>>PREVIEW
GLORIOUS!
Runs until November 5
Theatre Calgary and Canstage, Toronto
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
She was to singing what Ed Wood would become to film – a talent so immensely terrible that Florence Foster Jenkins would go down in history as the worst singer of all time. Despite her musical training and her years as a musical instructor, Jenkins’ exclusive, invitation-only concerts provided the world with some of the worst singing it has ever heard.
It isn’t surprising that a woman so epic in her ineptitude would capture the imagination of at least one playwright. In fact, it caught the imagination of two – both Stephen Temperley (Souvenier) and Peter Quilter (Glorious!) placed Jenkins centre stage. Now, in Theatre Calgary’s second co-production of the season with CanStage, Nicola Cavendish will step into the shoes of a self-financing heiress convinced, despite all evidence to the contrary, that she was an opera singer of the highest order. Just as its title suggests, Cavendish sees a kind of Glorious! revelry in singing off pitch.
"If I thought that we were making her a figure of fun, somebody who should be just laughed at, I’d catch the first bus back home," says the Vancouver-based actress, herself an ingénue to musical roles.
Cavendish points out that the value of a show is not defined simply by the quality of the music on stage, even if Calgary audiences will be receiving repeated doses of Foster’s mangled repertoire.
"Like anybody, I go to a concert for a whole ton of reasons – the society of the audience around me, the unpredictable, the kinds of people that you get to look at and then, in this instance, the kind of happy madness on stage," she says.
In Glorious!, that happy madness attracts an entourage of gleeful accomplices, including her gluttonous boyfriend, her irritable maid, and a jaded pianist named Cosme McMoon – the nom de plume used by a string of pianists under Jenkins’ employ. In fact, McMoon’s progression from catty quipster to full-fledged accomplice is the play’s principal thrust, as the play’s audience joins Jenkins and her absurd group on a journey from the overstuffed apartment Jenkins is gradually liquidating to the musical stages where her dwindling funds are spent to perform. Though Cavendish concedes that Jenkins may have been aware of her own failings, she says that there is little to suggest that it would have made any difference.
"I don’t think she fooled herself in this story," she says. "She’s not a delusional character. What I see on this page, every line, is, ‘Shall I sing you something right now?’ There’s a joy in the offering."
Of course, despite the extensive, almost cult-like following that developed around Jenkins, she was often the subject of derision. Her final performance at Carnegie Hall in 1944 – an engagement she was invited to – was lambasted by the critics. In fact, it has been said that her death, which occurred scarcely a month after her Carnegie appearance, was a direct result of the unfavourable reviews.
But, at least in the character created by Quilter – a woman singing for the sheer joy of the complete experience – this is unlikely.
"It proceeds to a point where she’s confronted by someone from the audience, who tells her to stop," says Cavendish. "And you see this straw break in her, and she says, with her entourage around her, ‘At some recitals, towards the back of the room, I have witnessed total pandemonium. I’ve watched people beat on one another, hoot, collapse, and — in extreme cases – stagger round in circles like the demented. If they’re not going to come here and have a nice time then they shouldn’t come.’ That’s not delusional.
"She acknowledged the negative, and she got on with the positive," she adds. "Not a bad message for the world we’re in now."
To the end, Foster was resolute, famously saying, "People may say I can't sing, but no one can ever say I didn't sing." Her audiences both laughed and applauded, even selling out her 3,000 seat performance at Carnegie. If her tone was off, the value of her entertaining presence certainly never was. |
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