Mhairi Berg and Maureen Rooney in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

One of the haunting songs in Morningside Road, the “new Canadian Celtic musical” that blows open the Shadow Theatre season, wonders about the remarkable way the past is never black-and-white in memory.

How does it get colourized, so to speak? “In memories you share,” sings Girl (Mhairi Berg) who slides in and out of the present and into the past to become Elaine, the younger version of her Scottish Granny (Maureen Rooney), “there are voices of the people you knew.” And in  the premiere production directed by Shadow’s artistic director designate Lana Michelle Hughes, those strong voices have a live band too onstage with them: three musicians in shadows behind a screen in a tilted frame, who seem to float, in the mind, ever ready to join in on celebratory occasions.

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In a graceful way, that song “There Is Colour” is what this gem of a new musical, by Berg with music by Berg and Simon Abbott, is all about. The dimensions of Morningside Road are small (as small as a family), but its heart is big; its sense of time is complicated. And as a story about stories and the memories that colour, shape, and populate them, the musical actually gains narrative heft, intricacy, and emotional resonance from having a small cast: three actors, three musicians.

A place that’s home “is built of stories we call our own,” as another of Morning Side Road‘s songs has it. And that’s how we meet Granny and Girl, drinking tea and doing crosswords together, connected by Granny’s stories of growing up on Morningside Road in Edinburgh, in the 30s, in war-time and beyond. As Granny, Rooney, too rarely seen on our stages, is a sassy kind of Gaelic sage, anti-sentimental, reductive in her wit. In matters of romantic love, she advises her granddaughter, don’t settle for nice, or reliable. “I just don’t want to see your fire burn out,” Granny declares. “The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.”

In Rooney’s performance it is genuinely heart-wrenching to see what happens gradually, in Act II, as Granny’s own fire is dimmed by dementia, and cracks begin to appear in her memory and oft-repeated stories. They aren’t time-proof in their details, much to Girl’s dismay. But there may be other stories to unearth; maybe we are all archaeological sites.   

Under Hughes’ direction Granny and Elaine, her younger Edinburgh self played by Berg, are unmistakably the same feisty person over time. And quick wit and crackling responsiveness, and the same love of words, are recognizable in Girl, Granny’s Canadian granddaughter, too. She’s also played by Berg, who is a luminous and magnetic performer onstage, with a supple, multi-angled voice.

What you inherit, what you imagine, and the uses you make of that domestic legacy of stories, are woven delicately and artfully into the fabric of Berg’s script. Are truth and fact interchangeable? Morningside Road wonders about that, and has its doubts. In harmony with that thought, Daniel VanHeyst’s set has a realistic kitchen table sitting solidly in a world with other possibilities: empty frames, free-floating hints of old-country wallpaper and yellowed old-school lino. Like Granny and Girl, we are haunted, suggests the play and its design (lighted by Lieke Den Bakker).

Mhairi Berg and Cameron Kneteman in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

There’s a third actor, too, and since there are mysteries attached to Lad I can’t tell you too much more than that. Lad appears; he vanishes. While he’s onstage, in captivating little scenes with the firecracker Elaine, he’s a wry, playful, thoroughly corporeal presence in Kneteman’s performance — “I’m the kind of lad who’d lead a lamb astray,” as he sings. But, intriguingly, he doesn’t stay put. He floats in and out of scenes, part memory part dream, in Berg’s play and Hughes’ staging.

The music by Berg and Abbott (a first-rate piano player who’s part of the onstage band himself) is soulfully — and playfully!— Celtic in flavour. There are both “traditional” and rocking folk ballads. There’s a jazzy Christmas morning number. There are love songs that make you fish for your Kleenex. There’s a dance party with a rousing drinking song to match. The score has made beautiful use of the gorgeous “Wild Love,” originally written by Abbott and Cassie Muise for The Trial of Patrick Whelan.

Simon Abbott, Cameron Kneteman, Mhairi Berg, Maureen Rooney in Morningside Road, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Morningside Road co-creator Abbott (also the music director), Curtis Den Otter (percussion) and Viktoria Grynenko (violin) are superb musicians. And Hughes’ sound mix is impeccable. Strange and telling how the violin can turn lyrical into wistful; it’s the sound of memory and romance.

Some ghosts cannot be banished, no matter how hard we try to re-imagine them. And the gorgeous finale song Morningside Road, delivered by Rooney with wrenching simplicity, will make your eyes water. An impressive new homegrown musical, Shadow’s first musical, poignant and funny, with a great score and a story about storytelling, has joined the Canadian theatre repertoire. Don’t miss your chance.

12thnight interviewed Mhairi Berg for a preview, here.

REVIEW

Morningside Road

Theatre: Shadow

Written by: Mhairi Berg (book)

Music and lyrics by: Mhairi Berg and Simon Abbott

Directed by: Lana Michelle Hughes

Starring: Mhairi Berg, Cameron Kneteman, Maureen Rooney

Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.

Running: through Nov. 2

Tickets: shadowtheatre.org.