New Al Purdy song cycle “The Shape of Home” unspools like a tight, cinematic long take

The Shape of Home: Songs in Search of Al Purdy unspools seamlessly like a master film-maker’s long take. Bold, complex and exquisite, the new song cycle currently playing at Crow’s Theatre is more than the sum of its considerable parts.  

To summarize those parts:  

• The focus of the The Shape of Home is the life and work of Canada’s unofficial poet laureate Al Purdy, who was born near Trenton, Ontario during World War One and died in 2000. In between, he published more than 30 books of poetry, a novel, two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence.
• The show is performed by Beau Dixon, Hailey Gillis, Andrew Penner, Raha Javanfar and Frank Cox-O’Connell. This is a Murderer’s Row of award-winning artists that Toronto audiences know from concerts, song cycles, musicals and plays performed for companies like Soulpepper, The Musical Stage Company, Crow’s Theatre and others. The five created the show, along with Marni Jackson (co-writer of the film Al Purdy Was Here).
• The Shape of Home was commissioned by Festival Players, who operate in the heart of Prince Edward County, where Al Purdy was born and lived for much of his life. 
• Yes – in addition to the piano and the drums on the floor, the show’s five stars are going to play all of those instruments you see hanging on the rustic, wood-panelled wall at left as you enter the Studio Theatre at Crow’s. That includes guitars of all different shapes and sizes, the banjo, the fiddle, the drum, the tuba and the cornet.

Those are the parts. And under Cox-O’Connell’s deft direction, they fuse to yield an intricate and unbroken multi-sensory experience. 

In telling the story, Dixon, Gillis, Penner, Javanfar and Cox-O’Connell are all Al Purdy. In brief excerpts mined from his oeuvre, they tell the story of his life: his relationships, his struggles to write poetry (admittedly bad poetry at first) and his moves criss-crossing the country until a return to Prince Edward County’s Roblon Lake, which unlocked something new and vital.

Each voices Purdy’s reflections on his family, his livelihood, his art, and his contemporaries. Each speaks Purdy’s prose and recites his poetry. Each sings that poetry in soaring and soulful new songs, whose styles and speeds are as arresting and vital as Purdy’s words.  

Each shift in speaker or singer is a proxy for the movement of time. 

And yet . . . at the exact same time, the five performers are recounting the pandemic origins of The Shape of Home: the dark days of lockdown isolation, when they created this work over Zoom, and found sustenance in Purdy’s perseverance and wisdom. 

Like riders on a carousel, Dixon, Gillis, Penner, Javanfar and Cox-O’Connell glide around the stage – stalking, stepping, swaying, singing and playing that multitude of instruments. Earnest, intense and uplifting, they take seamless turns at lead vocals and harmonies, and rotate among the instruments. (You can’t be on this stage unless you’re expert in more than one!).   

And with kinetic and aural inevitability, The Shape of Home’s disparate elements mesh seamlessly into a joyous journey and life-affirming celebration scored with haunting original music. Five bravura performances yield a tight, transcendent experience that is unlike anything else you’ll likely see this year. 

The Shape of Home is a must see. And for me, a “must see again.”  

Reserve tickets to The Shape of Home on crowstheatre.com.  

© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2022

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