The Globe and Mail: The new Canadian musical Bloodless, which made its debut in Toronto this week, features two scheming Irish immigrants in 19th-century Edinburgh who kill off the lodgers in their boarding house and sell the cadavers to a medical school. Hopefully the show itself meets a happier fate than the victims of the murderous William Burke and William Hare.
3 comments:
I honestly have never thought of musical theatre as having national boundaries, it has always just been theatre to me. I have always known that Shakespeare was English and Racine was French, but when seeing or reading their plays, it never enters my mind that they're written by people with completely different backgrounds from everyone I know. But reading this article, I realize how much of an impact the origins of a play have on its success and acceptance. I wish "Bloodless" all the luck in the world, and I hope that future musical theatre endeavors are successful. Canada should come out of its shell and enjoy all the wonderful possibilities musical theatre has to offer.
I agree that Oklahoma! is not a very good representation of the potential of musicals, but I think that America tends to have the same view of musicals as somehow less serious than a straight play. While we do have some plays that your average theatregoer thinks of as a more serious musical (Les Mis, Phantom) these tend to be more in the format of an opera, with more singing than dialogue, whereas a musical with about 50-50 dialogue-singing is likely to be seen as a more comedic, lighthearted show.
That is crazy that the musical has not crossed the border into the world of Canada. I really like how the theatre 20 group seems like they really want to inspire the Candaian people to enjoy this form of art. Of course they want to make money, to continue functioning but to inspire as a main goal is a very honorable goal.
Also to me as a young TD grad student this is encouraging to hear that there are people pushing to bring more theatre to more people. This is completely selfish in some ways, but I love to hear of people expanding the world of theatre. That means more jobs and that means more opportunities for all of us at CMU SOD.
I really hope that these people find a way to do musicals in Canada. Maybe there can be a monty musical. I would totally pay to see it.
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