Wartime broadcast

Till We Meet Again revisits the days of
WWII by recreating radio newscasts
and song and dance numbers

AIR RAIDS ON THE AIRWAVES: Till We Meet Again

by NEIL BOYCE

Continuing thematically from last week’s show, where a warehouse was fitted out like an apartment, we’re still on this “different kind of theatre” thing: getting out of typical stagings and familiar venues and into new kinds of experiences.

David Langlois’s historical musical Till We Meet Again puts us in a time machine, reconstructing a live CBC broadcast from the ’40s. It was the voice of Canada at War for the families back home who waited for news of their loved ones and how the battle was progressing across Europe.

Hudson Village Theatre founder Heather Markgraf-Lowe, with her new company Theatre Panache, is breathing life once again into a show that’s gaining momentum with each successive production (this is its fourth run since 2003).

“What this show does,” she says, “is try to let people know what it was like back home at the time for families to be sitting around the radio and listening to news direct from the front.”

The audience is in the imagined setting of the Normandie Roof at the Mount Royal Hotel; we’re cast as viewers of the original live broadcasts. An active part of the piece, viewers are cued by applause signs and encouraged to sing along, making it more than just a nostalgic revue for old-timers.

“The radio shows of 1942–’43 had a formula,” says Markgraf-Lowe. “News of the day, commercials, the letter from home, the report from the front.”

As well as the radio broadcast and the song and dance numbers, there’s the backstory of the performance, woven through with personal stories and the text of actual letters between soldiers and their families.

Langlois went through CBC and government archives as he assembled the piece, speaking to over 100 veterans about their experiences to make sure the work felt authentic.

The NDG Legion—where Theatre Panache are practicing for the show—is a sprawling building, hidden away in the run-down part of de Maisonneuve West where it’s bisected by the autoroute. In this no man’s land of beat-up auto body shops, a busy hive of theatre activity is underway throughout the building.

On the main floor next to a bar, an accompanist bangs out a tune on a piano while the singer warbles through a number. Vintage war posters and framed newspaper clippings adorn one wall, with giant headlines screaming, “Men of Valour: They Fight For You” and “Come on Canada!”

Downstairs, three girls sway through “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B.” Later, choreographer Lorna Wayne tightens up a routine with two guys and a girl. It hits a minor snag when, midway though “Sentimental Journey,” singer Amanda LeBlanc crashes through the thin sticks (used in place of canes for the stage show) held by her dance partners to support her.

LeBlanc, amid general laughter, recovers with a laugh, “Well, that makes a girl feel wonderful.”

The touring show begins in Montreal this month, heading to Ontario (where it plays, fittingly, at the War Museum in Ottawa just after Remembrance Day) before looping back to finish here once again in late November.

TILL WE MEET AGAIN, OCT. 16–17
AND NOV. 21–22 AT 8 P.M. AT OSCAR
PETERSON CONCERT HALL (7141 SHERBROOKE W.)
INFO: (514) 848-4848, OSCAR.CONCORDIA.CA
VETERANS AND MILITARY DISCOUNT.