NEEDFIRE grew out of the tremendous talent pool in the Celtic arts this country has produced. In the last decade, these Canadians have gone on to revolutionize the music industry. This production takes this significant cultural movement into the legitimate theatre on one of the country's major stages. This was a gamble, but we have produced a spectacular and moving show that showcases established and emerging Canadian talent. - Producer David Mirvish
July 1998
By Brendan Landers
TORONTO - Needfire is the
latest Celtic extravaganza to grace the stage, following in the exalted
footsteps of Riverdance and Lord of the
Dance, but, unlike its predecessors, this production has a distinctly
Canadian flavor and the performers rank as some of the best Celtic
singers
and dancers Canada has to offer.
They include The Irish Descendants, Jim Fidler and the Ennis Sisters
from Newfoundland; fiddler Sandy MacIntyre, musician and storyteller
John Allan Cameron and singer Mary Jane Lamond from Cape Breton; Denny
Doherty (former lead singer with The Mamas And The Papas) from Nova
Scotia; Alberta-born guitarist Bill Bridges; Ottawa Valley step- dancer
Chanda Gibson; and, from Toronto, the acclaimed Juno Award Nominee
John McDermott.
Needfire also includes some dazzling musicians and dancers from the
Irish and Scottish traditions, but the show truly shines when the
Canadian performers are let loose on the stage and it's this celebration
of the Celtic culture in Canada that gives the production its soul.
Indeed, at the show's premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre in
Toronto, at least half the audience was from the East Coast. After
the finale and a standing ovation, as we left the theatre and headed
for a Needfire party hosted by Newfoundland Premier Brian Tobin, I
heard a woman behind me remark, "It was great. It was just like being
back home in Cape Breton."
Singer
John McDermott was instrumental in bringing Needfire to the stage
and he says it's a uniquely Canadian story. "The actual setting is
Canada. It's the story of a fella named John Michael, who is remembering
his past and the stories that were told to him, which go back to Scotland
and Ireland.
"What John Michael is doing is passing on the stories, the songs and
the history of his heritage. It's about how, as we've immigrated to
Canada, how the music, dance and song has been touched by each generation
and changed over the years to become Canadian," he says.
He says Needfire is a tribute to the generations of Irish and Scottish
immigrants who kept their culture alive by gathering at each other's
houses
to sing songs, play music and tell stories. "You know the old line
- one singer, one song. And of course each one who did it had different
reasons and a different story behind it and this was something personal,
so if Uncle Bill wasn't there, nobody would sing his song.
"I remember growing up, listening to John McCormack with my father
and thinking of the stories behind the songs and how he sang them.
So, when I think of those songs now, my memory goes back there. I'm
sure in my father's mind, the music took him back to his father and
his father the same thing. The memory is passed on and it changes
ever so slowly along the way. Needfire celebrates that memory," he
says.
And celebrate it does, with fierce energy, though I was given cause
to cringe early in the show when the Ennis sisters delivered a galloping
rendition The Leaving of Liverpool that insensitively transformed
a haunting, bittersweet ballad into a boom-chichi-boom-boom almost-polka
reminiscent of The Lawrence Welk Show.
The sisters made up for it later, though, and The Leaving of Liverpool
was truly forgotten when Mary Jane Lamond, who sings entirely in Scottish
Gaelic, came onto the stage and did her thing. She put so much soul
into her voice that you didn't need to understand the words to absorb
the spirit of her muse.
Two grizzly, wild-looking giants did a duet on the bagpipes that evoked
centuries-old images of burly Highland warriors with hairy armpits,
bare
arses and Braveheart-blue faces, strutting a sword dance and striking
terror into the hearts of their Sassenach foes.
Scottish dancer Xavier Corcoran from Pennsylvania rendered a dazzling
balletic display, doing such impossible splits while virtually hovering
in the air. And, the Irish dance ensemble stepped out nicely, doing
what they do best, which, while always impressive, was so evocative
of Riverdance, that the ghost of Michael Flatley must have been wagging
his finger.
John
McDermott minimizes the influence of Riverdance and Flatley. "I'm
not going to be taking my shirt off and I'm not wearing a headband,"
he says, "No, but seriously, I loved Flatley in Riverdance when I
saw it on the Eurovision, but beyond that, I needed something more.
"Needfire is different. It's a beautiful story. And you're going to
see a lot of stuff that's very different. You're going to see something
that's very Irish, very Scots, very Cape Breton and Quebec-influenced.
"You're going to see dance and music, especially fiddle-playing, that's
been influenced by sources from Newfoundland, Cape Breton and the
Ottawa Valley. If you haven't seen the Ottawa Valley style of dance,
you're in for a treat. I've never seen anything like it in my life.
That kind of dance was originally influenced by the Scots and Irish
cultures. It had to start somewhere, but it has evolved into something
completely
different."
He tells no lie. The exhilarating exhibition of Ottawa Valley step-dancing
by Chanda Gibson was probably the highlight of the show for me. That,
and the singing of The Irish Descendants and McDermott himself. With
such troubadours as these to the fore, the Celtic Revival is alive
and well for the foreseeable future, though McDermott says there never
was a revival as such.
"I
just think that the Scots and Irish music were always there and had
a tremendous following. You're not going to flip on the radio and
catch John McDermott, but my following is as big as any of those pop
artists and it is the same for a great number of the traditional musicians
and Celtic artists in this country. They're there. They just don't
get the acknowledgment they deserve. All of a sudden the big boys
caught onto it, but it was always very strong," he says.
Needfire is a flagship for this rich vein of culture. There's talk
of taking the show on the road. If anybody asked me, I'd say gather
a bunch more Celtic Canadians, lose the Irish and the Scots (good
as they are), and cram the show chock-a-block with homegrown performers.
If Needfire does anything, it proves that the talent is there.
Article and Photos courtesy of Judy Mann