Michelle Yu, Lisa Nasson, Julie Martell, and Lindsay Kyte in Dear Rita at Neptune Theatre. Photo by Stoo Metz.
Rita MacNeil spent nearly her whole career telling us “I’m Not What I Seem;” it was literally the title of her third album, released in 1982, four years before she would reach international success with Flying On Your Own. And yet, even among her own fans, there is a specific, persistent image that people have of her as a sweet folksy grandmother rocking in her chair amidst the lupins, writing songs about the rugged beauty of Cape Breton that surrounded her, who might kindly invite you into her warm kitchen some day and ask, in her soft cozy voice, if you might like a cuppa tea. Yet, like most of our grandmothers, Rita MacNeil had a whole full life before she became the woman in the red hat in on the porch swing, and like many of our grandmothers: she was a badass.
MacNeil is admired, beloved, nostalgic, and in some places revered, throughout Atlantic Canada and beyond, but, even so, as a Millennial life-long fan of Rita MacNeil’s music I can tell you definitively that this fact was never once something that made me “cool” amongst my peers. Lindsay Kyte and Mike Ross’ musical play Dear Rita may prove to be the gateway in to MacNeil’s music for folks under forty-five. As Neptune’s Communications Specialist Laura Thornton said to me tonight, “Rita MacNeil slaps.”
Dear Rita starts with an aggressive assertion that Cape Breton is the most beautiful place in the world, followed by a provocation: if anyone disagrees they can work out their differences in the parking lot later, and right away Kyte and Ross are challenging our preconceived notions about who Rita MacNeil was and where she came from.
The ensemble cast: Lindsay Kyte, Lisa Nasson, Julie Martell, Ian Sherwood, and Michelle Yu take turns playing all the different characters in the play: Rita’s family members and childhood peers, Rita’s friends in Toronto, individuals within the music industry and the media, and Rita herself. No one actor plays Rita, each of the five inhabit the character throughout the show.
Rita was a young girl growing up in Big Pond in the 1950s with a cleft lip and palate; she had to learn pretty quick how to win a fight, and get back up after having been knocked about. She grew up in a family of eight children. Her father was a carpenter who built many of the homes in the village, and also owned a local store, and her mother, along with tending to the home and children, worked in the store as well. Both her parents encouraged her natural singing gifts, and were fiercely proud and protective of her. Singing was the one area in Rita’s life where she felt like she could rise above her shyness and the differences in her physical appearance, and that she could truly express herself. Her love of music took her from Cape Breton to Toronto where she became involved in the women’s liberation movement, and started writing protest songs, and songs that explored both how restrictive it felt to be a Canadian woman in the 1960s, and also the movement’s dreams of a more equitable future. There she met David, her first boyfriend, and in time her husband, and the father of her two children. As much as she tried to be the wife and mother she felt David and the children deserved, Rita didn’t feel fulfilled, or like she was being authentically herself. Taking the first steps toward realizing her dreams, and coming into her own power nearly completely broke her. She struggled with addiction, as had both her parents, and before she recorded her first album Born A Woman in 1975 at the age of thirty-one she had had to find a way to claw her way out from the very rock bottom of alcoholism, grief, guilt, and depression. The show also very gently touches on her subsequent relationship with Noreen, often referred to as her “close friend” or “very best friend,” taking the lead from the way MacNeil herself chose to write about the relationship in her memoir On a Personal Note. MacNeil, after all, was not a fan of labels, so it feels unfair to saddle her with one now, but I think the audience is meant to put two and two together, as it seems those in Rita’s life did, quietly, throughout her final few decades too. This is just one of many details that make up a very rich, intricate, and at times complex and difficult, life. It was out of all of these profound experiences that gave MacNeil the depth and clarity to write lyrics like those in “Flying On Your Own” and “Southeast Wind,” among many others in her catalogue of twenty studio albums.
What struck me during this production was thinking about the parallels between the way MacNeil got her start in songwriting in Toronto and Bob Dylan’s start in New York City. Of his idol Woody Guthrie Dylan once said, “The songs themselves had the infinite sweep of humanity in them… [He] was the true voice of the American spirit,” and Dylan vowed to be Guthrie’s “greatest disciple.” Not only did MacNeil not have a female songwriter to idolize growing up in Big Pond, but female songwriters were unusual everywhere. Like Guthrie’s and Dylan’s her music has that same sweep of humanity, and she has similarly been a voice for Cape Breton’s spirit, and for many Nova Scotian and Canadian woman, and beyond. It’s likely if MacNeil had not been “Born a Woman” her songwriting prowess alone may have led to international success a decade earlier. That bleak reality, the working uphill constantly against the odds, is so much at the heart of her music. One song in particular, “Angus Anthony’s Store” from her debut album stands out as perfectly capturing what it is like to live as women when [white] men so frequently victory dance around us in a world that they, largely still, have made, and where we, still so often, just inherit the consequences.
While it’s gratifying to see MacNeil’s lyrics firmly at the centre of this piece, it is also the stunning harmonies that will “bring you to your knees.” These five singers sound magnificent together, and if there hasn’t already been serious talk about recording a cast album, honestly I would say the music in both this production and the one at The Savoy, need to be available for sale. Kyte and Ross have done such a great job of staying true to the essence of the music’s original style, but also infusing it with some more contemporary pop and also musical theatre elements. Julie Martell has a big “The Wizard and I”-esque moment at the beginning of the show with “We’ll Reach the Sky Tonight,” transforming what I had always thought was a love song into a more dynamic anthem towards adventure.
Each of the actors bring so much of themselves, their deep humanity and empathy, to the way that they help to capture Rita’s spirit. Lindsay Kyte beautifully expresses the giddy nervousness of a girl from a small rural place suddenly at a dance in Toronto meeting a handsome young man. Julie Martell evokes the profound heart wrenching grief Rita feels at “breaking up” her children’s home, and losing her mother to cancer. Michelle Yu has a beautiful rootedness in Rita’s connection to home, her family, and the natural world. Ian Sherwood captures the way Rita connects to her audiences, especially working class folks of a similar economic background as her, and Lisa Nasson, who in many ways is the most reminiscent for me of how Rita seemed to be as she navigated the world, captures her, at times disarming, humour and the mischievous twinkle she had in her eye, even as the kindly tea lady, suggesting that the rebel spirit of her earlier years was never very far away.
There are only three musicians: Musical Director Avery-Jean Brennan, Brad Reid, and Stephanie McKeown, which is incredible, as at times it feels like there is a much larger band behind the singers the sound is so full and immersive. The set by Lucas Arab gives us just a touch of the homey Cape Breton kitchen and living room, while also providing a more surreal beautiful starry sky with lampshades motif that suggests both MacNeil’s music emanating from radios all over the world, but also MacNeil herself suddenly becoming a more ephemeral spirit between us and the stars. Rebecca Wolfe infuses the show with a lot of humour through dance as the Movement Director, and Samantha Wilson does a beautiful job of both grounding the kitchen sink moments in the realism they need to reach their full dramatic power, but also finding interesting ways for the concept of the ensemble to be playful, theatrical for its own sake, and to really build on the idea of Rita’s story being so intertwined with that of her community. She cannot escape Cape Breton, even when she wants to, because Cape Breton is essential to who she is. “Banish thoughts of leaving… Home I’ll Be.”
If Rita MacNeil were alive today I think she would be a Swiftie. I wonder if she would have written a song for the Women’s March back in 2017. With the right social media manager, I bet she, and her music, like Joni Mitchell, would have already found the TikTok generation. I wonder what other stories from her life she may have chosen to tell us had she had more time to reflect, to dream, and to write. Dear Rita gives MacNeil’s music a much deserved chance to enter a zeitgeist that will benefit from her unique voice, her wisdom and experience, her strength, clarion calls for change, and her breadth of genuine kindness and sensitivity to others’ feelings.
There is something even more powerful, I think, in the image of MacNeil’s voice ringing out now, today, from the Great Beyond, and wrapping itself around a new generation of girls and non binary folks- in Cape Breton and across the world- reminding all of us, in the simplest but also the most compelling of terms as we face down a future that looks dark and bleak and frightening: “there isn’t anything that you can’t do.”
Come prepared to sob.
Dear Rita plays at Neptune Theatre’s Fountain Hall (1593 Argyle Street) until August 25, 2024. Shows run Tuesday to Saturday at 7:30pm and Sunday at 2:00pm. Tickets range in price from $43.00 to $75.00 based on seating.
For tickets please visit this website, or call the Box Office at 902.429.7070 or visit in person at 1593 Argyle Street.
MASKED PERFORMANCE
Sunday, August 11 – 2pm
Neptune Theatre is fully accessible for wheelchair users. For more Accessibility Information Click Here.
