Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✩✩
by Rob Kempson, directed by Briana Brown
Theatre Passe Muraille, Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, Toronto
January 21-February 8, 2014
Cameron: “I don’t mean to live in denial out west”
Rob Kempson’s new musical, The Way Back to Thursday, frequently has its moments, but on the whole is rather too vague in telling its tale to be entirely compelling. It lasts only 70 minutes so one can’t expect it to delve too deeply into its characters, yet the show often spends precious time on irrelevant topics and not on those we would like to see explored.
Kempson tells the story of Cameron (played by Kempson), who is on the verge of a trip from Vancouver to Etobicoke to visit his beloved Grandma (Astrid Van Wieren). Cameron’s most cherished moments in his childhood and early adolescence were the Thursday nights he would spend watching old movies with his Grandma. They provided a constant that helped him withstand the disruption caused by the break-up of his parents’ marriage. These nights were also the highlights of his Grandma’s life.
Their consensus was that Rock Hudson was their favourite actor, a man Grandma tells Cameron is “just like” him. When Cameron decides to write a class paper on Hudson, he is dismayed to discover after googling him that Hudson was gay. Does that mean he is gay for liking Hudson? Does it mean his Grandma thinks he’s gay? After a confusing transition, Cameron moves to Vancouver with the clichéd mission of “finding himself”. And he does discover (surprise, surprise) that he is gay.
What is not at all clear is why Cameron refuses to talk to Grandma on the phone and tries to keep his gayness a secret. Cameron may have had to google “Rock Hudson” to find out he was gay, but Grandma, if she follows the news, would already know it, yet she still lists Hudson as her favourite. So what’s the problem? What has made his primary confidante no longer his confidante? Meanwhile, Grandma agonizes over her own secret. In two songs she worries about the lies she has told Cameron about her once having been a Hollywood star. This is all rather improbable since she would have had to explain why she never shows Cameron movies she appeared in.
These problems are compounded by Cameron’s refusal to follow the principal of “Chekhov’s gun”. As master of the short story, Chekhov said, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off”. This is a principal any dramaturg should know. But Kempson allows both Cameron and Grandma to have secrets from each other which are never told.
Despite its narrative failings, Kempson does deserve praise for trying to write a musical in the strict formal structure of a song cycle, citing Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann as his models. Unlike an ordinary musical or even an opera, a song cycle consists simply of a sequence of self-contained songs. Famous cycles like Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin (1824) or Schumann’s Dichterliebe (1840) are sung by only one singer and each of the songs serves as an insight into the character’s changing psychological state.
What Kempson’s musical most resembles, however, is Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years (2001), where the songs alternate between a male and female singer. While both Brown and Kempson describe the breakup of a relationship, Brown has his female character tell her story in reverse chronological order, while Kempson’s follow same chronology after Cameron’s first song and move from the past to the present.
The difficulty of the song cycle structure is that it allows for no dialogue or recitative to place the songs in context. Listeners have to discover the plot themselves. This is much easier in a traditional cycle where there is only one voice. Cameron encounters a problem with two voices in that he has plot details he wants to convey that don’t really belong in a song that is meant to stand alone. As a result very few of the fifteen songs of the musical really can stand alone.
Kempson has a high light voice and rapid vibrato. He’s very engaging but his diction is not always clear and certain plot points are lost because of it. He falls into the trap that adult actors often have playing children of being far too precious as Cameron at eight years old. Nevertheless, his best number is probably the one praising his school teacher for her assignments then hating her for them after he finds out about Rock Hudson.
Much of the pleasure of Kempson’s varied score comes from the Scott Christian’s sensitive arrangement of the musical accompaniment for piano (Christian) and cello (Samuel Bisson). Given the abstract set, Beth Kates’s lighting becomes the chief indicator of time, place and mood.
In its present state, The Way Back to Thursday is a promising start. For the show to have greater success Kempson should clear up the narrative problems and think hard about why a guy like Cameron would keep his gayness a secret from such a with-it Grandma, especially in the 21st century. Kempson can still have his downbeat ending because ageing naturally takes its toll. There is no need, however, for his lack of communication to be a contributing cause. Kempson clearly has a talent for songwriting and I look forward to his next endeavour.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Rob Kempson and Astrid Van Wieren, ©2014 Michael Cooper; Astrid Van Wieren and Rob Kempson, ©2014 Rob Kempson.
For tickets, visit www.artsboxoffice.ca.
2014-01-22
The Way Back to Thursday