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music by Tom Szczesniak, book and lyrics by Carolyn Hay, directed by Donna Feore

Blyth Festival, Memorial Hall, Blyth

July 5-August 11, 2013

Gabe and Jules: “Don’t just love me ‘cause I’m cute”

Yorkville - the Musical is an amiable, good-natured show that rings new, contemporary changes on the old contrast between city folk and country folk.  It has a varied and tuneful score by Tom Szczesniak and an amusing book and lyrics by Carolyn Hay.  It is already a crowd-pleaser but if it solved a few issues related to its plot and characters, it could be even more successful.

From the title alone, one might assume that a musical about Yorkville would deal with the area’s glory days as a centre of Toronto’s counterculture in the 1960s.  In fact, the musical is set in the present when the area is known primarily as one of Canada’s most exclusive shopping districts with the third most expensive retail space in North America.  Torontonians would not consider the prospect of living in Yorkville as the fulfillment of all one’s dreams, but Yorkville - the Musical is not written from the point of view of Torontonians but of people from rural Ontario.   

The plot of two young women looking for love and fortune in the big city is basically an update of Leonard Bernstein’s 1953 musical Wonderful Town with Druxburg, Ontario, and Yorkville replacing Columbus, Ohio, and New York City.  In Yorkville best friends Jules (Jess Abramovitch) and Gabe (Steph Sy) have packed their bags and taken the bus from Druxburg to Toronto and settle into the Yorkville condo owned by Gabe’s cousin Karen, who has joined a spiritual commune to begin the process of rejecting materialism.  From the nostalgia Jules feels at leaving home, one might think that Druxburg were somewhere out in the Prairies.  It turns out, the mythical village is somewhere in Southern Ontario near Listowel. 

The first catch in the friends’ “chance to have it all”, as their opening song “Maybe It’s Today” puts it, is the demand of the assistant condo manager Chase (Ryan Bondy) for the three months in back condo fees that Karen left unpaid.  The duo get nowhere fast in trying to find jobs and feel relieved when Tasia (Sarah Cornell) their neighbour downstairs agrees to help them.  Tasia, a Russian émigrée, sympathizes since knows what it’s like to arrive in Toronto with nothing.  She gets her hairdresser Preston (Michael Torontow) to give the women a complete makeover so that they can advertise their talents on the internet.  The trouble is that the only real talent the two have is step-dancing.  Is there any way to parlay such a quaint skill into making it big in the big city?  To find out, you’ll have to see the show.

Hay’s book is full of well-observed humour.  It makes perfect sense that the two Druxburgers naively would assume that decimal points in prices are a digit or two to the left of what they’re used to.  In the most hilarious running joke of the show, it is also perfectly natural that Gabe would assume that a male hairstylist with the hip metrosexual clothes and hair that Preston sports would also be gay.  Gabe treats Preston’s attempts to tell her that he’s straight as denials of his own nature that she, in a valiant effort to show herself worldly, assures him she fully understands and accepts.  Hay’s satire focusses on the city mice in Act 2 when they find themselves totally out of their depth in rural Ontario.

While Hay has well imagined the course of the relationship between Gabe and Preston, she has got herself into difficulties with Jules.  Early in Act 1 we learn that she has almost finished divorcing her husband Russell (Rob Torr).  In Act 2 she goes back to him to give him another chance.  Meanwhile, Chase has fallen hard for Jules.  He wants to tell Jules how he feels but Jules never gives him a chance.  Hay never even suggests that Jules is interested in the guy.  Yet, in Act 2 just after Russell shows Jules the large house he’s bought for them to live in in Druxburg, she flees and somehow suddenly becomes enamored of Chase.  For a show that deliberately avoids any heavy questions, we have to wonder why a nice girl like Jules is treating Russell so badly and why she can so easily reject the man she once loved for someone she hardly knows.  Even if she falls for Chase, she still is married to Russell.  Therefore, Hay should either eliminate Russell as a character (Gabe has no ties back in Druxburg), or give us some compelling reason why staying married to a good man like Russell is such a terrible idea.  The way it stands now, Jules comes off rather badly for raising then dashing the hopes of someone that she admits is a nice guy.  She even sings a song “I Think I Should Love Him”.  Russell may be a bit dull but Hay gives us no evidence that the airheaded Chase is any less dull.

The second problem is the character of Tasia.  The song Hay gives her to encourage the young women is “You Must To Have A Plan”.  As we discover Tasia’s solution after many failed options was simply to marry a wealthy man.  How then, exactly, can Tasia’s solution be of any use to the two?  Why should they trust her when all of her other plans, except marriage, have failed?  Hay really needs to rethink the character and give the women a better reason for following her advice. 

Related to this is Hay’s confusing characterization of Tasia.  She portrays Tasia as tech- and media-savvy and yet has her speech riddled with malapropisms which, from Shakespeare’s Dogberry to Mrs. Malaprop herself are used to reveal a character as dim-witted.  How such a sexy, image-conscious person as Tasia has lived in Toronto for years without learning that a “handjob” does not mean a palm reading?  Hay wants Tasia to be humorous but for the humour to have the greatest impact it also as to be probable.   

If one ignores these points, Yorkville is quite a bright, peppy show.  Donna Feore’s direction is efficient and her dance choreography energetic if not especially remarkable.  The sequence that shows off her choreography the best involves no dance at all. Instead, it is an ingeniously staged scene where Gabe, Jules, Chase, Preston and Tasia arrive at the same diner and yet because of oversized menus, newspapers, dropped items or going to the loo manage not to see each other for an extraordinary amount of time.  The dancing that will really knock you off your seat is the wonderful step-dancing sequences arranged by Canadian step-dancing champion Kyle Weymouth for Gabe and Jules’ set piece, “Don’t Just Love Me ‘Cause I’m Cute”. 

Among the men, Torontow helps make it believable that Gabe could mistake his frustration in telling her he’s straight as confirmation that he isn’t.  He has such a fine singing voice it’s a pity he doesn’t have a song on his own.  Bondy is amusing in a number of contexts.  In Act 1, his officiousness in enforcing condo rules will remind people of what happens when insecure people wield just a little authority.  Then in Act 2, his growing frustration in trying to navigate the county lines amid fields “that all look the same” was a great source of humour for the local audience.  Rob Torr has the task of playing every other character in the musical.  His choosy homeless beggar in Act 1 is a treat and his belly-scratching gas station owner in Act 2 is a hoot.  As Jules’ husband Russell, he draws so much sympathy that her rejection of him seems uncomfortably harsh.  Hay could have omitted the two gay stereotypes he plays in Act 1 since their presence isn’t that funny and only confuse matters in the “Is Preston gay?” subplot.                                          

  

Designer Joanna Yu has had the great idea of having three musicians (Tom and Stephen Szczesniak and Junior Riggan) play behind cutouts of windows in the façade of the converted row-houses that used to make up most of Yorkville.  Yu’s costumes suit the personality of each character perfectly and her trillium-emblazoned step-dancing outfits for Jules and Gabe are cute and corny all at once.

Szczesniak’s music is varied and memorable.  Only the lyrics to Tasia’s “You Must To Have A Plan” and Jules’ “I Think I Should Love Him” need reworking.  If Hay also sorted out the plot and characters issues noted above, the humour and the musical itself would have much greater impact.  Yorkville doesn’t intend to mine any deep veins of social criticism, and that’s perfectly fine.  In many ways it’s an old-fashioned musical comedy that just happens to be set in the present.  With a few revisions it could be a sure-fire hit in theatres all across Ontario.      

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Steph Sy, Michael Torontow and Jess Abramovitch; (middle) Steph Sy, Michael Torontow, Sarah Cornell, Ryan Bondy, Jess Abramovitch, (front) Rob Torr.  ©2013 Terry Manzo.

For tickets, visit www.blythfestival.com.