‘BRACEBRIDGE ON BROADWAY’ BEST OF MUSKOKA’S LADY SINGERS AND HOOFERS
REVIEW Mark Clairmont | MuskokaTODAY.com
BRACEBRIDGE — Rodgers and Hammerstein, Sondheim and Webber are to Broadway what the Bridle sisters, Tracy Kilgour and Emma Grimstead are to Bracebridge and Theatre Muskoka.
Musical geniuses of the local stage.
Tonight with Donna Hollands, Eddy Palileo, Ginny Metcalfe, Kaleigh Adie, Nicole Moore, Niki Cutting-McLean, Paul Feist — and a great tight band — they brought the best of 42nd Street to the Rene Caisse Theatre with very demanding performances.
If you’ve been to any Rotary Musical or any stage show with an orchestra and a choreographer you’ll recognize Muskoka’s song and dance royalty and some new really talented troupers and hoofers.
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In the first of three fundraising shows for Theatre Muskoka (former the Bracebridge Arts Council) the 10 terrific ladies sang their hearts out and hoofed their asses off in a fast-paced, non-stop performance that touched on most of the board’s greatest-sounding hits of the 20th and 21 centuries.
It was more than luck be these ladies tonight. It was seasoned local talent. Bracebridge at its best.
What Amy Bridle-Phillips said in the liner notes applied to everyone on stage, behind it and including Theatre Muskoka executive director Michelle Emson up in the tech booth.
“A lifelong love affair with theatre.”
Especially of the musical variety.
Unbridled enthusiasm is what I’d call it and the audience got from the multi-taskers who switched voices (and costumes) from song to song as fast as stage director Alec Hollands could dim lights and pull strings to make the curtains open and close and go up and down.
For Kilgour the veteran Bracebridge actor, singer and dancer Friday — in addition for this show director and choreographer — it was a chance to showcase the women of stage in showy production numbers vibed and vamped by trumpet player and leader Neil Barlow’s driving sextet.
Feist, who reprised his alter-ego “Dorky Barnes” to delight of the more than half-house audience most who remembered him from past Muskoka shows, opened the show with his trade-mark humour before narrating and leading the theatre lover down a musical memory lane.
With memorable lyrics and lines and barbs being traded back-and-forth and ricocheting between vocalists like an Annie Oakley rifle shot, the rapid fire delivery flew from stage filling the seats with laughter.
They sang songs on journey through the decades from “Annie Get Your Gun” to “Guys and Dolls,” “Oklahoma” to the “Jersey Boys,” “Wicked,” “Mamma Mia,” “Phantom,” “Cats,” “The “Lion King” and “Chicago” to name but a few of more than two dozen familiar classic and recent stage hits.
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Room was made for all in the ensemble cast to star in solo roles that had them soar with beautiful voices hitting all the high notes and eliciting loud applause from any critics who mostly may have seen the original performances. Emily Bridle was just one who stood out among the greats of the night.
All of the stunning production pieces were visually and audibly entertaining.
The charitable Theatre Muskoka — in its new post-BAC transition as operator and management of the community theatre — is looking to bring more shows on board in addition to its “Acoustics Series” of concerts.
Emson says they want to complement what the Rotary Musicals do, including this winter’s Billy Elliot — which Amy Bridle-Phillips and Grimstead are directing and getting their cast quickly into shape.
Theatre Muskoka is also open to other theatre, lecture hall, conference and auditorium-related uses.
The final two matinee shows of “Bracebridge on Broadway” are Saturday and Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m.
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