Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre

BROADWAY NORTH

BROADWAY NORTH

The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre

Mel Atkey

Copyright © 2006 Mel Atkey

All rights reserved. No portion of this book, with the exception of brief extracts for the purpose of literary or scholarly review, may be reproduced in any form without the permission of the publisher.

Published by Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc.

P.O. Box 95, Station O, Toronto, Ontario M4A 2M8

www.naturalheritagebooks.com

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Atkey, Mel, 1958-

Broadway north : the dream of a Canadian musical theatre / Mel Atkey ; [foreword by Elaine Campbell].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-897045-08-5

1. Musicals—Canada—History and criticism. I. Campbell, Elaine II. Title.

ML1713.5.A873 2006     782.1’40971    C2006-905429-0

Cover and text design by Neil Thorne

Edited by Jane Gibson

Printed and bound in Canada by Hignell Book Printing of Winnipeg

Natural Heritage/Natural History Inc. acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We acknowledge the support of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Association for the Export of Canadian Books.

Norman Campbell and Elaine Campbell at home. Photo by Robert Swerdlow. Courtesy of Elaine Campbell.

This book is dedicated to my friend and mentor

Norman Campbell, 1924-2004.

CREDITS FOR COVER VISUALS

Front Cover

Playbills of Canadian Musicals: Anne of Green Gables, Napoleon and Billy Bishop Goes to War. All courtesy of the author.

Back Cover

Tom Kneebone and Dinah Christie. Photo by Beverley Rockett. Courtesy of Dinah Christie.

David Warrack and Michael Danso. Photo by Jim Marshall. Courtesy of the Scottish Studies Foundation.

From left to right: Lindsey Frazier, Matt Carroll, Janet MacEwen, Kristen Peace, Joey Kitson, Terry Hatty, Julain Molnar, Sophie Hunter (in back) and Sweeney MacArthur in the 2006 Charlottetown Festival’s production of CANADA ROCKS!: The Hits Musical Revue. Photo by Louise Vessey. Courtesy of the Confederation Centre of the Arts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Credits for Cover Visuals

Acknowledgements

Foreword by Elaine Campbell

Overture: … Of Canada, Limited

ACT ONE

1   In the Beginning

2   Dumbells and Uptown Girls

3   Filling the Cultural Vacuum

4   Will You Dance With Me?

5   Putting the Audience on Stage

6   Rain or No Rain: Theatre Under The Stars and Rainbow Stage

7   On the Crest of a New Canadian Theatre

8   The Glory of the Modern Age

9   Merry Madness

10 Lovely, Juicy, Silly Fun

11 The Fur Flies

12 A Chilly Northern Breeze: Cabaret and Revue in Toronto the Good

13 Humbug

14 Industrial Strength

15 The Epitome of Show-Dance Professionalism

16 Something Truly Wonderful

17 The Toast of Their Home Town

18 Vancouver: The Things That You Yet Will Do

19 Learn the Rules, Then Break Them

20 A Lot of Heart: Charlottetown After Anne

21 A Radiophonic Musical

22 Try, Try, Aim for the Sky

23 I Could Change the World

24 The Killer Hero: Billy Bishop Goes to War

ACT TWO

25 Entr’acte: Are We Having Fun Yet?

26 Broadway Bound—and Gagged

27 The Virtuosity of Opera with the Vitality of Broadway

28 A Canadian in New York

29 Nice Tries and Missed Opportunities

30 Sunday in the Park with Emily

31 Minding the Store: Theatre as a Business

32 Defying Gravity: The Unmaking of The Grand Finale

33 The Canadian Imperative

34 Breaking Into Song: The Primal Scream of the Civilized Set

35 With Glowing Hearts, We See Thee Rise: The Canadian Musical Identity

36 Achieving Immortality: The Original Cast Recording

Finale: Anything Worth Doing Is Worth Doing Badly

Postscript

Appendix A: Canadian Musicals on Record

Appendix B: Principal Interviews

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this book originally was begun in 1984, but insufficient funding led to work being suspended a few months. I returned to it in 2003. This does not claim to be an exhaustive history, for the history of the Canadian musical has yet to happen. Rather, it is the history of a dream, written with the same mindset with which I approach the musical theatre itself, with interludes where ideas are allowed to take flight and the characters to burst into song.

I would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Sid Adilman, Rob Asseltine and The Association of Canadian Librettists, Composers and Lyricists, Bruce Bell, Eugene Benson, Ian Bradley, The British Library, Roy Cameron, The Charlottetown Festival, Barbara Charters, Bruce Dow (Mussoc), Suzanne Dubeau (York University Archives), Cleone Duncan, James Doohan, Michael Doucet, Philip Eckman, Gino Emprey, Robert Farnon, Alan Forrest, Christine Foster, Robert Goulet, Paul Illidge, John Lahr, Phoebe Larmore (agent for Margaret Atwood), David Y. H. Lui, Michele Melady (CBC Reference Library), Mirvish Productions, Peter Mann, Joe Marchi, Tedde Moore, Ruth Morawetz, Kate Macneil, National Archives of Canada, Wendy Newman (Vancouver East Cultural Centre), Jack Raymond, Dean Regan, Kelly Robinson, Warren Seaman, Cecilia Smith (Theatre Under the Stars), Sam Sniderman, Jerry Stovin, Ross Stuart, The Theatre Museum (London), Vincent de Tourdonnet, Martin Truax (Rogers Cable 10, Vancouver), and Jonathan Ward.

For interviews and/or correspondence, I would like to thank Bob Allen, Leslie Arden, Sue Astley, Michael Bawtree, Jim Betts, Norman and Elaine Campbell, Ian Campbell, Brent Carver, Dolores Claman, Susan Cluff, Phyllis Cohen, Charles Cozens, David Curle, Dance Collection Danse, Victor and Lori Davies, D. Michael Dobbin, Gracie Finley, Rick Fox, Bill Freedman, John Gray, Marian Grudeff, Alan Guettel, Michael Gutwillig, Don Harron, Kevin Hicks, Jeff Hyslop, Raymond Jessel, Cliff Jones, Voigt Kempson, Tom Kneebone, Blanche Lund, Galt MacDermot, Grace Macdonald, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Stephen MacNeff, Richard Maltby Jr., Maureen Milgram Forrest, Joey Miller, Bill Millerd, John Mills-Cockell, Mavor Moore, Richard Morris, Barry Morse, Ann Mortifee, Jane Mortifee, Marek Norman, Richard Ouzounian, Greg Peterson (Sheridan College), Hugh Picket, Shel Piercy, Timothy Porteous, Meryl Robertson, Patrick Rose, John Russell, Andrew Sabiston, Stephen Schwartz, Reid Shelton, Marlene Smith, Vinetta Strombergs, Nelles Van Loon, Moira Walley, David Warrack, Simon Webb and Betty Jane Wylie.

For assistance with visuals, much appreciation goes to: Randy Alldread (Mirvish Productions), John Arpin, Kate Barris, Ted Barris, Jim Betts, Elaine Campbell, Tom Carson (Smile Theatre Company), Ellen Charendoff (Stratford Festival of Canada Archives), Dinah Christie, Dane Clark (Noble Caplon Abrams), Suzanne Dubeau (York University Archives), Bernadette Hardaker (Theatre Orangeville), David Hunter (Scottish Studies Foundation), Ray Jessel, Cliff Jones, Scott Klein, Russell Lazar (Honest Ed’s), Blanche Lund, Anna MacDonald (Confederation Centre of the Arts), Doreen Malone and Debbie Roza-Mercier (Neptune Theatre), Joan Marcus, Jane Parkinson (Paul D. Fleck Library in The Banff Centre), Louise Pitre, Gordon Pim (Ontario Heritage Trust), Robert Ragsdale, Keith Sherman, Marlene Smith, Wayne Townsend (Dufferin County Museum & Archives), David Warrack Productions, Robert Warren, Larry Westlake (St. Lawrence Centre For the Arts) and Mairi Welman (Playhouse Theatre Company).

I am much indebted to my parents, Ken and Marion Atkey, and to my sisters, Bev and Marilyn, and my brother-in-law, Bill Beese, for their ongoing encouragement of my work. And finally, I would like to thank Jane Gibson and Barry Penhale of Natural Heritage Books for their continuing support.

Except where otherwise noted, personal quotations are taken from interviews and correspondence with the author as listed in the appendix. When quoting theatrical reviews, the full citation has been given where available, but often, when quoting indirectly from publicity materials, dates are not given (and sadly, many archival clippings are undated). Every effort has been made to obtain permission from all the copyright holders of material included in this book, but in some cases this has not been possible. The author, therefore, wishes to thank those copyright holders who are included without acknowledgement and apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in the next edition.

Unless indicated otherwise in the text, opinions expressed are those of the author.

Mel Atkey, 2006

The trouble with Canadians is they spend half their time convincing the Americans they’re not British; the other half convincing the British they’re not American, which leaves them no time to be themselves.

—From My Fur Lady (1957); book by Timothy Porteous, Erik Wang and Donald MacSween, lyrics by Timothy Porteous, music by James Domville, Harry Garber and Galt MacDermot, additional songs by Roy Wolvin.

I always did think I could sing

Till Trillium came home from the College

She told me, "You can’t do a thing

That needs any musical knowledge"…

I studied the tonic-sol-fa

Joined a choir and the new Philharmonic

Sing in tune! cried my love, "or Papa

Must speedily give me a tonic

—From Ptarmigan; or, A Canadian Carnival (1895); words by J.N. McIlwraith, music by J.E.P. Aldous.

FOREWORD

I couldn’t have been more thrilled when Mel Atkey suggested to publisher Barry Penhale that I write a foreword to his Broadway North: The Dream of a Canadian Musical Theatre since the book is dedicated to my late husband, Norman Campbell.

I found Mel’s opus to be most engrossing and I couldn’t stop reading. There is such a wealth of facts, told in a very engaging manner. The style is easy to read and the comments often hilarious. I appreciated seeing the work in progress and recognize that a prodigious amount of work was needed to unearth all these details. As Norman said in a letter to author Mel Atkey in 1997, Nobody knows more than you do about musical theatre!

Fifty years ago, Norman as composer, Don Harron as book writer and lyricist and I as lyricist turned the novel Anne of Green Gables into a musical for CBC Television.

In those hectic days of early television in Toronto, writing a musical was only a part of what Norman did as a TV director and producer. An hour and a half to fill? Norman decided that a musical based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s famous book (it was Don Harron’s suggestion) would fill the time slot.

In 1965, the now-expanded for stage, directed and choreographed by Alan Lund, the Artistic Director of the Charlottetown Festival, Anne of Green Gables, the Musical hit the stage of the one-thousand-seat Confederation Centre of the Arts, where it remained on stage playing to sold-out houses and standing ovations from millions of theatre goers for 41 continuous years.

A Japanese-language translation has been extremely successful in Tokyo and the major cities of Japan for over twenty years. A year in London’s West End in 1969 and uncountable numbers of stock and amateur productions across Canada, the USA and the Commonwealth have proved its staying power.

You might say that the Canadian Musical is not just a dream—it is a reality.

Elaine Campbell, 2006

OVERTURE: …OF CANANDA, LIMITED

A couple of decades ago, I stood on the stage of Toronto’s 1913 Winter Garden Theatre, before its restoration had begun. The musty smell of the ancient vaudeville scenery that had stood disused for more than sixty years easily set my senses tap dancing. This was a place made for a smile and a song. But, truth be told, not for our songs. It was built for a far off, imported world. In those days, Toronto the Good was but one stop on the North American vaudeville circuit. The Winter Garden’s stage was designed for receiving shows, not for creating them. There is no Canadian Drama, declared playwright Jessie Edgar Middleton in Canada and Its Provinces, a multi-volume work published in 1913. It is merely a branch of the American Theatre, and, let it be said, a most profitable one.¹ Around the same time, an article in Canadian Magazine said, Canada is the only nation in the world whose stage is entirely controlled by aliens. She is the only nation whose sons and daughters are compelled to go to a foreign capital for permission to act in their own language on the boards of their own theatres. The only road to applause of a Toronto theatre audience is by way of Broadway.²

Even now, people will say—Canadian musical theatre—isn’t that an oxymoron? Aren’t musicals American? Hewers of wood, drawers of water aren’t supposed to sing and dance, or have ideas above their station. Yet, when I began my career as a musical theatre writer, I was startled to realize how many of my heroes—that is, those who had influenced me—were Canadian. For me, these included Patrick Rose, Marek Norman, Richard Ouzounian, Ann Mortifee and, above all, Norman Campbell, composer of the perennial hit Anne of Green Gables. Yet, the world didn’t always see things my way, for when the New York Times reviewed George Ryga and Ann Mortifee’s play-with-music The Ecstasy of Rita Joe in 1973, it was said:

Canadian Playwright. The words seem a little incongruous together, like Panamanian Hockey Player, almost, or "Lebanese Fur Trapper.

The very notion of Canadians having their own cultural expression was clearly preposterous. What difference does it make whether or not we can speak (or sing) with our own voice?

In the early 1980s, I was having lunch in Vancouver with an expatriate New Yorker. We were discussing a proposal for an original musical of mine about a high school reunion. He was excited about the idea, but when I presented him with a first draft, he was disappointed. C’mon! Where’s the guy who went off to war and got killed? I replied, Nobody in my high school went to war. He didn’t understand. How could a baby boomer write a show about high school and not mention Vietnam?

We know what we’re not—but do we know what we are? Canadians have always been attracted to the glossy, slick and exotic shows of Broadway. It is said that we should not try to compete with that vibrant culture to the south. Cole Porter did it all so much better. The danger of living next to that exuberant giant is that, far from inspiring us to succeed, we are lulled into a lazy acceptance of something that is not our own. This is the Canadian disease; it’s not that we lack a vibrant culture, but that we have lobotomized it.

Now, we don’t want to be so self-absorbed that we never look at the outside world. But surely a diet consisting entirely of foreign culture is not healthy. Would our southern neighbours take it lying down if their only role models were British, and if the good guys always spoke with a stiff upper lip and fought for Queen and Country? Of course not. It’s an off-the-shelf culture, not one that’s tailor made; an approximate fit, but not an exact one.

The art form in which I work is often referred to generically as the American Musical Theatre, although it’s a bit of a misnomer: the mature musical began in France, Austria and Britain, and spread throughout the world. While there are many musicals that are uniquely American in character (Hello Dolly, Annie, et al), there are also distinctly British musicals (Oliver!, Salad Days) and German musicals (The Threepenny Opera). There are even American musicals that think they’re British (My Fair Lady) and German (Cabaret). More recently there have also been Australian musicals, and even Russian musicals. The form itself is not the exclusive property of any nationality.

Yet in many people’s minds, the musical still has the Stars and Stripes pasted firmly on it (in spite of the fact that it’s the European musicals that currently rule the world) and the Americans defend their national art form with the same alacrity with which Canadians defend hockey (although to give them their due, the U.S. is the one place where musicals are taken seriously).

In the late 1980s, a time when Broadway was dominated by Cats and Les Misérables, the late Peter Stone, librettist of 1776, flatly declared that musical theatre did not exist outside of New York City.³ At the time, one could question whether one actually existed in New York—Cameron Mackintosh having famously called it just another stop on the American tour—but in Stone’s mind, one could not expect to produce great work while sitting in a room in Cincinnati. You had to be where the action was, studying the great writers.

On the face of it, this would appear to be good advice. And Stone certainly knew his business. But this would also mean that the musical—an art form that spans the globe—can only reflect the values and perceptions of one rather insular city. Would he accept that there is no opera away from La Scala, no ballet but the Bolshoi? This notion also presumes that what works in New York works in the rest of the world. To quote Ira Gershwin, t’ain’t necessarily so. Even Broadway writers have to ask themselves, How will it play in Peoria? The truth is, musical theatre does exist outside of New York and London, and while there are a number of excellent books on American and British musicals, they don’t tell the entire story.

American commentators equate the decline of Broadway with the decline of the musical, but when the American musical began its slide in the 1970s, the gap was soon filled by the British mega-musical. The latter has also faded, but the audience for musical theatre is still there, leaving the door ajar once more.

To many in the world theatre scene, Canada would, at first glance, appear to be an unlikely place for anything exciting to happen. So, what’s a poor kid to do if he’s Canadian as maple syrup, yet every fibre of his being screams, Gotta sing! Gotta dance!? I have these two great passions. One is a romantic current that dictates that strong emotions be externalized in melody and harmony. The other is a deep love for my country. To me, it is only logical that the former should be informed by the latter. I was born in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I am in the beauty-expressing business.

How is it possible for a vast patchwork quilt of cultures surviving in a hostile environment to be boring? It isn’t. It’s a tempest sea that has had oil poured on it. Canadians have the same primal urge to make music out of dramatic situations as other cultures. We are all born with the same natural metronome—the human heartbeat. We have a landscape that cries out to sing and to be sung. There is a point at which mere words defeat us. Somehow, like a flower growing through a crack in the cement, we Canadians keep persisting in adding song and dance to what is supposed to be our ennui. Music critic William Littler writes, The increasing willingness of Canadians to sing and laugh about themselves has finally made writing musicals and revues a full-time career option.⁴ Some are working toward an indigenous Canadian musical theatre, while others want to succeed on a wider stage. I find myself in both camps.

Of course, it is more important to be good than to be distinctly Canadian, although I would argue that being distinctly Canadian may, for us, be a part of being truly good. If we are to work with the broadest palate, we’ll need a few colours of our own. Americans didn’t become great at writing musicals in spite of their national characteristics, but because of them. We can’t copy them, no matter how hard we try. The American choreographer Agnes de Mille once said, There are no known recipes for success, and when those that have proved most useful are copied, the resulting form seems stale.⁵ It’s worth noting that, while de Mille’s ballets are distinctly American, they are still within the tradition of ballet.

Alas, the principle that every nation can and should express itself in art is not universally embraced. There are those with the Darwinian view that the lesser cultures should give way to the greater. I am not going to predict that Canadian musicals will necessarily conquer the world. What I am hoping is that musical theatre will become truly international and that we will see not only Canadian musicals but Australian, Irish and others as well.

In Canada there is a suspicion that musicals are an American form that doesn’t belong here. By the end of this book, I hope that you will see that musical theatre has its own roots in Canada and is an international form adaptable to many different cultures. We’ve had revues. We’ve had pageants. We’ve had operettas and full-scale book musicals. Some of them were even, in their time, popular successes, but until now, few people have connected the dots.

Perhaps the reason why Canadian musicals have seldom reached popular audiences is that we simply haven’t had enough practice at touching our own nerves. We have lapped up a steady diet of imported culture full of references that have limited relevance to us, accepting it as our own. (I even went through my teen years worrying that I might be drafted, until somebody finally made me understand that, in spite of media bombardment to the contrary, we were not at war.)

The musical theatre is as old as the theatre itself. Greek plays had Greek choruses. Shakespeare’s plays invariably included songs. It is only since the nineteenth century that plays without music have been the norm. But, for the purposes of this book, my definition of musical theatre is of a presentation in which the musical and dramatic elements bear equal weight. (I prefer to avoid the rather ungrammatical music theatre.) In this I include operetta, musical comedy, burlesque, revue and cabaret, usually with some basis in the popular music of the day. But one thing that a musical is not is a play. It operates on different principles. It is related to straight theatre in the same sense as it is to opera.

The musical is, however, without question, the most popular form of live theatre. Yet, strangely, it is also the most neglected. There are some practical reasons for this—even a small musical is more expensive to produce than a play. It requires at least one musician, plus the extra rehearsal time required for learning songs and dances. (It is also far more complicated to get right, and this fact quite understandably intimidates many producers.)

However, the added production expense does not fully explain the resistance to the musical that some people have. After all, opera is, from a financial and logistical point of view, an absurdly impractical proposition, and yet opera companies persist. No, the musical suffers from snobbery. Non-musical theatre is deemed to be legitimate theatre. Does that make the musical a bastard? It is even held in outright contempt by those who deem misery to be more profound than joy. I have a physical aversion to them, says Pavel Zatloukal, head of the art museum in the northern Moravian city of Olomotic in the Czech Republic. It’s not real culture, he sneers, it’s pop culture,⁶ making no distinction between Mama Mia and A Little Night Music. Even pop musicians can be snooty about musical theatre—one rock critic complained that Pete Townsend had been reduced to mounting Tommy on Broadway, instead of pursuing his more artistically rewarding avocation of smashing guitars on stage.

There are those who believe musicals should do nothing more than entertain. Others believe they should challenge. I believe they must do the former in order to effectively do the latter.

If musicals are pop culture, then why are they so uncool? Why is there such a gulf between musical theatre and pop music? Although Broadway used to give us pop hits, the two forms diverged in the 1960s. To some, musical theatre failed to keep pace. To others, pop had dumbed down too much, and the world of musical theatre—along with cabaret and jazz—was a last refuge for craftsmanship and sophistication. In addition, a musical usually takes several years to develop, precluding the following of pop trends. Because of the expense involved, musicals need to have long legs, and can’t afford to be here today and gone tomorrow. The result is that, since the 1970s, the musical theatre has developed along very different lines from pop music. Although it borrows from pop and rock, it is rarely current. Godspell in 1971 sounded musically as if it had been written half a decade earlier, yet it ran for many years, and is often revived.

There is also snobbery within musical theatre—especially in the rivalry between the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim camps. Musicals have developed a very fussy following who demand well-crafted lyrics and complex harmonies, usually absent in pop music. Thus, the musical is caught in a limbo between what is considered to be commercial and art. Of course, it’s understandable that some theatre professionals who are not triple threats—i.e., singing, dancing actors—would show disdain for that which they cannot themselves do.

Then again, there is reverse snobbery. In Canada, some people deem a show that packs a 100-seat fringe venue to be populist, but one that sells out a 3,200-seat opera house might be labelled elitist. In fact, I believe that we need both lowbrow and highbrow theatre, a balance between the commercial and the subsidized, mainstream and alternate, musical and non-musical. One can’t prosper without the other.

With this snobbery comes a lack of interest in the development of new works. This is a universal problem. In London, where I currently live, a writer for the Sunday Times, in a profile of director Trevor Nunn, declared that the only thing worse than a musical is a new musical.⁷ Granted, there’s nothing worse than a badly written musical, but despite the efforts of London’s Mercury Musical Developments (of which I am a member), the now defunct Bridewell Theatre, Greenwich Theatre’s Musical Futures and others—there are no major well-funded producing organizations dedicated to developing new musical theatre in Britain. So one can imagine how desperate the situation is in Canada where, except for an emasculated Charlottetown Festival and some recent developments at CanStage and ScriptLab, there is even less. Only in the United States are they taken seriously. Yet, if the musical—the poster child of the modern theatre—were to die, surely the straight theatre would follow closely behind (and vice versa). Does it not make sense for Canadian theatre to try to harness this most popular and powerful form?

When I was beginning my career, musicals, as far as the official theatrical establishment was concerned, were bourgeois, and the only useful purpose they served was as a means of wiping out deficits. Director Michael Bawtree maintains that a musical’s generating force, is and always has been, commercial.⁸ Often, when regional theatres deigned to do a musical as their end of season blowout, they would apologize for their indiscretion by casting non-singers and non-dancers and using tinny sounding orchestras that lacked several vital instruments. The snobbery is further underscored (to use a musical term) by the fact that the 1989 Oxford Companion to Canadian Theatre has no entries for Marlene Smith (then Canada’s most successful commercial producer), Norman Campbell, Patrick Rose or composer, producer and musical director David Warrack. I found it to be particularly telling when that same volume mentioned Alan Lund’s choreography of Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Stratford Festival. Surely there would have been nothing to choreograph had it not been for Kurt Weill’s music—or is that, even in an opera, incidental? (If an opera company does Sweeney Todd, it is by Stephen Sondheim. If a legit theatre does it, it’s by Hugh Wheeler. Only when a musical theatre company does it do both get equal billing.)

So, it would appear that we have to contend with both snobbery and nationalism. It would be absurd to dismiss the cinema as an art form just because for every one Seventh Veil there are a hundred Porky’s. And while cinema may belong to Hollywood, there are also Kurosawa, Truffaut, Fellini, etc. Surely the same principle applies to musicals.

How relevant is the musical to Canada’s culture? Author John Lahr says that the American musical celebrates two things: abundance and vindictive triumph.⁹ Is this true in the same way in Canada? The triumphal aspect, perhaps. Anne of Green Gables celebrates a young girl’s victory over the conservatism of her elders. Paper Wheat and Ten Lost Years are about people holding onto their dignity, if not exactly triumphing, through poverty. On the surface, Billy Bishop Goes to War celebrates the triumph of a military hero keeping himself alive, but it proved to be far too ironic for the conventional Broadway mentality. (Lahr goes on to say that social comment is as unwelcome to most Broadway producers as syphilis is to a whore.) And it goes without saying that Ten Lost Years does not celebrate abundance.

Canadians have never been comfortable with the kind of flag-waving triumphalism that all this implies. Our national anthem sings of glowing hearts but not at the thought of bombs bursting in air, We view our southern neighbour with a mixture of admiration and fear. But what American musicals do exude—and this is something to be emulated—is a terrific sense of confidence. Just as a person with a low self-image tends to be unattractive, so it goes with nations and cultures. It’s one of life’s vicious circles.

What are the conditions that nurture the musical theatre’s development? What is a great culture? American lyricist Alan Jay Lerner says that a civilization should be judged by the intelligence it has developed and the way it is used, the compassion it is capable of and the priority it receives, a never-ending effort to close the rift between rich and poor, the responsibility of man for his neighbour and the magnitude of the art it produces.¹⁰ How does Canada measure up? We’ve had a reputation as a peacekeeper and a Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister. A much admired accommodation of multiple cultures—we coined the term multiculturalism. A tradition of welfare. We discovered insulin. The books of Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje and the songs of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell are celebrated throughout the world. Yet the world doesn’t notice us. Why?

Note that Lemer said should, not is. Of course, the word great can mean powerful rather than good. Perhaps the truth is that great civilizations—such as Rome—violently imposed their will on others and produced extravagant works of art on the backs of the poor. Just as a laser beam only becomes visible by adding impurities to it, so goes civilization. Cities like New York and London, noted for their urban decay, are celebrated. Toronto and Zurich, noted for their cleanliness, efficiency and low crime, are not. Professor Peter Hall of the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning of University College, London, writes, Look at creative cities at their zenith: Plato’s Athens, Michelangelo’s Florence, Shakespeare’s London, Mozart’s Vienna. All were economic leaders, places in frenzied transition, magnets for talented people seeking fame and fortune.¹¹ When a British TV series selected the twenty best cities in the world, some of their choices suggested that a surfeit of filth, grinding poverty and stratospheric crime, along with ready availability of all manner of illicit vices were requisite. The Devil gets the best tunes, or so the saying goes. A writer in London’s Daily Telegraph put it this way, Canada is the perpetual wallflower that stands on the edge of the hall, waiting for someone to come and ask her for a dance. A fire breaks out, she risks life and limb to rescue her fellow dance-goers, and suffers serious injuries. But when the hall is repaired and the dancing resumes, there is Canada, the wallflower still, while those she once helped glamorously cavort across the floor, blithely neglecting her yet again.¹² Perhaps we need to become more annoying. Small wonder that my father used to keep a sampler on his office wall that said, Rudeness is our only hope.

So, when I said I was going to write a book about Canadian musical theatre, my colleagues in the U.K. wondered if it would be a companion piece to that modest volume called Two Thousand Years of German Humour (or, I retorted, the even slimmer Best of British Haute Cuisine). A London newspaper sneered about that rarity, a famous Canadian. They hadn’t heard of Bryanadams-celinedion-michaeljfox-jimcarrey-danayckroyd-mikemyers-williamshatner-christopherplummer-shaniatwain-alanismorissette. Fifty years ago, the British took more interest in us, but have since fixed their gaze on the Australians. To them, we are indistinguishable from the Americans. So what is our response? To import culture in a misguided quest to become world class?

Author Richard Gwynn writes, Here [North America]… two nations have evolved that are utterly alike in almost all of their externals, and yet are utterly unalike in their political cultures so that they are as distinct from each other as are the Germans from the French.¹³

John Gray, author of Billy Bishop Goes to War, explains, We live in a northern climate versus a temperate climate, which means that survival here is a value. It entails all sorts of attitudes toward nature. Americans look on nature as something to be beaten, because it can be in a temperate climate. Canadians living in an intemperate climate know that nature cannot be beaten. You get a whole philosophical difference out of that. Americans think confrontationally ideologically because they fought a revolution on the basis of an idea. Canadians think consensually in terms of finding ways of living together because that’s what our history was. We have kept the British tradition. Americans think of things in terms of black and white, good and evil, whereas Canadians don’t. So the whole thesis/antithesis notion of drama, which comprises conflict in American drama, doesn’t have a great basis for existing in Canada. And, without the struggle between black and white, good and evil, what do we have to hang our mythology on? Would the rules learned from studying Broadway musicals apply in Canada?

We Canadians, on the other hand, believe a few myths about ourselves. We are fond of saying that we won our independence without a shot fired, ignoring the MacKenzie and Riel rebellions. We see ourselves as pacifist peacekeepers, even though some Somalis may beg to differ. And we didn’t shoot our Indians—anyone who has read my book When We Both Got to Heaven knows we found a more cost-effective way to relieve them of their land. We equate Broadway theatre with the urbane and sophisticated, but most Americans actually live in the rural heartland, while most Canadians live in towns and cities. The cultural implications of this are enormous.

What does a political history lesson have to do with a book about Canadian musicals? Everything. Our culture reflects who we are and how we think, and politics is a big part of that. Because the Americans fought a revolution (in effect, a continuation of the English Civil War between Oliver Cromwell and Charles I), they had to make a conscious decision to exist as a nation. Canadians just said, Sure, why not? I guess so. We have never actually declared our independence. It seems incredible to my generation, but my parents were raised to believe that they were British. Even now, it is a mistake to try to second-guess the Canadian character, for there is no single national identity. As Gwynn says, People here aren’t required to be Canadian in the way that Americans are required to be American.¹⁴ They are simply a collection of individuals expressing themselves. The trick is to filter out the noise pollution that keeps them from seeing that. Ironically, I did it by moving to Britain. Now I can spot a Canadian at 100 metres.

Much is said about the supposed Canadian inferiority complex, but Canadians are also capable of a smug superiority, especially when regarding their southern neighbours. If the U.S. is Rome to Britain’s Greece, then Canadians imagine themselves to be in the Athenian camp.

Some complain that Canadians define themselves by not being American, although one could argue that it is the Americans who—quite successfully—delineated themselves from us. In effect, the revolution partitioned British North America, and we are, to a great extent, the result of that huge migration of political refugees—the United Empire Loyalists—that flooded north in the aftermath.

We are not, however, an island. Foreign influences are a part of our cultural mix, and we deny them at our peril. Former Governor General Vincent Massey, whose Royal Commission led to the formation of the Canada Council, wrote, "The exclusion of cultural influences from abroad is both impossible and undesirable. The answer to the problem we held was not negative, but positive—the strengthening of our own resources in the field of the arts and letters, and a deepening of confidence