Volume 30 Issue 5 | April & May 2025

MUSICAL THEATRELife

MUSICAL THEATRELife After’sfull circleJENNIFER PARRFirst rehearsal of Life After. L to R: Alex Edwards, Mariand Torres,Britta Johnson, Ryan Lewis, Kaylee HarwoodMICHAEL COOPERThis April, acclaimedCanadian composer,writer, and lyricist BrittaJohnson’s Life After returns tothe city where it began, in anew production at the CAA EdMirvish Theatre. I saw the firstprofessional production backin 2017 at Canadian Stage’sBritta JohnsonBerkeley Street Theatre and remember being captivatedby the fluidity of the staging, the deeply felt yet oftenfunny writing, and the way the songs carried theaudience into the heart of the characters’ emotions.Life After is not your typical musical, focusing as it does on an innerjourney – that of 16-year-old Alice, trying to come to terms with thesudden death of her father, famous self-help guru, Frank Carter. Theshow’s own journey, from first inspiration to its first fully commercialproduction, is also an absorbing one, so I took the opportunity to findout more, by talking to its creator and some of her collaborators.Coming of age: “It started,” Johnson told me, “when I participated,at age 19, in the Paprika Festival in Toronto – a free program for writersunder 21 – as one of their playwrights in residence. I had lost my dadwhen I was 13, and then, while I was 19, one of my best friends passedaway.” In both cases, she told me, she found herself at visitations,feeling so clumsy, not knowing what to do or say. “But also findingthe richness of comedy in the situation; so Life After started as a fewsongs sung from a single character’s point of view at one of thesevisitations. It wasn’t necessarily about me. I was just processing thecomplexity of how your reality is temporarily altered when you areactively grieving, and I thought music could help me explore that.”Very quickly it became a show that wasn’t about her at all. “[It’sabout] a family that is SO different from mine, and much more aboutthe texture of coming of age through the experience of grief, and howwe can use music to illustrate that specific experience in a way thatfeels honest and funny and warm, and that’s what I’ve been trying todo. I didn’t even know it would BE a musical when I started.”First full Life: The first full musical version of Life After debutedat the Toronto Fringe Festival in the summer of 2016, and the showtook off from there. As Johnson told me, “I remember at one ofMICHAEL COOPERour fringe shows, I was onstage playing the piano and I could seeeveryone in the audience and there was this row that had MatthewJocelyn from Canadian Stage, Mitchell Marcus from the MusicalStage Company and Natalie Bartello and Linda Barnett of YongeStreet Theatricals (YST) – and I remember looking out and thinking‘oh, we better nail it tonight!’ I saw them all talking outside thetheatre afterwards and very soon after that it all came together.”It’s unusual to have commercial producers enter the picture so earlyin the development of a show. “It was an admirable thing,” Johnsonsays: “YST collaborated with both Canadian Stage and the MusicalStage Company to create the first production in 2017, then stayed andhave been ushering it along in collaboration with various people eversince. It’s been such a game changer and it’s really exciting to be backin Toronto with them.”Yonge Street Theatricals, based in Toronto, is a Tony, Olivier,and Dora Award-winning production company led by foundersBarnett and Bartello. The duo have been quietly working together oncreating new musicals at the grassroots level for 18 years with a focuson developing new Canadian talent. Their Broadway credits include:Maybe Happy Ending, A Strange Loop, and Come From Away,among others. They told me about their first meeting with Johnsonwhen she was part of one of the first cohorts of their Noteworthyprogram (created with Musical Stage) where playwrights andcomposers are paired to create mini musicals.“Britta was paired with Sara Farb and from the minute she puther fingers on the keys, Linda and I were astonished at her talent.”When they saw Life After at the Fringe their immediate reactionwas “how can we get this up as quickly as possible with this amountof money.” They immediately joined forces with Musical Stageand Canadian Stage for the Berkeley Street production. Under YSTproduction auspices, Life After’s journey took it next to the OldGlobe Theatre in San Diego in 2019, then to Chicago’s GoodmanTheatre in 2022 directed by Annie Tippe, who is also directing theupcoming Toronto production.Enter the Furies: Workshops and rewriting have been a constant inLife’s journey, before each iteration of the show. But “the big pillars”of the show, as Johnson describes them, have stayed the same fromthe get-go. “The first songs that I wrote – Alice’s Poetry and Snow,and the mum’s Wallpaper - are the things that have been alteredthe least. I wrote them even before I knew I was going to be a writerand this is important as it feels like that is where the most honestversions of this teenage grief lives.”One big change post-Fringe was the addition to the cast of anunexpected trio of shapeshifting figures called the Furies. “So muchof what Alice goes through,” Johnson explains “is in her own head,24 | April & May 2025 thewholenote.com

JJ GEIGERbut if she can be in conversation, if there is something leading heron, then there can be a kind of hero’s journey that she is going on.I think of the Furies as the funeral guests that never leave and thenanimate her world around her. They are also helpful to fill out thecomedy of the story.”Overall, the structure of the show has remained remarkablyconstant, Johnson says, “but I’ve had the chance to decorate theshow with more and more detail [and] as I grow I get better atwriting the adult characters. At the beginning I really had access toAlice but I didn’t know what her mum was really thinking about;now I’m closer to her mum’s age, and it gives me perspective on themany chapters of life and where that fits in with grief.”That being said, there is one substantial change for the upcomingproduction – a new song near the beginning replacing a spokenscene between Alice and her dad, Frank. “We had been asking forthe song very patiently for a while,” producers Bartello and Barnetttold me. “We always felt that Frank needed another song. It’s a veryfun number, a duet for Frank and Alice at a very happy time in theirrelationship. It’s really fleshed out the show.” The show’s directoragrees: “A brand new song within the first 20 minutes of the show[was] something we had all craved, but had needed the benefit ofthe full process of the last production (in Chicago) to know that thatscene needed to become a song.”Annie Tippe: Tippe is the third directorJohnson has worked with on Life After.“I have loved working with each of themand learned so much,” Johnson says.“What I really love about working withAnnie is that she is close to my age, weshare the loss of a dad, and she is deeply,deeply funny and very collaborative. … Shereally understands the teenage girl world,really shares that point of view with me;collaborating with her unlocks reallyexciting and theatrical things.”Annie TippeTippe echoes Johnson: “I was sent the script by my agent and thedemos from the show, and I had a reaction that I have truly never hadbefore. Not only did I instantly fall in love with the material but all ofa sudden felt immediate excitement and anger at the possibility thatI might not be given the chance to direct the show. I lost my fatherten years ago now, and the thing that I received, even just reading thelibretto right off the page, was the remarkable humour and the perfectcapture of the absurdity of losing someone when you are young andhaving to process the world after they’re gone. I found myself laughingand crying as I read it and I just knew that I had to fight to have thechance to have this opportunity to direct it. We met and I rememberus within 30 minutes of meeting crying together, and I thought ‘okaythis is going to be a good partnership’.”The cast: Another constant in the show’s evolution has been howto go about casting it. “Always,” says Johnson, “you first have to findan Alice as she is only 16 years old, and then build the rest of the castaround her. We needed to find someone with Olympic vocal chopsas she carries the show, but also a true vulnerability so that ouraudience can access her.”It’s a tough combination to find but, as Bartello and Barnettremarked, “We were really lucky [this time]. Isabella Esler walked intothe room and her resume was like a blank sheet – with just one credit(two years playing Lydia on the U.S. national tour of Beetlejuice) – andyet very quickly we knew this was the person we needed.” “She is theyoungest Alice we have ever had,” Johnson adds. “She’s truly astonishing.She has this huge emotional world, she’s so funny and has anamazing voice. I think her star has just begun to rise.”And they have built a standout majority-Canadian cast around her:Jake Epstein as Frank, Chilina Kennedy as Ms Hopkins, Julia Pulo asHannah, and Kaylee Harwood, Arinea Hermans and Zoë O’Connor asthe furies. “We fought for that,” say Bartello and Barnett, “it’s beenIsabella Esler (Alice) sings “Poetry” from Life After in rehearsal.part of our life’s work educating our New York colleagues that thereare excellent performers here.”With this Toronto production, Life After comes full circle. “Itfeels incredible and the exact right next step to bring it home,”Johnson says. “This is the community that raised me. This is thecommunity that raised this show, and to have so many Canadiansin it that I have shared so much of my creative life with, it feels likethe amalgamation of everything beautiful I have got to be part ofin my career. A perfect homecoming. I am truly so proud to be aCanadian artist.”Life After plays at the CAA Mirvish Theatre April 16 to May 10.https://www.mirvish.com/shows/life-afterJennifer Parr is a Toronto-based director, dramaturge, fightdirector and acting coach, brought up from a young age on a richmix of musicals, Shakespeare and new Canadian plays.RobeRtle diableBY GIACOMO MEYERBEERFRENCH OPERA WITH ENGLISH SURTITLESFRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025 | 8 PMJEANNE LAMON HALLTRINITY-ST.PAUL’S CENTRE427 BLOOR ST WNEW VENUE!HELEN BECQUÉ, MUSIC DIRECTORWITHROBERT COOPER, CM& THE OPERA IN CONCERT CHORUSRCM TICKETS416-408-0208 OROPERAINCONCERT.COM/TICKETSKEVIN LEE SMITHthewholenote.com April & May 2025 | 25