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Students Make Show Biz History
BY PATRICK McDONAGH
The lights dimmed; the crowd fell silent; and curtains rose in Moyse Hall. The date: February 7, 1957. The event: the annual McGill Red and White Revue, this time a musical satire whimsically titled My Fur Lady. And a couple of hours later, as the actors were taking their final bows for the evening, a McGill legend was born.
University revues are notoriously unpredictable in their quality, but the next day, the press response was positive: "My Fur Lady is a genuine Canadian satire," wrote one critic, who went on to call it a "rattling good evening's entertainment, filled with topical and political jokes that seldom miss their mark." There was then, as now, much to satirize. The decades-long debate over a new national flag for Canada provided a juicy target, as did the adolescent angst of Canadian cultural identity and the hip-swivelling sensation from Memphis (in fact, the McGill crew may have founded the genre that has now become a cultural cottage industry, with their clairvoyant "Eulogy to Elvis").
But My Fur Lady was not simply to be an isolated Montreal hit. As they say in the theatre, the piece had legs: enough to carry the show and its student cast on a triumphant 18-month run across the country, first in a summer revival, and ultimately playing 402 dates from St. John's to Victoria, including successful stagings at the Stratford Festival and at the Royal Alexandra in Toronto. Again, critics called it "brilliant," "hilarious" and "the phenomenon of Canadian drama." It went on to gross three-quarters of a million dollars. As if that weren't enough, an original cast recording was in "fine record and department stores coast to coast" -- so the advertisements claim -- in time for Christmas 1957.
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Written by Timothy Porteous, Donald MacSween and Erik Wang, the plot itself is a classic romantic-political intrigue. The "fur lady" in question is Aurora Borealis (played by Ann Golden), the princess of Mukluko, a tiny principality somewhere around Baffin Island. The community is wealthy -- thanks to soaking the constructors of the DEW (Distant Early Warning) line -- but, under the terms of an ancient treaty, Mukluko will be subject to Canadian authority, and tax laws, unless the princess marries before turning twenty-one. As the threat of Ottawa bureaucracy looms, the resourceful princess heads into the maw of the dragon -- Canada itself -- on her quest for a husband. There she meets Rex Hammerstein (Jim Hugessen), a reporter for True Canadian Romances Magazine, and together their whirlwind adventures form the basis of the story.
With music by James Domville, Harry Garber and Galt MacDermot (who studied arranging at McGill and later went on to fame and fortune by composing the music to Hair and winning a Tony Award for his score of Two Gentlemen of Verona), and additional songs by Roy Wolvin, the show features such toe-tappers as "Teach Me How to Think Canadian," "Governor Generalities," "Royal Victoria Rag," the love duet "We Hate Each Other," "Honey Don't Be Highbrow," and "Parliament Debate... and Howe!"
Does all end happily? In retrospect, it's difficult to tell. The Princess finds true love in the arms of the Governor General himself (Wilfred Hastings), and the show ends in a rousing romantic and political union.
As for the people who put My Fur Lady together, James Domville said in a 1975 McGill News interview, "It was a major event that marked us all, one way or another." The show's authors, of course, didn't know that at the time. Don MacSween, who became director general of the National Theatre School in the 1970s -- a position once held by Domville -- recalled his only ambition was "to get the damned thing written in time for opening night."
In 1982, the cast and crew of the show reunited for the twenty-fifth anniversary. Before the fiftieth, perhaps we could be treated to a re-release, in CD format, of the smash musical?
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