>>PREVIEW
RHYME RUSTLER: THE BALLAD OF ROBERT SERVICE
Worthy Words Theatre
Runs until July 16
Vertigo Theatre (Epcor Centre)
The Classics! Well, most of them bore me,
The Moderns I don't understand;
But I keep Burns, my kinsman before me,
And Kipling, my friend, is at hand
They taught me my trade as I know it,
Yet though at their feet I have sat,
For God-sake don't call me a poet,
For I've never been guilty of that
– Robert Service, "A Verseman’s Apology"
Though he was born in Scotland and died in France, Robert Service remains one of the most enduring symbols of Canadiana. The prolific author of "The Cremation of Sam McGee," his poetry and novels brought acclaim and wealth that took him from his humble beginnings as a Yukon bank clerk for the Canadian Bank of Commerce to the streets of Paris.
Despite his success, Service never considered himself a poet, per se. In fact, having culled much of his material from the workingmen of the Yukon, it is little surprise that he called himself "a rhyme-rustler, rugged and shameless," in "A Verseman’s Apology." Now, for the second year, Mount Royal Conservatory instructors Jim Dobbin and Grant Paterson are taking Calgary audiences on a two-man, 80-minute tour through Service’s life and verse in a show appropriately titled Rhyme Rustler: The Ballad of Robert Service.
Opening July 6 at Vertigo, the production’s run will intentionally coincide with the Calgary Stampede – our own city’s most enduring symbol of its rollicking past. Though Service was never, himself, an Alberta man, it’s a time both Dobbin and Paterson see as ideal for the story of an author whose fame hinged on his own fascination with the rugged world of the frontier. After all, during a time when every oil executive is wearing Wranglers and a freshly-purchased cowboy hat, a bank clerk with aspirations of being a cowboy seems positively normal.
"He did spend some years roaming around doing all kinds of labour work, but he was really kind of a genteel man, trained as a bank clerk," says Dobbin. "He was quite fascinated by these miners and stories, the strangeness of the landscape. But, in his imagination, he was a bronco-busting cowboy. It is ironic that he never did settle here."
With Dobbin taking the role of Service himself, Patterson provides the production’s ambience as the Ragtime Kid, a musical homage to the character of the same name in "The Shooting of Dan McGrew." The first show of Dobbin and Patterson’s Worthy Words Theatre Company, which has since mixed works of Romantic poets with Chopin, the pair sees music as an important tool in livening classic stories. As intimately tied to the era as Service’s tales of Canadian frontiersmen, and a nod to Service’s repeated allusion to music in his poetry, the ragtime music of the production is both of its time and aimed to please it audiences – just like Service himself.
"I think the music has the same quality as Service’s poetry," says Patterson. "It doesn’t pretend to be something great or classical, but in it are these elements of beauty or classicism and a haunting charm. The composers, at the time, like Service, were composing for the masses, for entertainment, but at the same time they thought there was a Chopin-esque quality to the music."
Almost 50 years after Service’s death in 1958, one roaming bank clerk’s fascination with the world of Canada’s own western frontier continues to enrapture Canadian school children reading Service’s works and Calgary audiences ready to embrace a romanticized frontier myth. His cowboy dreams notwithstanding, cowboy-clad local Stampeders can take some heart in a local connection that, like Dobbin and Paterson’s production, brings the Arctic poet’s work to Alberta’s frontier – the real Sam McGee wasn’t cremated on the marge of Lake Lebarge: he was buried in 1940 in Beiseker, Alberta.
"I don’t think he ever lived down that poem or that name," says Patterson.
"Probably cursing that poem ever since," laughs Dobbin. |
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