Crescendo!, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

What exactly is it about singing, and especially singing with other people, that lures people into choirs to make music together?

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That’s the question at the heart of Sandy Paddick’s Crescendo!. And not only is it demonstrated in a heartfelt way, it gets asked again and again, simply and explicitly, in this engaging new Canadian musical, the first musical Shadow Theatre has ever done in 30 seasons. The answers are as varied as the characters who step up to explain, in close-up or fleeting cameos, in Kate Ryan’s production.

Underwriting the play-with-music is the mysterious and universal magnetism of music itself — possibly visceral, certainly beyond rational explanation. Creating sound, acquiring a voice beyond words: much has been written about that phenomenon. And when Ryan’s cast sings together, it gives you a thrill to understand. But as the musical’s assortment of women who meet on Thursday nights for community choir practice attest — in both fragmentary and more extended form — motivations to join a choir, as opposed to a chess club or a curling team, reach into daily life and personal back stories.

These are the fabric — er, the ground bass — of Crescendo! Some of the characters are in the Crescendos as a respite from the routines, pressures, and multiple connections of their lives; some are there to acquire all of the above. For some, choir is an antidote; for others it’s a pick-me-up.

Bobby (Colleen Tillotson), who has a church bent, and Darla (Michelle Diaz), who decisively doesn’t, are temporary roommates: they’re in rehab. The former, struggling with an eating disorder, just loves to sing; the latter, who’s hostile and sardonic in Diaz’s amusing performance, is in tow for drugs, and needs something to do. Natalie (Jenny McKillop), who has seven kids and is a professional babysitter of unshakeable cheeriness, is there to have a world outside child-minding. She arrives invariably late, apologetic, and breathless, pushing a pram. May (Kirstin Piehl) is socially challenged, and she’s at choir to practice making connections and conversation. Her fallback in every moment of stress and hostility is to appeal to routine and organization.

And then, at the centre  there’s Pat (Cathy Derkach), the fierce, stern conductor who has a past that includes a shot at an opera career. Flashbacks that reveal what happened to that youthful dream include a comic audition scene with warring judges. Piehl, a gifted singer, plays the young Pat, torn between conflicting commands to reinterpret the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute.

“Count! Breathe!” commands Pat, leading a warm-up before the Thursday night practice begins, in the early moments of Crescendo!. In a new wrinkle she’s exhorting her charges to pair sound and colour. “Think blue. Paint the wall blue with your air…. Now try orange.” May is good on “count!”,  and baffled by the colour of sound.   

Between scenes and fourth-wall breakouts of the principal characters there are little glimpses of other choir members, with assorted reasons for joining the choir you might not expect. “I’m Jody, “a professor. With tenure. Choir is an excellent mental challenge.”  Amanda explains that she can arrive at choir practice feeling low and “when I leave I feel like I won the Lotto.” One mother says she joined to have an activity that would distract her from trying to run her kids’ lives. “A win-win for everyone.” One daughter joined the choir to keep her mom company; another as a tribute to her late father.

Crescendo by Sandy Paddick, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

The cast steps up to create tiny individual portraits. And the reasons for singing with each other evidently have enough gravitational pull on their lives to overcome the stresses and indignities set forth in Crescendo!. How strong? Strong enough to lead people to sing Christmas songs in crowded shopping malls whilst wearing Santa hats. Strong enough to put up with the tightly wound Pat, who’s stern and fierce, and says things like “let’s come to a place of readiness.” It’s enough to send you reeling towards the Civil War Re-enactment Club … until the cast starts singing, that is.

Crescendo! doesn’t operate as a crescendo, narratively speaking. It’s more scattered and kaleidoscopic than that, reflected in a glowing colours of the set design by Lieke Den Bakker. In the end, the way the multiple stories are tied together narratively feels a little perfunctory, or convenient, to me. But it’s definitely not one of those musicals where your mind drifts to wondering why the people onstage are bursting into song. The songs and the singing have to be there: Crescendo! is a musical about making music, after all.

And there’s a selection of original songs composed by Jen McMillan, along with her arrangements of choral favourites. Her pastiche number Baby Jesus is particularly amusing, especially when accompanied by Pat’s ferocious exhortations to really feel it, as a battle cry. “Baby Jesus shakes his rattle as a sword….” Composer McMillan is a superb pianist, who leads the music from the onstage grand piano.

Cathy Derkach and Kirstin Piehl in Crescendo!, Shadow theatre. Photo by Marc J. Chalifoux.

Since this is a play about sound and making sound, the design by Lana Michelle Hughes, with its echo effects and amplifications and diverse aural distances, bridges the gap between art and life — between the music inside one head and the remarkable way choral music is more than the sum of its individual parts. That’s the transcendence part of this choir story, the rush you get from joining other voices to create one big, resonant, enlivening voice.

REVIEW

Crescendo!

Shadow Theatre

Written by: Sandy Paddick with music by Jennifer McMillan

Directed by: Kate Ryan

Starring: Cathy Derkach, Michelle Diaz, Jenny McKillop, Kirstin Piehl, Colleen Tillotson

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: through Nov. 5

Tickets: shadowtheatre.org