The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom
Review by Sean McQuaid (August 2014)
Cameron MacDuffee as Stompin’ Tom Your crusty chronicler admires the persistence of playwright David Scott. By his own account, Scott pestered Canadian music icon Stompin’ Tom Connors into helping him create a musical based on Connors’ life and music, wearing him down with a series of letters until the living legend acquiesced.
Five years of development later, The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2006 and has since been remounted by several companies, including the Charlottetown Festival in 2008. The show is now playing exclusively at the Harbourfront Theatre as the foundation of that venue’s nascent Summerside Theatre Festival.
Between and sometimes during performances of Connors’ songs, the show stages a largely chronological series of vignettes charting the star’s life story. His troubled youth (parts of it spent on PEI), nomadic wanderings, career struggles, rise to fame, self-imposed retirement and latter-day comeback all unfold over the course of the play.
Jukebox musical veteran Cameron MacDuffee (past credits include Ring of Fire and Dear Johnny Deere), stars as the adult Connors and leads all the songs in that guise. While not an impersonation per se, MacDuffee’s performance captures much of Connors’ style as both a musician and a personality, often strongly evoking the original.
MacDuffee brings a crafty twinkle to the show in general and the musical numbers in particular, but he also has enough dramatic range to pull off the darker chapters of Connors’ story, whether he’s observing them passively in flashbacks or actively participating in the scenes.
He’s backed by an excellent house band (led by musical director Chas Guay), who also play assorted small supporting roles in the story; and a strong cast of eight actors, most of whom also play multiple parts. Highlights among these include a haunted Emily Oriold-Keay as Connors’ petty criminal mother Isabel, who brings the play much of its pathos; and all-star utility player Gordon Gammie, whose many roles range from the quiet dignity of Connors’ stepfather Russell to the screwball comedy of the world’s weirdest ice cream vendor, not to mention a laugh-out-loud hilarious bit as a potential employer baffled and repulsed by Tom’s bizarre “Muleskinner Blues” song.
Scott’s script has more meat than many such jukebox musicals, crafting a life story that conveys a strong sense of Connors’ character and the events that shaped it, not just a concert with dramatic asides. Director Catherine O’Brien and her fine cast do Scott’s work ample justice with a smooth, well-crafted production that often fosters a sense of playful humour in the proceedings.
Scott’s script loses steam somewhat near the end, partly because the most dramatic elements of its subject’s life are unavoidably front-loaded in Tom’s early years. Even taking that into account, the home stretch before the finale feels somewhat cursory and anticlimactic as the story more or less peters out, though a big musical finish helps the show end on a high note regardless.
Link to The Buzz http://www.buzzon.com/articles/reviews/754-stage/21332-living-a-legend
