1997: Richard 111

http://www.canoe.ca/TheatreStratford/richard3_jun26.html

2000:Three Musketeers

http://jam.canoe.ca/Theatre/Reviews/T/The_3_Muskateers/2000/06/01/742530.html

2000: Hamlet

http://jam.canoe.ca/Theatre/Reviews/H/Hamlet/2000/05/30/742033.html

2005:Urinetown

http://jam.canoe.ca/Theatre/2005/06/28/pf-1107705.html

2006:The Wrong Son

(Thanks to Maria for these)

The Globe and Mail  www.globeandmail.com

Review by KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE

The Wrong Son

Directed by Peter Hinton

Written and composed by Allen Cole

Rating: 2 1/2 stars

So much for easing himself into the job with a well-made play or a crowd-pleasing musical! The first show of Peter Hinton's tenure as artistic director of English theatre at Ottawa's National Arts Centre is a complicated work of literary and musical licence-taking that's at once a bold artistic statement and an uneasy marriage of opposites.

It's as thrilling as it's frustrating and as sane as it's ultimately maddening.

The Wrong Son is a sung-through musical, written and composed by Allen Cole, which weds the free-flowing rhythms of jazz to the predetermined, inescapable narrative tropes of Roman drama and film noir. It takes a visual and psychological vocabulary largely identified with movies set in the urban jungles of postwar America and transplants it to the quieter shores of Nova Scotia's Bay of Fundy. It has a sophisticated score full of compositional surprises and tonal innovation but, frustratingly, is built around a largely inane storyline.

The sights and sounds of The Wrong Son may look derivative, but some elements are so fearlessly remixed, the lines between original creation and homage are constantly crossed -- heck, trampled on is more like it. My ears loved it, particularly since it's exquisitely sung. My eyes adored the look of it, with Hinton's direction working one visual miracle after another with Dany Lyne's set and costume designs. But my mind had the hardest time going along with Cole's story, which in turn muted its emotional resonance.

The musical, 16 years in development, is borne out of Cole's fascination with the noir genre, but his work, as far as the storytelling goes, marks the difference between revisiting a genre and replicating its broad strokes.

Here's my best shot at summarizing the plot: Ryle (a commanding David

Keeley) is a returning Second World War soldier who is now working as a piano player in a Halifax bar with torch singer Maggie (Tamara Bernier who never sounded or looked lovelier). When a drunken woman (played by Corrine Koslo as a fragile tough-talkin' dame) interrupts their performance, her identity and then her murder (which he may or may not have committed) send Ryle running from the crime scene. This takes him to the highway where he's picked up by Cornell (the always-sympathetic Martin Julien), a man on his way to meet the biological father who gave him up for adoption as a child. After a road accident in which Cornell is left for dead, Ryle assumes his identity and heads to a remote cottage where he presents himself to the father (Frank Moore, making the most of an improbable character and a ridiculous costume) as the son. A pair of singing detectives (brilliantly captured by Randi Helmers and John Millard) act as chorus and Ryle's talking and singing subconscious.

Among its other narrative problems -- insufficient grounding of characters tops the list -- The Wrong Son takes an unexpected shift from noir to fairy-tale land once Ryle and the "father figure" meet.

Cole himself is fond of fairy tales and has crafted more than one musical inspired by them, The Crimson Veil being the most famous. The father's surroundings and his stash of gold bullion that the "wrong son" will one day inherit are Cole's attempt to find a Canadian context to a genre that owes its roots to European expressionism and its glory to American hard-boiled fiction. There's a smart comment there about the relative innocence of Canada and the beginning of the end of that innocence, but the price the musical pays for as it spins out of narrative control is too high.

Hinton and Lyne, however, are in full control of the look and feel of the production. Both invoke more than atmosphere, although that remains their creative priority. With allusions to both movie sets and recording studios -- the Arraymusic Ensemble plays onstage behind a wall of reflective framed glass -- Lyne draws attention to the modes through which audiences have come to experience noir art.

But the more dazzling the production looks, the more hollow its centre is revealed to be. If only Cole had concocted a story that would let all that creativity, including his own score, show to full advantage.

The gods have created book writers for musicals for a very good reason after all.

Ottawa Sun www.ottawasun.com

September 19, 2006

The Wrong Son, at the NAC Sept. 22-Oct. 7 By DENIS ARMSTRONG

Twenty years ago, a promising university student named Allen Cole couldn't decide whether he wanted to be a novelist or a composer.

Ultimately, he couldn't decide so he chose to compose music for the theatre. And not big splashy plays but artistically ambitious operas, operettas and musicals, all with a distinctly Canadian personality.

The latest, The Wrong Son, comes to the National Arts Centre on Friday.

"I've always been into both literature and music and when I had to decide between the two, I couldn't," Cole admits between rehearsals.

"I knew I wanted to write fiction but was equally drawn to film music particularly cinema noir. I had always loved Bernard Herrmann's movie scores, Psycho, Citizen Kane and North By Northwest spring to mind, because he sounded like he was writing the story with music rather than dialogue.

"That's when I realized that I wasn't a musician who was strictly interested in writing music, but a dramatist who was creating action through music."

So, inspired by the cinema Cole set out to write The Wrong Son, a super-jazzy musical that tells the story of Ryle Rawlins, a piano player at the Flamingo Club in Halifax who finds himself wrongly accused of murdering his wife. On the run he steals the identity of a man who picks him up while hitchhiking and ends up hiding out with a lonely old man. Eventually he suspects the old man is the father of the driver whose identity he stole, and that the driver is also likely the real killer.

"The idea is to be an exciting suspenseful thriller with a lot of psychological dark tones. People who don't like jazz won't like it because it has a very jazzy score."

With the musical in the works off and on since 1990, he's had time to iron out all the bugs.

"The good thing about taking that much time is that it's really rich and mature because I spent so much time on it," he says. "I feel a big responsibility given that it's Peter's (director Peter Hinton) first show for the NAC and I want him to kick off his time here with a good one."

This world premiere production features Tamara Bernier, Randi Helmers, Martin Julien, David Keeley, Corrine Koslo, John Millard, Frank Moore and members of the acclaimed ArrayMusic Chamber Ensemble.