Hearts Made Great shouldn’t be missed
November 12, 2005
One of the finest ways Londoners could ever salute the Year of the Veteran is on the stage at Centennial Hall this weekend.
Based on yesterday afternoon’s presentation, Orchestra London’s Hearts Made Great—a fictional London region family’s wartime saga in words and music, new and old—is not to be missed. If you can’t go tonight, go tomorrow afternoon—or both times.
The music by composer and conductor Jeff Christmas and words by UWO grad Jennifer Venner call up a Remembrance Day universe of emotions—sorrow, pride, fear, patriotism, hope and relief among them.
Hearts Made Great fulfils the ambitions of the orchestra’s partnership with two London singers, Jo-Ann Lawton and Donna Creighton, two of Hearts Made Great’s stars this weekend, and folk duo Sirens at other times.
Lawton, Creighton and the orchestra first discussed the idea of using music from the Second World War era in a concert setting.
Remarkably, Hearts Made Great grew into an original combination of period music from the 1940s, new compositions for the orchestra, powerfully restrained words, documentary touches and some glorious singing and playing.
In the show, Lawton plays a London region farm family’s widowed matriarch, Margaret, mother to First Hussars tank gunner Victor (Paul Grambo) and Nora (Creighton), a medical worker.
Fine moments include a heartbreakingly peppy Cheek to Cheek by the young lovers—Victor and Red Cross nurse Julia (Carolyn Hall)—in the first act. More sombre accomplishments include Christmas’s Unknown Soldier and the quiet wail of Archie Cairns’ bagpipes, heard in a recording.
As for famous Canadian voices from the war, former Prime Minister Mackenzie King and CBC Radio announcer Earl Cameron are both heard at critical moments to set the time and place.
Venner’s use of letters as the basis for her drama—and Louise Fagan’s direction—allows for subtly developed shifts in the playwright’s characters. Margaret and Nora are both widows, strong and independent women who see the foolish dangers of war in the early scenes of Hearts Made Great. By the end, Margaret has come to accept the war’s importance and even its glories. Nora has made her own peace, too.
Christmas’s arrangements of pop songs from the era and his use of Peter Brennan’s guitar to drive much of the music is marvellous. His inspired direction of the orchestra and its majestic playing respects the era’s conventions without surrendering to them.
The bells or chimes that toll in Christmas’s own compositions seem to echo in even the most joyful of the pop hits during the 90-minute show.
Only once, on the lovely standard I’ll Be Seeing You, does the approach miss its mark. But Christmas’s arrangement of It’s a Good Day, a sweeping and cinematic treatment, follows triumphantly as Hearts Made Great soars to its finale.
Yesterday afternoon’s performance was a student preview before an audience of about 800 from London region school boards and private schools in the orchestra’s London Life community music program. Tonight’s premiere and tomorrow’s performance—with an intermission—are part of the Pops series.
There is much more in my notes about Hearts Made Great and the way it shares so many feelings and thoughts—as experienced by Londoners—of the war on the homefront or the Normandy beaches.
But all that needs saying is this: See it and hear it and feel it.