My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding was a hit at the 2009 Toronto Fringe Festival.
A scene from the earlier Fringe production of the musical comedy.
As fate would have it, audience members included Mirvish Production staffers, who told David Mirvish about the show. Mirvish went to see the musical and was impressed.
As a result, Mirvish Productions has mounted an expanded and reworked production, which opens at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre for an open-ended run beginning Nov. 7.
“When members of my staff saw the very first performances of this hilarious and touching musical, they reported back to me with such enthusiasm that I even took my out-of-town guests to a performance,” Mirvish says.
After seeing the show himself, Mirvish invited the show’s writers, husband-and-wife team David Hein and Irene Carl Sankoff, to his boardroom. During the meeting with the theatre mogul, they discussed how they could expand the one-hour show to an hour and a half.
“At the performance we attended, the crowd went wild, and they had good reason to do so,” Mirvish said. “It doesn’t often happen that a show leaps straight from its Fringe beginnings and lands in the mainstream.
“The last time it happened was 10 years ago with a little show we discovered [also at the Toronto Fringe] called The Drowsy Chaperone, which we helped to develop over a workshop and several productions. And everyone knows what eventually happened with that show.” It was a big hit in Toronto before opening on Broadway.
My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding is based on the true story of Hein’s mother, who moved from the Prairies to Ontario and in the process discovered her sexuality and rediscovered her Judaism.
“It is about her coming out to me as a lesbian and a Jew,” Hein says. “She never practised Judaism before, so we never celebrated holidays or went to temple when I was growing up. In the play and in life, there was a specific moment that she told me she was going to a synagogue, singing in a Jewish choir and learning Hebrew.”
Hein is an award-winning singer-songwriter and actor, who plays himself in the production and also serves as the musical director.
He’s been married to Sankoff, an actor, for eight years. Sankoff also performs in My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, playing Michelle, a young lesbian and confidante of Hein’s mom, as she is making her way from her old life and rediscovering herself.
In the play, as in real life, Hein introduced Sankoff to both his mothers at Hooters. One of the songs Hein wrote for the play is called Don’t Take Your Lesbian Moms to Hooters.
In the show, Sankoff is played by Lori Nancy Kalamanski. Shaw and Stratford Festival veteran, Lisa Horner, plays Hein’s mother.
The new production of My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, directed by Andrew Lamb, allows for a bigger cast, crew and band, as well as better lighting and costumes than the Fringe production. Hein also wrote more songs for it.
Hein says that the association with Mirvish has allowed them to amp it up and take the show to the next level.
Sankoff says that with the longer format, the story has a lot more breathing space. “Now we can visit some of the themes that were in the first production more closely and find out about who the background characters are. We now have more space onstage, so before dance numbers were sort of suggested, and now they’re able to take a life of their own.”
Hein says: “At the end of the day, it is really a beautiful love story about one person falling in love with someone else. I think in the play there is something for everyone who has ever fallen in love. It is a great show for parents and kids.”
Sankoff adds: “It is about respecting other people’s faith and sexual orientation, and about how we are all the same on the inside, with the same desires, and that we all want to fall in love and want to have families and to be able to express who we are.”
Tickets are available at the Panasonic Theatre box office or by phone at 416-872-1212, or toll-free, at 1-800-461-3333. For more information, visit www.mirvish.com.
