Truth-telling, imagery take you on amazing musical journey

There are a couple of issues. More about those later.

I don’t suppose anyone who read Tom Wilson’s 2017 autobiography, “Beautiful Scars, Steeltown Secrets, Mohawk Skywalkers and the Road Home,” ever thought it would be the least bit ordinary as a full-fledged musical. And of course it’s not.

Through a kind of contemporary poetry that is pure Wilson, filtered here through compassionate, sometimes linear storytelling by Wilson and co-conspirator Shaun Smyth, “Beautiful Scars” is a powerful and personal story well told.

It’s a theatre piece that blissfully ignores the conventions of today’s largely claustrophobic musicals, where lungs are laid on the floor, notes are warbled relentlessly and words are amplified beyond the ache of eardrums. No, “Beautiful Scars” is wonderfully old-fashioned in the way it takes the heft of imagination and filters it through a Technicolor lens. It’s like “The Wizard of Oz,” “Hair” and maybe even “Oklahoma!” in the way it takes bold images and paints them in a highly elevated vocal and visual way.

Take the fragmented and wildly stunning stage set from designer Jay Havens that evokes Wilson’s own richly atmospheric paintings. This landscape connects the reality of Quebec’s Mercier Bridge with the belching smokestacks of the once powerful steel mills of Hamilton. Flung under the teardrop winks of abstract eyes, blinking above the stage, side-by-side with winking faraway stars, they suggest some far away heaven.

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• Dec 31, 1969
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• Dec 31, 1969
• Comments

Washed by rainbow hues from Kevin Fraser’s painterly lighting, these heavenly onlookers can be approving, or sometimes offering caustic comment.

Then there are Yolonda Skelton’s costumes, offering an appropriate feeling of lived-in personality.

It’s always the Wilson songs, however, those mood-drenched melodies, that give this sometimes sweet, sometimes rough definition of a musical the words it needs to sing.

Songs, including that anthem, “Calling On The Angels,” “Give Me Some Light” and the powerful “Leave This House” are embedded into this musical’s tale of perseverance and celebration. And you know, they fit perfectly. They grow naturally out of what’s happening on stage, as all songs in musicals should. Performed defiantly, they are the heart of this quirky musical.

Director and dramaturge Mary Francis Moore has tugged the many disparate elements of what might have been a rangy, episodic tale into a unified whole. Her staging is always fresh, imaginative and brave. And yes, it’s quirky too.

Miraculously Moore has found the perfect cast to tell this sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes angry story.

Sheldon Elter is a mesmerizing Tom, singing Wilson’s songs with musical clarity that is always simple but spellbinding. He is the fulcrum on which this production turns. But he’s far from the whole shebang.

Kristi Hansen is thrilling as Bunny, Wilson’s adoptive mother. She has such a shimmering soulful sound, and even when she retreats into the background, as part of the show’s excellent ensemble, you can’t take your eyes off her.

Jeremy Proulx as Bear, Wilson’s guiding spirit and sometimes belligerent comrade, is magnificent. A catalyst for much of Wilson’s thinking, he binds this show together, a kind of conjure man and relentless inner voice, maybe even a nagging conscience.

Brandon McGibbon’s George, Wilson’s adoptive dad, has a warm and powerful voice, and you wish he had more to sing. And Valerie Planche finds such vulnerability in Jane, Wilson’s birth mother, that you finally weep for her.

It’s a real plus having Thompson Wilson as Young Tom, helping to connect reality with this story’s roots.

Now about those issues. The show’s two pivotal scenes, where Janie and Tom sit talking about the secret that has haunted Tom’s life, unfortunately bring the show to a halt. The pacing is too slow and mechanical and the scenes, at least the way they’re played here, haven’t sufficient heft to work in this purely narrative way.

And now to a more worrisome area. Maybe it’s just me, but Bear’s monologue about the tyranny of white settlers and the horrors of things done to Indigenous people, while all true and devastating, goes on too long, past its point.

On the musical side, musical director Bob Foster has done a remarkable job with the arrangements and orchestrations for this powerful show. And movement director Barbara Kaneratonni Diablo’s always-apt choreography, coupled with Phil Davis’ authentic dance performances, is a marriage of movement and music that seems organic, never imprinted.

It was obvious if you read Tom Wilson’s 2017 book, or listened to any of his songs, that “Beautiful Scars” wouldn’t shake down as an ordinary musical. Though heaven knows, musicals have taken some darker turns lately. Consider “Spring Awakening” with its religious backslap and sexual repression. Or perhaps “Hadestown,” where mood and atmosphere take over as powerful allies in the narrative.

“Beautiful Scars” takes me back to experimental musicals in Greenwich Village in the 1960s and a little later on Broadway.

I’m thinking of “Celebration” and “Working,” shows ahead of their time that broke the traditional musical mould.

Go surrender to some theatrical magic at Theatre Aquarius. I think you’ll be glad you did.