International: Flight of fantasy lands in Canada

Some out of town try-outs are farther out than others. That’s certainly the case with Nicholas Lloyd Webber and James D Reid’s revised musical adaptation of The Little Prince, which had its world premiere in late January at Theatre Calgary, in the dead of a Western Canadian winter.

The production, directed by Theatre Calgary artistic director Dennis Garnhum, is a reworking of the musical that Reid and Lloyd Webber premiered as a 2011 holiday show at the Lyric in Belfast, where it was praised for its musical score while at the same time had critics scratching their heads at the show’s admittedly complicated time-and-space travel plotline.

While both halves of the team have substantial music backgrounds – they worked together at the BBC for several years, and Lloyd Webber also caught some attention recording several years ago with his band Archangel – The Little Prince is their first full-length musical.

Second time around, they had the opportunity to reflect more on what worked and what didn’t in the frantic lead-up to the Belfast production. “The most important thing that’s changed since Belfast,” says Lloyd Webber, “is that this time it makes a bit more sense. We knew we needed to have a long look at the show and we did some London workshops since then to get things to where they are now.”

That includes adding text – in Belfast, the show was sung-through – and recalibrating the focus of the story. “We’ve looked through the various layers of this story,” Reid says, “about this little boy leaving his asteroid and refocused on the story of the pilot – and why was the pilot there in the first place – and his journey, which is very much the journey of Saint-Exupery himself, when you read deep into his background and private life.”

The duo reduced the number of songs by about a third. “With Belfast,” Reid explains, “it was a very short turnaround. From the original idea to opening night was 18 months – and that included writing everything from scratch plus the rehearsal period – so it was really a case of let’s just write this thing, put it up, and see what we’ve got.”

What Lloyd Webber believes the Canadian Little Prince has retained the is original’s belief in the redemptive power of imagination. “One thing I’d like to think we’ve achieved is that magical quality to it, and it does transform you – hopefully in the same way it transforms the pilot. And in that spirit, I hope we achieve that.”

For Lloyd Webber, mounting The Little Prince in Canada brings the whole story of how he first became aware of the book full circle – a Canadian friend gave him a copy when he was nine years old.

For the Theatre Calgary version, Canadian designer Bretta Gerecke joined the team. Her work has previously been seen in the West End’s Nevermore, a musical about the life of Edgar Allan Poe, produced by Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre. Gerecke was also a connecting thread when Lloyd Webber served as best man at her wedding, where he met Garnhum.

Gerecke delivered her own vision of the novel, including a lighting grid that comes up through the floor, illuminating the cast from below. As Lloyd Webber says: “We trusted Bretta to just go away and surprise us, and so she did this design presentation back in London – and it took us to someplace we never imagined we’d go. For example, to light the cast from underneath sounds like an obvious thing to do, but no one does it. This piece is about imagination as much as anything else – and I think that what Bretta’s trying to do is avoid being too literal. And in some respects we have, too.”

The show is presented in Calgary in a deconstructed manner, on a bare stage where the cast – in the style of Cirque du Soleil – constructs the pilot’s airplane onstage. In another striking moment of transparent stagecraft, a stagehand appears to help hook up the Little Prince in order to ascend to the rafters.

Continues…

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5 things you need to know about Theatre Calgary

1. Before he became a Broadway and Hollywood icon, Christopher Walken played Romeo in a 1972 Theatre Calgary production of Romeo and Juliet.

2. In 1980, West End producer Cameron Mackintosh presented Tomfoolery, a musical inspired by the songs of Tom Lehrer at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, before a Broadway run. According to longtime Calgary theatre critic Louis B Hobson, the run went so well that Mackintosh pitched a follow-up project to ATP: a musical inspired by the cat poems of TS Eliot. However, that plan changed when Mackintosh found a West End home for Cats in London.

3. Adam Brazier, who plays the Pilot in The Little Prince, last appeared at Theatre Calgary as Alfonso in The Drowsy Chaperone, a Canadian musical that started at the Rivoli Bar in Toronto and went on to Broadway and the West End.

4. Calgary independent musical theatre company Forte Musical Guild created Crossing Swords, based on Cyrano de Bergerac, in Calgary. The mini-musical won five awards at the 2013 New York Musical Theatre Festival and reopens in April, in Rahway, New Jersey, at the American Theatre Group, for a tryout before a possible Off-Broadway run.

5. Calgary is the home of Loose Moose, the improv theatre created by Keith Johnstone, where Rebecca Northan created Blind Date, an improvised comedy that later ran Off-Broadway – and Off-West End in London. A second Northan creation, Legend Has It, was produced in January, 2016 at BAM in New York

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The Calgary production features an all-Canadian cast. “Last April and May we did an audition tour, Vancouver and Toronto,” says Lloyd Webber, “and we have a Canadian cast that is as good as anything in the world – as good as the West End. It’s just not a straightforward, musical theatre cast either. We’ve got all sorts and it’s given the piece an instant life and character that’s quite unusual, actually.”

While Canadian regional theatre productions feature abbreviated four-week rehearsal periods, Reid and Lloyd Webber discovered – to their pleasant surprise – how the cast deals with that early in the rehearsal period.

“When we saw the rehearsal schedule, it was tight,” says Reid, “especially for a musical that’s about a boy who falls in love with a rose and a pilot who crashes in the desert.”

“I think it was by day two of rehearsal that they sang the whole show through,” recalls Lloyd Webber. “We were gobsmacked.”

Reid adds: “For our previous workshops – and we’re talking about some of the best musical theatre people in London – they would have taken two or three weeks to get to this stage.”

As far as acoustics go, both agree that Theatre Calgary’s Max Bell Theatre, a 750-seat space, delivers richly. “We have found out that Theatre Calgary has the best Surround Sound system in the whole of Canada,” says Reid.

“There’s a guy we met yesterday who has been mixing some of the sound for us in his garage, but at the same time, we’ve asked ‘Why are you here? You should be in London or New York’, because he’s one of the best sound designers and mixers we’ve ever worked with.”

“Down to the craftsmen and the seamstresses, everything has serious quality here,” says Lloyd Webber. “It’s hard to see any difference between doing the show in Calgary and London. And if I’ve learned anything from producing in Calgary, it’s that there’s no difference in talent, quality or professionalism from anywhere you’ll find in the world.”

The opening night drew a worldwide audience, including members of the Saint-Exupery family, although not Andrew Lloyd Webber, who has a new Broadway hit with School of Rock and announced the same day that he was bringing Cats back to Broadway following a 16-year absence.

If Reid and Nick Lloyd Webber have their way, maybe Cats will end up becoming neighbours with The Little Prince. “It is our dream that ultimately the show does go on around the world,” Reid says. “Certainly what you would be seeing on the Theatre Calgary stage is what you would be seeing in our minds in the West End.”

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Profile: Theatre Calgary

Artistic director: Dennis Garnhum
No. of employees: 28 full-time, 50-60 throughout season
Plays per season: six main stage productions, one outdoor Shakespeare summertime production
Space: Max Bell Theatre (750 capacity)
Annual performances: 240
Audience figures: 112,000 (annual average)
Ticket sales: C$6.3 million (£3.15 million)
Funding (government and public): C$1.2 million  (£600,000)
Total operating budget: C$10.4 million (£5.2 million)
Key Contact: Colleen Smith, executive director, csmith@theatrecalgary.com

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The Little Prince runs at Theatre Calgary until February 28