Kelly Holiff. Photo by Stoo Metz.
I have been trying to find a way of burrowing into Kelly Holiff’s voice and hibernating there for the winter since I first heard her sing when I lived in Toronto in 2009. She is one of the only people I know who I haphazardly search for on YouTube/Facebook sometimes because I miss hearing her voice. I listen mostly to old videos from the Musical Stage Company’s annual UnCovered concert. I keep going back to this one with Sara Farb where she and Holiff perform an arrangement of Carole King’s song “Beautiful” by Reza Jacobs. It’s apt to mention that Holiff performs often in these UnCovered concerts in Toronto, as she so deftly covers the songbook of Adele here at Neptune Theatre in Halifax, playing until March 3rd, and touring to Glace Bay, Pictou, Annapolis Royal, and New Glasgow. Spending an evening watching Holiff perform in Rumour Has It: The Songbook of Adele, conceived with Jeremy Webb, and featuring musical direction by Sarah Richardson, will at least allow you to burrow in for ninety minutes and allow Holiff’s gorgeous powerful voice sweep the last of the February blues away.
The conceit of the show is interesting, because on the one hand it seems like a no-brainer, as Kelly Holiff’s voice is ideally suited to Adele’s emotionally soaring music, but while their voices are inherently similar, and both have truly stunning belting prowess, Holiff makes no attempt here to impersonate Adele, but instead she infuses Adele’s music with her own storytelling. The most vivid example of this for me was her rendition of “Someone Like You” from Adele’s 21 album. Here we really get a sense of Holiff the actor, as she takes us through her own unique interpretation of the story behind the lyrics. In the same way, if Adele were on the Fountain Hall stage, she might tell the audience stories associated with the development of the songs, but because of Holiff’s charm and humour she immediately endears herself to the audience (despite the fact that she is from a town North of Toronto; she is forgiven) and the audience is captivated to hear stories from Holiff’s own life that she associates with the music that she is singing. She tells an especially poignant story about a unique relationship she had in relation to her rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Make You Feel My Love,” which Adele covered on her album 19.
Holiff is accompanied by rockstar Musical Director Sarah Richardson, and bandmates Andrew Murray (guitar), Steve Lawrence (bass), and Matt Gallant (drums), and backup singers Shanoa Phillips and Melissa MacKenzie. Richardson, Phillips, and MacKenzie provide harmony for Holiff during most of her songs, and the three of them perform their own Adele songs during a brief interlude while Holiff is offstage changing her costume. All three have magnificent voices. Richardson’s stage presence, especially at the piano, is electric; she and Holiff complement one another really beautifully, but also with a dynamic that seems quite unique to the two of them. It is truly a stage full of absolute powerhouses bringing this music to life.
Holiff sings all your favourite Adele songs: “Rolling in the Deep,” “Hello,” “Water Under the Bridge,” “Rumour Has It,” and the newer “Easy On Me” (from 30), among others in what is truly a tour de force performance.
What is fascinating about this tour de force is that Holiff doesn’t pretend that what she is doing is easy. Perhaps this is a nod of respect to Adele, and how hard she works, and the talent that goes along with writing songs for yourself that are so technically difficult to sing, and to sing well with those huge, incessant belty bridges and choruses. Holiff does this in a hilarious and self-deprecating way, sometimes collapsing onto the floor in what can only be described as triumph- like a tennis player who has just finally served their way out of a long rally and won the match. So many singers try so hard to look effortless, and that can be a beautiful deception, but there is something so human about being able to accomplish a feat that few can do so flawlessly, but to acknowledge, as athletes do, that they have given absolutely all they have inside of them, and they have left everything they have out there on the stage and now they are (momentarily) a puddle in a ballgown.
I found myself thinking while I watched Holiff interact with audience members in the front row, ad-libbing jokes, and not being afraid to bring in a little silliness (like a fan with Jeremy Webb’s name all over it), that there is a cliché in the musical theatre world of which Holiff is a part that most leading actors like her are very clearly either an Elphaba or a Galinda type (a reference to the musical Wicked). Holiff is both. In fact, if Wicked were in the public domain like Hamlet is, I could see her doing something like Raoul Bhaneja’s Hamlet Solo, where she could condense Wicked down to 90 minutes and play all the parts. She is that versatile, and that is rare. She can sing pop, musical theatre, or rock music as seamlessly as a ballet dancer transitioning from first position to fourth. Tonight she channels Adele, in November it was The Eagles, in 2019 she was the Heather Rankin/Celine Dion singing Captain Hook, the year before it was Carole King, at the Stratford Festival last year she understudied Maureen in Rent, while years ago she played Miss Stacey in Anne of Green Gables at the Charlottetown Festival, and she was, very aptly, Doralee, the role made famous by Dolly Parton, in 9 to 5: The Musical in Port Hope in 2022. She is one of Canada’s biggest and most dynamic voices in the theatre, and one of our most versatile musical theatre performers. Adele is just one shade of what she can do, but she performs here like it’s the entire palette.
If a star-system existed in Canada, Kelly Holiff would be a household name like Adele is.
She is singing her heart out in Rumour Has It: The Songbook at Adele on Neptune Theatre’s Fountain Hall Stage (1591 Argyle Street, Halifax) just until Sunday, March 3rd, 2024. Saturday is sold-out online. You might have some luck calling the Box Office at 902.429.7070. Tickets for Sunday at 2:00pm are very limited and available here. Holiff is then at The Savoy Theatre in Glace Bay (116 Commercial Street, Glace Bay) for ONE NIGHT ONLY- March 5th, 2024 at 7:00pm. Tickets at The Savoy are EXTREMELY limited (just 29 tickets left at the time of writing this!) For more information please visit this website. There are a few more tickets available for the March 8th performance at the Astor Theatre (219 Main Street, Liverpool), the March 9th performance at the King’s Theatre (209 St. George Street) in Annapolis Royal, and the March 10th performance at Glasgow Square (155 Riverside Parkway, New Glasgow).
Please note: this show will have haze and flashing lights.
This show is approximately 90 minutes (no intermission).
Babes in arms & children under 4 are not permitted in the theatre.
Neptune Theatre is fully accessible for wheelchair users. For more Accessibility Information Click Here.
The Savoy Theatre is accessible for wheelchair users. For more Accessibility information please visit this website.
