Actors rehearse at the Medicine Hat Musical Theatre for the upcoming production of The Full Monty. From left are Andrea Krause, Amber Stark, Allie Kapcala and Susanne White.--NEWS PHOTO SAMANTHA JOHNSON
reporter@medicinehatnews.com
“The show must go on” is definitely a fitting cliche for the Medicine Hat Musical Theatre’s first production of the 2023-24 season.
Rehearsals for The Full Monty, director Becky Grewer’s second production for MHMT – using the Broadway adaption set in Buffalo, N.Y. of the 1997 British movie – were going well until chaos intervened and half the 21-person cast were out with respiratory illnesses a couple of weeks ago.
“We’ve never run with understudies. There was the odd show where there may have been one or two,” explained Grewer. “It’s not something we’ve every really done. This is an ensemble show that you can’t run without one cast member. We’ve been working on plan B for the what if somebody drops. In the old days, it was stay on stage. We encourage people not to do that anymore.”
The lead character, Jerry, is played by Gord Hawker, who is making his debut on the MHMT stage. Hawker sang for 15 years in a barbershop quartet and was looking for a creative outlet after moving to Medicine Hat in August 2022.
“He’s (Jerry) found himself out of work for 18 months and he’s lost,” stated Hawker. “His marriage is falling apart. He’s worried about losing his son and making enough money to catch up on support payments.”
Hawker has enjoyed getting to know everybody at MHMT and finding a musical community. The songs have been easy for him, but the dialogue has been more of a challenge.
“It’s a good, fun night out,” said Hawker. “What’s interesting about it is we can put ourselves there … who am I (without my job) and what am I going to do to know I’m more than that? The music is fun, happy and there are lots of laughs.”
Amber Stark has been involved with the theatre for about 20 years and has worn many different hats.
“It’s a wonderful community and so addictive. As soon as you join, you feel like you are part of a family,” she said.
For this production, Stark is playing Vicki, the much younger wife of one of the Monty’s.
“She’s a bit eccentric but very in love with her husband,” said Stark. Her husband lost his job, as supervisor at the steel plant, but hasn’t told his wife yet. He’s afraid Vicki will leave him if he can’t afford to buy her all the things she wants and this is one of the underlying questions throughout the show.
“It’s been a challenging show,” said Stark who is also involved in set design. “It follows the movie so closely and the movie has many different scenes. It was a big challenge, especially when I designed the set. How do you create all these different scenes with just one set?”
Cast and crew at MHMT will continue to be busy as they are running four shows this season. Coming up in January is Little Women, followed by Rock of Ages in March and finishing with Mambo Italiano in May.
The Full Monty runs from Oct. 20 to Nov. 4 and start time is 8:00 p.m. The show will run for over two hours with an intermission. For more information or to buy tickets go to https://mhmtheatre.com/.
