Jeff Hyslop Articles

There's something blithely unpredictable about showbiz in this country. Take the case of Jeff Hyslop, sipping a beer while we muse on the theme of: "only in Canada; where else could it happen?"

If there's an Anne of Green Gables in Hyslop's extensive past (as Gilbert Blythe), there's also a Hamlet (John Neville's production in which he played Laertes). There were four years dancing in the New York production of A Chorus Line, yes; but there was also a Timon of Athens. The narrator of the Toronto Symphony's 1986 Sorcerer's Apprentice is Jeff the Mannequin in TV Ontario's hit Today's Special. I Do! I Do! rubs shoulders with Love's Labours Lost in the Hyslop resume.

You find this hyperkinetic director cum actor cum dancer cum choreographer staging either The Vast (a touring Peter Pan, say, Stratford's Irma La Douce, every telethon in the history of Vancouver.), and hip and unexpected � like the oddball six-woman musical that opens Thursday under his I direction at the Mayfair Dinner Theatre. "Yup, it's the huge canvas versus the little pen and ink sketch," he says cheerfully.

In the latter category is this Canadian premiere of 6 Women With Brain Death (Or Expiring Minds Want To Know), an evocatively titled musical born in Kansas (trust me, the only thing it shares with Dorothy and Toto). It ran two years in San Diego before Hyslop and Vancouver's SDA productions discovered it at a 99-seat theatre in LA.

Hyslop, a friendly, personable sort who made time for a chat and a few desultory leaps in the air before rehearsal this week, describes 6 Women, plausibly, as "nicely gruesome, cheeky, funny but black funny" � as befits a show threaded with the bizarre headlines of the species you read in The National Expirer: Mother Gives Self Caesarian and Bears Twins or I Saw Jesus In A Taco Shell.

"How often do you get to hear six women do six-part harmony?" says Hyslop, initially attracted by the music. "There's crazy rock, there's bebop, there's '70s pop-rock, there's Manhattan Transer, there's real musical comedy, there's the Nylons . . . it's a very tuneful score; people will go out humming at least some of the songs."

More unexpectedly, perhaps, says Hyslop, is a certain funny poignancy in the show. "These ladies are frustrated with their husbands, their lovers, their

Hyslop's versatility takes lots of energy
LIZ NICHOLLS

kids, the things Oprey tells them� They're saturated with b.s." Reality, in a word, and its obverse but revealing reflection in The National Expirer, has got them down.

There are "little slices of life" in the show, says Hyslop. "No through-line, but they're distinct personalities, and by the end you know each of them."

In a world where post-pubescent roles for actresses are to be cherished, 6 Women sounds like a find. "The prerequisite to be in the show," smiles Hyslop, "is that you have to be over 30, and you have to have had a 20-year reunion." How else does the scene in which they play 16-year-olds getting ready for the prom make any sense?

It's essentially a star-less ensemble, says Hyslop approvingly of his sextet (which contains Edmonton actor Christine Maclnnis). And the show is an ideal commercial vehicle � "yes, it's obviously by an American, musically, dramatically, comedically" � in that its tabloid references can be updated.

It is some measure of Hyslop's desire to do a show he finds "delightful" that he was far from idle when Howard Pechet presented the opportunity two short weeks ago (his Mayfair Dinner Theatre has been dark since Mass Appeal closed last month).

Hyslop concedes that getting a show cast and on to the stage in a fortnight isn't anyone's idea of tranquillity. So he and the women have been closeted in a defunct Vancouver scene shop � "it's a good thing we're all so compatible," he grins.

And then there's the standing-room-only production that Hyslop himself is in every Tuesday night at the Soft Rock Cafe in Vancouver. A Little Show, devised by Hyslop and his wife of 14 years, actress Ruth Nichol, who star in it together, is "a vaudeville, rag-time revue - we hardly speak; we mostly sing," It's been so successful � and in a town where theatre managers pray for bad weather to salvage the box office � they plan to take it on a national tour.

One reason it's fun to talk to Hyslop is that he has a panoptic sense of Canadian theatre. And no wonder. Not only does he work continually and across the country, in classical companies, in musicals, on TV and film, on esoteric Canadian plays, with dance companies. But at 38, he's done it for an astonishing 28 years, which is exactly how long he's had his Equity card.

Taken From:
The Edmonton Journal
Sunday, July 9, 1989

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