Dear Rita goes to the heart of Cape Breton’s First Lady of Song and pulls at the heartstrings in a powerful, musically rich show at Neptune Theatre to August 25.
For anyone who loved Rita and her music, this 95-minute songbook and life story is a must-see. Beyond that its message of personal triumph over adversity is for everyone.
The ending is haunting both as a farewell song – Weary Travelers – with Rita’s own recorded voice broadcast into Fountain Hall and as a stirring message to people to find their own voice and launch it out into the world.
The show’s co-writers, Cape Breton playwright and actor Lindsay Kyte and composer Mike Ross, find Rita’s soul and personal struggles in her music and craft her journey around that as five, highly-talented singers and actors take turns being Rita and also perform passionately as a chorus in beautiful arrangements of famous songs like Flying On Your Own.
The singers have a lovely range of voices from musical theatre to gentle, lilting soprano to country and Cape Breton twangs. They are also good at acting for lashes of humour and heart. And they are familiar to Neptune audiences: Cape Breton native and experienced musical theatre actor Julie Martell (Beauty and the Beast, Mamma Mia!); Halifax-based singer/songwriter and guitarist Ian Sherwood (Argyle Street Kitchen Party); Lisa Nasson (Pawakan MacBeth) and Michelle Yu (Cinderella) with Lindsay Kyte (Tompkinsville) making her Neptune debut.
The singer’s life story is told in quick snapshots from a childhood of family love and torment due to a cleft palette to the 1960s Toronto days as a member of the women’s movement and a struggling young parent to the death of Rita’s beloved mother – particularly moving with the song Who Will I Go To See. Not a dry eye in the house for that one.
The show, drawn from Rita’s songbook of 300 songs, some familiar, some wonderful surprises, cleverly covers her growing celebrity and the nastiness of the media – particularly on the subject of her weight– as record execs struggle to pigeonhole her music as Celtic or folk or country.
What shines through all the hardship including childhood abuse and a descent into alcoholism is Rita’s indomitable spirit and hard-won battles to be true to herself, her music and her people. Ian Sherwood does a magnificient job performing Working Man, introducing himself as a miner who is not allowed to cry and who needs Rita’s words to express his life and soul.
Samantha Wilson directs with warmth, an understanding of humanity and an ability to balance deep emotion with humour. The pacing is excellent in this production which moves along swiftly but doesn’t race through poignant moments. Working with movement director Rebecca Wolfe, Wilson also creates beautiful movement pictures that heighten this production.
The script is well-structured and steeped in Cape Breton culture with Rita’s love-of-home songs and props of tea pots, her rocking chair and her red hat. Set on a minimal stage, designed by Lucas Arab, with the stage wall kept bare, the three-piece band, of music director and conductor Avery-Jean Brennan (piano), Brad Reid (electric bass and cello) and Stephanie McKeown (percussion), plays behind the actors in semi-darkness.
The key focal point is a suite of hanging old-fashioned lampshades that rise up and down with their lit interiors. Leigh Ann Vardy’s lighting is particularly good; her colours and pinpricks of stars are gorgeous. Light is very important to this show literally and as a metaphor for Rita growing out the darkness of despair into the light of her own voice and talent.
Costume stylist Kaelen MacDonald highlights the different time periods and moods in her choices. Michelle Yu, in a soft flowing pink dress, is most like the older, onstage Rita and interweaves her emotive, lilting voice around the actors playing different Ritas. Sound designer is Joe Micallef and stage manager June Zinck.
Kyte was asked by Rita’s son Wade Langham to develop this show and has helmed it through a long and fruitful journey, including tours to Ontario and Newfoundland, to the Neptune mainstage. All the kinks have been worked out long ago.
The show received a standing ovation and hoots and hollars on opening night. It launches the theatre’s 2024/2025 season and is a perfect piece of summer theatre for locals and visitors.
Show times are Sunday, 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m. (masked show is Sunday, Aug. 11, 2 p.m.) Tickets are at www.neptunetheatre.com or call the box office at (902) 429-7070. (They seem to be going quickly.)
Side note: As a reporter I interviewed Rita several times. She was always very gracious and slightly shy and not very forthcoming; it’s a delight to see her fully realized as a woman of steel and incredible soul.
And I have never forgotten seeing Rita perform – barefoot, which does enter this production! – on stage at the Centre Bras d’Or Festival of the Arts in Baddeck in the high school.
So I’d also like to take this opportunity to lament the passing of Stephen “Beak” MacDonald, who ran that festival and was himself so rooted in Cape Breton music and comedy which he championed and produced. (https://www.novascotiaobits.com/post/macdonald-stephen-ewart-beak)
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