Chelsea Hotel

In 1974, Leonard Cohen was asked why his album New Skin for the Old Cer­e­mony was a fail­ure in North Amer­ica and the U.K. but a suc­cess in Europe. “Maybe it’s because they can’t under­stand my lyrics,” he replied. Both Cohen’s self-deprecating wit and the achingly sad poetry of his lyrics are on dis­play in Tracy Power’s play Chelsea Hotel, which is at Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre (280 E. Cor­dova St) until March 3. Chelsea Hotel adds inven­tive dance pieces and impres­sion­is­tic sto­ry­telling to Leonard Cohen’s clas­sic songs, often totally revamp­ing their musi­cal arrange­ments so fresh asso­ci­a­tions are cre­ated. The young cast scam­pers around a set made of paper filled with dis­carded poetry drafts, while adeptly switch­ing off on an astound­ing vari­ety of instru­ments. Adrian Glynn McMor­ran stars as the Writer, who acts out roman­tic regret and cre­ative strug­gle and sings beau­ti­fully. His solo turn, a wrench­ing ren­di­tion of Tonight Will Be Fine, is a show highlight.

The­atre­go­ers famil­iar with Cohen’s work will hear new and often faster paced ver­sions of his songs, such as a sexy cabaret-infused I’m Your Man and an ironic hard-rocking take on Amer­i­can Idol favorite Hal­lelu­jah. The cast’s voices are very, well, dif­fer­ent from Cohen’s self-admitted lim­ited range. Neo­phytes to Cohen will find Chelsea Hotel an excel­lent intro­duc­tion to Canada’s unof­fi­cial Poet Lau­re­ate. And any audi­ence should rel­ish the oppor­tu­nity to appre­ci­ate the depth and beauty of Cohen’s catalogue.

Rachel Aberle is a cast stand­out, play­ing a Sis­ter of Mercy — a com­bi­na­tion nun, nurse, and muse — with play­ful­ness and intel­li­gence. Sad­mag spoke to Rachel Aberle about Leonard Cohen’s cur­rent caché, want­ing to be a muse, and the state of the the­ater scene in Vancouver.

Sad Mag: How famil­iar were you with Cohen’s work before you started Chelsea Hotel? how did your rela­tion­ship to his work evolve as you were doing the play?

Rachel Aberle: To be hon­est, I wasn’t super famil­iar with Cohen prior to this sum­mer when I started to do some research for the audi­tions. I was famil­iar with Hal­lelu­jah, as I guess pretty much every­one in North Amer­ica is — but to be hon­est, the ver­sion I was famil­iar with first was the Jeff Buck­ley ver­sion — which I loved. I remem­ber when I finally heard a record­ing of Cohen singing Hal­lelu­jah think­ing, “This is awful! This guy can’t sing!” This was sev­eral years ago, in my late teens. The cast is all within about 10 years of each other in age, and we all talked about how Cohen’s voice was some­thing that put us off when we were younger, that it’s some­thing we’ve grown to appre­ci­ate as we’ve grown into adult­hood. Can’t remem­ber who, but one of the cast said at a talk-back that “Cohen’s not for kids,” and I think there’s some­thing to that.

Through work­ing on the show I’ve come to appre­ci­ate him so much, not only in terms of music, but in terms of incred­i­ble poetry. I’ve always been a pretty lyrics dri­ven lis­tener, and for that you can’t get much bet­ter than Cohen. He was a poet before he was a song­writer, and it shows.

SM: Yeah, i think that’s one of the great things in the show. You can appre­ci­ate the lyrics as a cap­tive audience

?RA: that’s great to hear. It’s been a really inter­est­ing process to con­nect such poetic lan­guage to some kind of playable acting

SM: Were there any Leonard Cohen songs that you wish had been used in the play, or that you rehearsed and didn’t use?

RA: Those deci­sions were made before I came on board. We did change and add some of the poetry used in the piece — just cer­tain pieces get­ting moved around or short­ened or changed to other things that Tracey felt told the story and got the audi­ence on board faster and more effec­tively than what she had orig­i­nally cho­sen. Because my knowl­edge of Cohen was admit­tedly pretty low before the show, and because we use so many songs (27 to be pre­cise) there aren’t any that I wish were there that aren’t.

SM: Were the writer’s lines in between songs also snip­pets of cohen poetry?

RA: Yes. Every word spo­ken or sung in the show comes from Cohen.

?SM: OK, a cou­ple more Cohen questions…Do you have a favorite song? Or a favorite line from his lyrics?

RA: I love Tonight Will Be Fine. I think the cho­rus speaks to some­thing so pro­found and so hon­est about feel­ings that linger long after one might hope they would. More specif­i­cally the line “We swore to each other our love would surely last/You went right on lov­ing, and I went on a fast/Now I am too thin and your love is too vast.” I feel like I’ve been on both ends of that state­ment — prob­a­bly every­one has at some point. That feel­ing of regret, wish­ing you could feel things that you don’t, or that feel­ings you have could be matched, when they can’t.

I also think that Famous Blue Rain­coat is one of the most beau­ti­fully heart­break­ing songs I’ve ever heard. I’ve never lis­tened to a song that made me sad so repeatedly.

SM: What do you think Leonard Cohen means to Cana­di­ans of your gen­er­a­tion? How is it dif­fer­ent from how he’s viewed by baby boomers?

?RA: To be hon­est, I don’t think Leonard Cohen means much to most of our gen­er­a­tion, and I hope that changes. I won­der partly if it’s because so much of his music has been so widely cov­ered by other artists, but I know for many peo­ple our age that I’ve talked to about this show, the most com­mon response has been that they’re not that famil­iar with Leonard Cohen — which, prior to the show, was pretty much the case for me as well. I think a lot of peo­ple my age think of Cohen as some­one that their par­ents lis­ten to, that they weren’t that into when they were kids.

Hope­fully it’s like a lot of music that’s just too mature for younger audi­ences, and peo­ple start to give it a lis­ten now that they’re old enough to under­stand what the hell he’s talk­ing about. I feel like it’s the kind of music peo­ple in their twen­ties should be lis­ten­ing to all the time. One of my friend’s fathers saw the show and said after­wards that he was tear­ing up through most of the first act because it brought back so many mem­o­ries from his twen­ties. He said you don’t feel those incred­i­ble highs and lows for­ever. I think that’s prob­a­bly what it means to a lot of peo­ple my par­ents’ age — it’s a reminder of the later years of their youth. His lyrics cap­ture so per­fectly what incred­i­ble love and incred­i­ble loss mean, but at a deeper level that any­thing you feel at ado­les­cence. The love is vast because you’re old enough to feel like it actu­ally means some­thing real, and the loss is dev­as­tat­ing, because it feels like a much deeper invest­ment that’s come up dry.

SM: What instru­ments can you play? Did you have to learn any for the show?

?RA: Oh the instruments…

I played the cello reg­u­larly for about 11 years, but those years were between age 4 and 15… so a bit of it’s in the “rid­ing a bike” camp, in that I learned so young that some of that knowl­edge will never go way, but I also had been out of prac­tice for so long until about this time last year that my musi­cian­ship is def­i­nitely still a work in progress in my opinion.

I started play­ing the ukulele this sum­mer for the fun of it. I played the piano in high school, and actu­ally got to a pretty high level, but have been out of prac­tice so long that it’s really crum­bled back into a pretty rudi­men­tary skill

And the bass gui­tar, which I play in the show — I had never touched until our work­shops for the show in early Decem­ber. Our first day of rehearsal Steve said, “Rachel, how do you feel about play­ing bass on [First We Take] Man­hat­tan?” I said, “Well, I’m will­ing to try, but just so we’re all on the same page here, I’ve lit­er­ally never even tried before.” Steve paused for a sec­ond and then said, “Oh yeah. I think you’ll be fine.” I leave that to the audi­ence to judge. The more work I get in the­atre, the more I’m start­ing to feel like half of the bat­tle is decid­ing what you’re crazy enough to agree to try, and then deal­ing with the fall­out of that agreement.

SM: Have you done much musi­cal the­atre before?

?RA: I’ve done a bit. I was one of those kids in high school that was really into musi­cal the­atre, and then I sort of drifted away from it when I went to uni­ver­sity, and then to the­atre school. I’d pretty much stopped think­ing of myself as a musi­cal the­atre per­former. Then in the last year all the shows I’ve wound up doing, while they haven’t all been full musi­cals, they have been full of music, and have required me to sing.

SM: What was it like grow­ing up immersed in the the­atre world? Did you always know you wanted to be an actor, or did you ever have phases of rebelling and want­ing to go into busi­ness or some­thing bour­geois like that?

RA: I had bouts of think­ing that maybe I wanted to be a writer, and for a time even a lawyer — I don’t think they came from a place of rebel­lion how­ever (and you couldn’t really call becom­ing a writer bour­geois). Grow­ing up with a Dad who was in the­atre taught me from a young age that it was a pos­si­bil­ity — that the idea of try­ing to pur­sue a career in the­atre (while maybe still insane) wasn’t impos­si­ble. Peo­ple did it. Hav­ing that knowl­edge meant that I never went through the phase of think­ing “Well, yeah, I want to be an actor, but nobody actu­ally does that… so what am I going to do for real?”

?SM: And I bet a lot of your peers did go through that phase, right?

RA: Yeah — I mean when I think of the peo­ple I went to high school with who I did the­atre with, I don’t think many of them are doing it any more. And to be fair, for some of them it was never some­thing that they wanted to pur­sue after high school — but I do won­der how many more young peo­ple might con­sider going into the­atre, or music, or any artis­tic field for that mat­ter, if it dawned on them that it was a viable option.

SM: How do you feel about the cur­rent state of the the­atre scene in Vancouver?

?RA: That is a tough ques­tion to answer. I guess what I would say is that I know for sure that I’ve been incred­i­bly lucky with the oppor­tu­ni­ties that I’ve had, not only because oppor­tu­ni­ties are scant (and that’s true of the­atre any­where), but also because the projects I’ve got­ten to work on have all been very ful­fill­ing, and very dif­fer­ent from each other, and have all involved incred­i­ble peo­ple. Of course I wish there was more fund­ing — that should go with­out say­ing but unfor­tu­nately we need to keep say­ing it, and keep say­ing it, and then say it some more. And I wish I could fig­ure out what would get the aver­age Van­cou­verite more inter­ested in see­ing plays.

There is so much to do in this city. I get why on a sunny day peo­ple want to go to third beach, and I get why on a rainy day peo­ple are more inter­ested in going up on a moun­tain where it’s snow­ing and rid­ing boards and skis back down the moun­tain. What I wish for is a way to make peo­ple who are inter­ested in those things also inter­ested in sit­ting down and watch­ing some fan­tas­tic sto­ry­telling. I would like to fig­ure out a way to build the the­atre into the recre­ational vocab­u­lary of this city … I’m just not sure how.

SM: In Chelsea Hotel you play a muse. Have you ever been a muse? Or had a muse?

RA: (laughs) If I’ve ever been a muse, nobody told me. In terms of hav­ing a muse, I’ve def­i­nitely wrote some things based on or about peo­ple that have come in and out of my life — and I’ve def­i­nitely used rela­tion­ships I’ve had with peo­ple as a way to con­nect with mate­r­ial I’ve worked on as an actor.

SM: Is it strange singing the same songs over and over again? Do you start mak­ing up your own ver­sions of the songs?

?RA: It hasn’t seemed strange yet, and I think part of that is that the mate­r­ial is so rich that there are a lot of new things to find every day. I have an unfor­tu­nate habit of replac­ing words with other words com­pletely sub­con­sciously, and have def­i­nitely sang the words, “Sup­pose that he froze when the wind took his NOSE,” instead of, “CLOTHES” a few times in rehearsal, and once while rehears­ing Take this Waltz I sang “I’ll bury my soul in a sand­wich” rather than “bury my soul in a scrap­book.” But inten­tion­ally? No, I’m happy with the mate­r­ial so far

SM: (laughs) Sand­wich!

RA: I know, I always think that if those were the lyrics it would mean that she dealt with the break up by eat­ing her feelings.

?SM: It’s a good Freudian slip, some­thing to sing when you are hungry.

?RA: Right?

SM: Right!

Chelsea Hotel
Fire­hall Arts Cen­tre (280 East Cor­dova)
Now until March 3rd, 2012
$25 reg­u­lar, $20 stu­dents and seniors
Ticket info here