The Villains Theatre’s brand new workshop production of their musical Rain on the Parade officially opened last night at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Stage, and it plays there until June 25th, 2023.
I was really happy to have spoken to actors/producers Dan Bray and Colleen MacIsaac, and book/lyric writer and director Evan Brown about the play for this preview piece, as I think they really captured the essence of the work in this interview, and also provided some insights into it that I found meaningful to have when I watched the show.
We are introduced to the quirky ensemble of theatre artists left at the Chronus Theatre, as they grapple with the fact that they have a fire problem. Not only are they attempting to rebuild their company after one catastrophic fire closed them down completely, but the fire seems adamant to return to finish what it has started. What is the source of this fire? Why has it come for them now? What does it want? It’s up to those who have made this theatre their life’s work to find out.
I love the premise of this musical, and I think this team working together is creating a strong, imaginative, weird, and wacky collective experience for the audience, especially in building the specific world for the Chronus Theatre to exist in. Colleen MacIsaac’s portrayal of a mute stagehand named Zimon, who infuses the show with a fun Chaplin-esque ambience, gives the show a lot of its heart, especially in their relationship with fellow stagehand, Elsworth (played by Dan Bray), whose pomp and ceremony in relation to the rest of the theatre artists is a source of a lot of fun in the play. The fire is coming from some larger source of evil within the theatre, but who could it be? Is it the Chair of the Board (Garrett Barker), the disgruntled playwright in the basement (also played by Dan Bray), has it been passed from the former Artistic Director (Pasha Ebrahimi), to his son and heir (Jacob Hemphill), is it coming from someone feeling powerless yet ambitious to climb up the ladder, or is it from the future itself? For those of us who understand these theatrical dynamics, or who can imagine them, there is a lot to make you laugh, and enjoy the metaphor.
Laura Caswell and Katherine Norris, as Tilly Go and Verily Go, are mother and daughter, two generations of theatre actors, a tradition nearly as old as the theatre itself, and Caswell and Norris really bring the signature musical theatre bravado to the piece. This works well, since their characters are two of only a handful of actors left at the Chronus. Caswell brings down the house with her torch song “Shine On.”
Evan Brown loves language, and there is a lot of beautiful poetic language, and also fun and clever wordplay in this piece. The characters mostly speak in a hybrid between contemporary vernacular and language more often associated with Elizabethan drama. Garry Williams’ music, and the lyrics by him and Brown, fit seamlessly into this world of verbosity and density of speech, and also gives the world a sort of layered tone that oscillates between the Globe Theatre of the 1550s and the 1850s-1910s Music Hall, and MacIsaac’s Zimon and Caswell’s Tilly Go both straddle both these worlds in interesting ways. The book and music integrate for sure, but there is room to tighten up how each element is moving the plot forward.
I wondered whether within the playing of language, it might be fun to have a stronger disparity between the ways that characters of different classes, or of different roles within the theatre, spoke, and similarly between the ways the characters spoke versus the way the snippets of plays we hear were written. It might be neat to play with subverting audiences’ expectations, for example a world where the actors sound like Shakespeare in their everyday lives, but all the plays they do sound like Beckett. I also felt that establishing the high stakes for each of the characters earlier in the play might give a bit more clarity, and help build the arc of suspense around the sources of the fires.
Howard Beye’s scenic design is really effective, and I loved having the staircases up to the catwalk in this space; they looked like they belonged there, and made so much sense. Oliver Dorais-Feming’s costumes also do a lot to root us in this strange other-world. I’m excited to see what a Choreographer might bring to this musical in a future production.
There is a lot packed into Rain on the Parade, and I think it’s a play that intentionally is playing with drawing the audience in, and then also alienating them, and that it will elicit a broad spectrum of responses from audiences. Folks will be able to engage on different levels with the ideas in the piece depending on how much academic knowledge they have of the theatre, or insider knowledge of theatre culture, and it is a play that can be watched multiple times to get a more thorough sense of all the moving parts. In our interview MacIsaac used the word “weird,” and it IS weird, but very creative, and certainly layering a lot of different elements together like a very tall theatrical cake. I think this story and these characters have so much potential and I look forward to seeing the next step in the process.
The Villains Theatre’s production of Rain on the Parade plays at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Studio (1589 Argyle Street) from June 21 to 25th. Performances are at 7:30pm from Wednesday to Saturday with performances at 2:00pm on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are available online here and are Pay What You Can on a sliding scale. The show is General Admission; if you require wheelchair seating please phone the Neptune box office at 902-429-7070. A list of content warnings is available here.
There is a free streamed performance which takes place on June 24th: click here to sign up.
Neptune Theatre is fully accessible for wheelchair users. For more Accessibility Information click here.
