the last few years.” As part of the ensemble in Singin’ in the Rain, he has more than one role.

“The Quartet,” he explained, “is a part of the number ‘Beautiful Girl,’ which is a big showgirl number that is the first ‘talkie’ by Monumental Pictures (the film production studio in the show). Typically, the number only has the tenor soloist and the female ensemble, but our director and choreographer, Valerie Easton, has added four of the male ensemble to create a quartet and have some fun partnering moments in the number. It’s really just a quick snippet of the show, and many of us in the ensemble jump around playing multiple parts. I’m also playing Rod, who is the head of the publicity department at Monumental Pictures, which has been a fun bit role.”

Wilkinson’s favourite scene, he said, “would have to be the number ‘Broadway Rhythm,’ which happens about halfway through Act 2. It’s around eight minutes long, and there is some amazing dancing and singing throughout the number. I think the audience will really enjoy it, especially once we have rehearsed it to perfection!”

For Cohen, the biggest challenge so far with the role of Lockwood has been “the sheer amount of material to learn. Don sings and dances a lot. In Act 1, he barely leaves the stage,” said Cohen. “Prepping for this show has been like training to do a marathon – every day a little further, more lines down, going over and over songs and dance breaks. That said, I grew up tap dancing but haven’t had the chance to tap professionally in a long time. It’s a real privilege getting to tap with some of the amazing tappers in this company.”

Cohen said, “It’s very exciting, seeing it all come together with the sets and the lights and the orchestra. How often do you get to sing with a real 18-piece orchestra?!”

For tickets to RCMT’s Singin’ in the Rain, visit ticketsnw.ca or call 604-521-5050.

Format ImagePosted on March 29, 2019March 27, 2019Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags Andrew Cohen, Michael Wilkinson, musical, RCMT, Royal City Musical Theatre
My Fair Lady fantastic

My Fair Lady fantastic

Tracy Neff (Eliza Doolittle) and Warren Kimmel (Henry Higgins) before the phonetics lessons start. (photo by Tim Matheson)

It was hard not to sing along. In fact, the couple in the row behind me couldn’t stop themselves on more than one occasion. So wonderfully witty and familiar are all of the songs in My Fair Lady, which is playing at Massey Theatre until April 26.

Directed by Max Reimer, the Royal City Musical Theatre production is well worth the trip to New Westminster. If you’re like me, the proposition is daunting. I made an afternoon and evening of it, heading out from Vancouver before rush hour, enjoying a walk along the quay and dinner with friends before heading to the theatre for the 7:30 p.m. show. While it took almost an hour to get to New West, I made it back in about 25 minutes. Granted, that’s about 15 minutes longer than if I had been coming from downtown, but the parking was plentiful and free – and I had longer to sing in the car on the way home, which made the drive seem that must faster.

I had forgotten just how funny are the book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner – even 50ish years after they premièred on Broadway! With the stellar cast enunciating brilliantly, nary a word was lost, and the 22-piece live orchestra and 30-plus cast also gave justice to Frederick Loewe’s music.

Of course, the musical’s origins go back further, more than 100 years, to George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion. Phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets phonetics enthusiast Colonel Pickering that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a street seller of flowers, and transform her: “You see this creature with her curbstone English that’ll keep her in the gutter till the end of her days? In six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. I could even get her a job as a lady’s maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.” (In Shaw’s version, the bet is three months to “pass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party.”)

photo - Jewish community members Kathryn Palmer and Jonathan Boudin in the ensemble of Royal City Musical Theatre's My Fair Lady.
Jewish community members Kathryn Palmer and Jonathan Boudin in the ensemble of Royal City Musical Theatre’s My Fair Lady. (photo by David Cooper)

Led by Warren Kimmel as Prof. Higgins and Tracy Neff as Eliza, there are many standouts in the Royal City production, including John Payne as the charming scoundrel Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza’s father, and tenor Thomas Lamont as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who falls for Eliza at the Ascot (her test run as a lady) when she cheers on the horse Dover to win, hollering, “Come on, Dover! Move your bloomin’ arse!” In addition to Kimmel, other Jewish community members involved in the show are Jonathan Boudin and Kathryn Palmer in the ensemble. Both do very well, but Palmer is particularly expressive, standing out as both a flower seller and a maid, very much at ease on stage.

The entire cast seemed to be having a great time on the preview night I attended, good-humoredly negotiating through a couple of technical glitches, including a tough-to-light candle. And the main two sets, which go from being two sides of a London street corner to Higgins’ study when they are turned around and pushed together, are fabulously detailed and necessarily sturdy (the actors must travel to a balcony on one side, a landing on the other), but they must be quite heavy – every time the halves of it slowly came together to form the study, I released a small sigh of relief.

None of this detracted from the performance. In fact, these instances made it seem more intimate, and reminded me of one of the reasons live theatre is so fun to watch. It was a great show. I got lost in the words, music, sets, costumes (gorgeous!). The cast, crew and musicians all deserve kudos – as Pickering says to Higgins after the ball, “Absolutely fantastic.… You did it!”

For tickets ($26-$47) to My Fair Lady at Massey Theatre through April 26, visit masseytheatre.com or call 604-521-5050.

Format ImagePosted on April 17, 2015April 16, 2015Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags Eliza Doolittle, Henry Higgins, Jonathan Boudin, Kathryn Palmer, Massey Theatre, Royal City Musical Theatre, Tracy Neff, Warren Kimmel
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