Can I Stop Writing This Show Now?
Short answer: No.
Long answer: Yes, for a while.
April 2013 has come and gone, and so has the third production of Bloodless: The Trial of Burke and Hare, lovingly nicknamed “Bloodless 3.0″ by the wonderful people at White Rabbit Productions, who remounted it. Significant changes were made to script and score since the Theatre 20 production in Toronto last October, including the addition of new songs and the restoration of old ones. It was directed by my longtime colleague Sharon Bajer, and presented at Winnipeg’s newest performance venue, Le Cercle Moliere. The space has modular seating, and was arranged in an alley-style configuration for our production. This made the show very intimate and immediate, with the audience facing each other and “becoming” the jury at the trial or the students at the anatomy lecture.
“Bloodless 3.0” was well-received — Good turnout, good buzz, a few sell-outs, and a very favourable review in the Winnipeg Free Press. Even Adam Brazier, Bloodless’s Toronto director, flew in to see it and was very much encouraged by the show’s evolution. What’s next for it? Not a clue. There’s more work to be done towards version 4.0, but for now I’m content to take a little vacation from it and let it cool.
In other news, if you’re an avid reader of The Sondheim Review (TSR), the quarterly magazine devoted to all things Sondheim-y, may I direct your attention to page 21 of the upcoming issue (Summer 2013). There you will find my disproportionately huge mug and about 1,700 words of semi-informed prattling authored by Yours Truly. I was approached by TSR to contribute an essay for their “Following Sondheim” series, where musical theatre writers get to wax with varying degrees of eloquence upon Sondheim’s influence on their work. The reason they would tap an unknown schlub like me to write an article for them is still a mystery, but — like any good Canadian — I was just happy to be asked. I think it’s an okay article myself, but had I considered that one of those avid readers of The Sondheim Review is Sondheim himself, I might have finessed it a little more. Oh well.