Hearts Made Great feels like “live movie”
November 9, 2006
Last Remembrance Day saw the world premiere of the remarkable Orchestra London Pops performance Hearts Made Great.
This fascinating and moving show returns to Centennial Hall Saturday under conductor Jeff Christmas, who also composed the score and arranged a dozen featured 1940s songs.
Scripted by Jennifer Venner, the show uses letters to tell the fact-based story of an imaginary London-area family coping with the trials and trauma of the Second World War.
I’ve never seen anything like it,
admits Donna Creighton, who sings and acts in the show. Together with her partner Jo-Ann Lawton, from the folk duo Sirens, she conceived and produces the show.
I’ve never been in anything like it. I think we’ve made up something new because we don’t know how to talk about it. It’s not musical theatre, it’s not a concert, it’s not a series of monologues, it’s not a revue. At the same time, it’s all of those things. It’s a complete hybrid. I sometimes think of it as a live movie.
Creighton insists it all started simply enough when she wanted to do an 1940s-style wartime show and approached Orchestra London.
The project was then shaped by screenwriter Venner and theatre director Louise Fagan, who called in Christmas.
Everybody was really interested and on board with the project,
recalls Creighton. It took two years to fully develop Jen’s script and Jeff’s music. Once we all started working together, it quickly . . . morphed into a story about a Canadian family during World War II. It’s a beautiful story told through letters between the various characters.
Christmas developed themes specific for each of the show’s four characters.
Nora (played by Creighton) and Victor (Paul Grambo) are brother and sister who are stationed overseas with the Red Cross and army. Margaret (Lawton) is their mother who holds down the family farm in Southwestern Ontario and Julia (Amber Cunningham) is the war bride Victor meets in Britain.
Creighton is thrilled with the way Venner’s epistolary script captures the different kinds of candour that people put into letters.