They're going gaga at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre these days.
That’s not a comment on state of mind but a fact: the company’s next production, starting performances May 14, is Of a Monstrous Child: A Gaga Musical, “a dance-floor dialectic” inspired by Lady Gaga’s life and work, in the words of its creator, Alistair Newton.
It stars Stratford vet Bruce Dow, cabaret supernova Kimberly Persona and is guaranteed to be the only musical onstage in Toronto this year where you'll hear a mash-up of “Born This Way,” “Teenage Rampage” and “Ziggy Stardust.”
Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, the 27-year-old performer better known as Lady Gaga, is the source of more discussion and debate than any musical icon since Madonna.
- interview:
Is she just another pop tart who made it big? An ironic jester playing meta games with our heads? Or an original artist with a unique view of the world?
“ I've been through all those stages with her,” says Newton on a break from rehearsal. “At first I didn't get her. I thought, ‘I want to take a ride on your disco stick.’ That doesn't sound too layered to me.
“Then I thought she was just one more boring trendoid who said, ‘ Aren't I ironic?’ when she really meant, ‘ Aren't I empty?’”
Then Newton came across a paper that Gaga wrote while enrolled as a student in the Collaborative Arts Project 21 (CAP21), a musical theatre conservatory at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
“She was like 17 or something and you won't believe the insights she came up with,” raves Newton. “She already had unique and clearly defined attitudes about sexuality, nudity, performance. You can see even back then the germ of her pop philosophy and her relationship to queerness and otherness.
“One of the reasons I love her, in fact, is she’s the perfect antidote to empty hipster irony.”
Fair enough, but how do you create a framework to put such a larger than life figure onstage?
Newton found his answer in the past, in the figure of Leigh Bowery, the outsized Australian performance artist who dominated the alternative scene in London during the 1980s and ’90s, mentoring many talents, most notably, Boy George.
“He’s our master of ceremonies, the one who takes us down the rabbit hole. Sure, he’s been dead for nearly 20 years, but he doesn't discover that until he reads his own Wikipedia entry. He’s kind of a Dickensian figure: the Ghost of Glamour Past.”
Playing the role is a unique Canadian talent, Dow, who has recently lit up the Stratford stage in roles like the Emcee in Cabaret, Trinculo (opposite Christopher Plummer) in The Tempest and King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar, a role he also played on Broadway.
“This is a part I'm destined to play,” said Dow, while trying out his grotesque character makeup for the first time. “If Leigh had lived, he would have been about my age now.
“It’s strange, do you know I've never played a real person before? I'm always doing King Hoohah the Whatsit or someone like that. It’s great to play someone so pronounced in his speech and his mannerisms, but I'm not doing a nightclub imitation, just trying to give a sense of who he is and what’s going on.”
Dow had no problem committing to the project, even though it meant taking a year away from Stratford, because he loves both Newton’s writing and Gaga herself.
“I always liked Lady G. in terms of mid-life crisis music,” jokes the 50-year-old Dow. “ I'ma fan of cheap bubble gum pop anyway, but here’s someone who can actually sing and is an incredible musician.”
Persona, whose portraying the diva, pauses in the act of putting her on her blush, “which is vital to a character like this,” she quips.
“I’m playing the essence of Gaga, not the woman herself,” she hastens to explain. “ We're not doing puppeteering here, we're after the essence of a musical experience.
“I never knew how smart she was until I started working on this show, or how much dedication she has to her art. I've got nothing but enormous respect for her now.”
It might be hard to envision what this tribute will finally look like, but Dow isn't worried.
“(Newton) understands the unique world of construction that goes into a musical. He has a great way of reinventing the wheel while still making sure the car moves forward.”
Which sounds a lot like Lady Gaga herself.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/15K8AYX
Last edited by Mikal on 6/1/2013, 3:06 pm; edited 1 time in total