Watching Act 1, I felt like I was trapped in my seat listening to a golden oldies station that I could not turn off. Act 2 is better. Musically and theatrically, this is all about accumulation or the lack of it.
Let’s be clear off the top: every member of the five-person cast has musical chops. Although nobody is a knockout vocalist, everybody can sing reasonably well and, impressively, many play multiple instruments.
The problem with Act 1 is that it’s mostly just song after song — 20 of them — without a lot of context, progression, or continuity. House of Folk sets out to pay homage to the Canadian folk-music scene of the sixties and seventies, taking Yorkville coffeehouse culture as its focus. But, in Act 1, this production barely even pays lip service to the broader cultural forces that demanded grass-roots resistance. I’m talking about the carnage of the Vietnam War, the struggles and triumphs of the civil-rights movement, women’s and gay liberation, anti-nuclear protests, and growing environmental consciousness. Speaking as somebody who lived through those days, there were levels of grief and fury fueling all sorts of music. There was also an intoxicating sense of solidarity and hopefulness. I loved being a hippie: the times they were a-changin’.
Instead of meaningfully engaging any of this, House of Folk offers a musical catalogue in that includes Paul Anka’s “Diana” and Antoine Gerrin-Lajoie’s “Un Canadien Errant” (1842) for context. Who cares?
Yes, we hear from some of the greats, including Neil Young, Robbie Robertson, and Joni Mitchell. But this revue doesn’t offer enough storytelling to evoke the spiritual weight behind Robertson’s “The Weight”; the environmental consciousness that informs Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” is reduced to a complaint about redevelopment killing the Yorkville scene. Sure, that’s a legitimate grievance, but there’s a much bigger, more urgent, and still-relevant picture.
In the first act, Val Wilmott’s arrangements didn’t reinvent any of this music for me — they didn’t make me hear it as if for the first time — so what we’re left with are more-or-less familiar versions of these songs performed by frankly lesser talents. Singer Michelle Bouey does a decent job with Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now”, for instance — and it’s a challenging tune — but I missed the crystal of Mitchell’s voice and, musically, I wasn’t offered enough to compensate for its loss.
As I said, Act 2 improves, although I need to add some caveats. Act 2 includes “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?”, which the program attributes to Susan Jacks, although every other source I can find attributes it to Terry Jacks, and “Seasons in the Sun”, Terry Jacks’s rewrite of a Jacques Brel tune. Both songs are irredeemably saccharine pop.
Still, there’s a greater sense of flow and accumulation in Act 2, so the song list doesn’t feel like just a list anymore. Wilmott’s arrangements allow one tune to flow into another, and the second act offers a bit more context about the Vietnam War. That bit goes a long way.
The difference is most apparent in the last three numbers of the evening. After the sounds of gunfire interrupt the buoyant “Good Morning Starshine”, House of Folk finds the substance it’s been lacking. The horror of Neil Young’s “Ohio”, which is about the killing of four anti-war student protesters at Kent State University, hits home. “Ohio” also resonates, of course, with ICE’s murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as does the plaintive follow-up, Young’s “Helpless”. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a stronger closer than Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”. Have we ever needed to hear these lyrics more than we do now? “Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.”
Because they’re working in service of a problematic vision in my view, I haven’t talked a lot about the performers, but it’s often pleasing when the two women, Bouey and Catriona Murphy, harmonize. Bouey gives “Which Way You Goin’ Billy?” more passion than it deserves, but, still, good for her. And, like the women, the men all offer charming, instrumentally adept performances: the buoyant Steve Charles, the committed Jack Garton, and the multi-instrumentalist Ben Elliott.
House of Folk finds its feet — belatedly. Still, overall, it gives too much catalogue and too little context.
HOUSE OF FOLK Conceived and directed by Tracey Power. Musical arrangements by Van Wilmott. A Firehall Arts Centre production. At the Firehall Arts Centre on February 20. Continues until March 8. Tickets and information.
PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of Ben Elliott and Jack Garton by Jon Benjamin)
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