Stage Door News
Stage Door News
[Mississauga ON, November 2014] Charlotte Gray’s best-selling The Massey Murder has just added the Toronto Book Award to its long list of prizes and recognitions. Now it is about to appear on the Theatre Erindale stage in a World Première adaptation created by the actors! The next entry in the company’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” season, this fascinating story is subtitled “A Maid, Her Master, and the Trial that Shocked a Country”.
February 8th, 1915: a Studebaker salesman returns home from work and is shot dead on his doorstep by his 18-year-old maid. But he is a Massey and she is a ‘nobody’, so all hell is about to break loose in Toronto society. The latest bestseller from 'Canada's doyenne of popular history' is "gripping and insightful ... a vivid picture of life during war time, of the Canadian justice system, and of the era's sexual mores, class divisions, and newspaper wars." – Quill & Quire "Fascinating" – Guelph Mercury "Memorable" – Globe & Mail
Charlotte Gray is a Member of the Order of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and the recipient of no fewer than five honorary doctorates. Her books are usually turned into movies and mini-series; Gold Diggers became the series Klondike on the US Discovery Channel, and Reluctant Genius has been optioned by the makers of The Border. With remarkable generosity, she has given Theatre Erindale permission to adapt her latest hit.
The company’s approach to this adaptation has been anything but conventional. Says director Meredith Scott (The Halifax Explosion), “Along with Associate Director Sarah Jane Burton, I have tried to keep the process of ‘writing’ as physical as possible. For weeks, we worked with this company on their feet and without scripts. We used movement exercises, improvisation, short performances created by the company and other discussion to constantly explore the events of the book. Eventually, yes, paper became a necessity, but we have tried, wherever possible, to make this a performance that began in our actors’ bodies not their heads.” Thus the audience can look forward to an imagistic collage in which dance, movement and music sequences play as great a role as dialogue scenes.
Out of the many topics the book addresses, Scott explains that several claimed the focus of attention in addition to the central murder and the ensuing trial. “The push and pull between old and new Toronto, the treatment of women prisoners in the Don Jail, the perception of female criminals, and the warring between Toronto’s rival newspapers have all functioned as themes in our explorations.”
The show runs November 13-23 at the Erindale Studio Theatre on the UTM campus, with evening performances Thursday through Saturday and matinees on Saturdays and on Sunday November 23. Single tickets are $12 or $18; Parking is $6.00, and Mississauga Transit Routes 44 and 110 will take you to the campus. For further information, call the Box Office at 905-569-4369 or visit www.theatreerindale.com .
Charlotte Gray’s
THE MASSEY MURDER
A Maid, Her Master, and the Trial that Shocked a Country
A Theatre Erindale World Première
adapted by the Company
under the direction of Meredith Scott
Associate Director Sarah Jane Burton
Preview Nov 13; Opening Nov 14; runs Nov 15 and Nov 20-23
Thurs 7:30; Fri 8:00; Sat 2:00 & 8:00; Sun 2 Nov 2:00
$12.00-$18.00
Erindale Studio Theatre
(UTM 3 lights north of Dundas off Mississauga Road)
www.theatreerindale.com or 905-569-4369
2014-11-06
Mississauga: Theatre Erindale presents a stage adaptation of Charlotte Gray's "The Massey Murder"