‘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.

Give our regards to Broadway. From the opening number to the last ‘Bracebridge on Broadway’ was a tour de force with non-stop singing and dancing by Muskoka’s musical theatre royalty.

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.

What began with the likes of “Guys and Dolls” easily morphed into “Jessus Christ Superstar” as the 10 talented ladies sang their hearts out and hoofed their asses off, writes reviewer Mark Clairmont tonight.

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.

With his character wit “Utterson farmer” Paul “Dorky Barnes” set the mood with some funny one liners.
Take a bow ladies. You deserve it for a rollicking good and fun time over 90 minutes.
It was a show the audience stood up at the end to applaud, including Carol Ann Robinson right and friends, who loved the performances and offered more seated ovations during the show. 
B&B: Bracebridge and Broadway. From 42nd Street to the Rene Caisse Theatre with Saturday and Sunday 2 p.m. matinees to see a fun show that hits all the high notes of musical theatre.
Theatre Muskoka executive director Michelle Emson, who not only sells tickets but does sound and lights, say the Rene Caisse Theatre in Bracebridge is open for all kinds of show opportunities, productions, rentals and other conference and auditorium-related uses. Here she sells tickets to Kent Phillips and his wife Susie, whose daughter stars in the show.

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