The Art of Time Ensemble is remounting its sensational show, War of the Worlds for seven performances starting Tuesday at Harbourfront’s Enwave Theatre.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
Seán Cullen replaces Don McKellar from the original cast but otherwise the show should be much as it was in March, 2011, when I reviewed its premiere.
Here is what I wrote in the Star:
When President Franklin Roosevelt declared during World War II that America had nothing to fear but fear itself, he could easily have been thinking of the panic that had gripped the country three years prior, when Orson Welles broadcast Edward Koch’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds on CBS Mercury Theater in 1938.
In a time before television — and before his own infamy as a filmmaker — a 23-year-old Welles used every trick he could think of to turn radio drama into pseudo reality.
Listeners were taken from a hotel ballroom, where pleasant orchestral pop played in the background, to a series of news announcements telling of the realization that aliens had landed and were creating widespread destruction in New Jersey.
Without anything visual to confirm what was really going on, listeners in the area were led into a state of despair and fear.
Andrew Burashko, artistic director of Toronto’s Art of Time Ensemble, has done something brave — and reckless — in staging The War of the Worlds, turning this into a show about a show.
It’s a brilliant effort, thanks to the work of three talented actors — Nicholas Campbell, Marc Bendavid and Don McKellar — 10 musicians and the ear-popping sound effects of sound artist John Gzowski.
We get to enjoy seeing how the radio broadcast came together, as if we had been the proverbial flies on the wall of the CBS studio in New York City. But, where the original listeners experienced waves of panic, Thursday’s opening-night audience at the Enwave Theatre found the whole thing pretty funny.
Because this is the Art of Time, the music is just as important as the words to the success of this show.
Burashko commissioned Dan Parr to create Hermanntology, a medley of 20 film scores of composer Bernard Hermann, who was born 100 years ago in June. The New Yorker was a serious classical composer and orchestra conductor before turning to creating film scores for the likes of Welles (Citizen Kane) and Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, including North by Northwest and Psycho. His final score was for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in 1975.
Not coincidentally, Hermann was the man conducting the ballroom orchestra in The War of the Worlds, making the medley a great opening piece to the radio drama. The 25-minute work was enhanced even further by a live video montage of clips from all 20 movies, seamlessly mixed by Tess Girard.
The music, by itself, is interesting. The radio drama is a historical curiosity. But seeing them mixed together in a new show makes for a compelling night of theatre.
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This is the promotional video, made from clips of the 2011 run:
For details and tickets, click here.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
