Alan Doyle is on his way to Ottawa. The much-loved frontman of Newfoundland’s Great Big Sea, and member of the Order of Canada shouldn’t have a hard time finding a good table anywhere, but he’s not looking to throw his weight around.
What he is doing is setting out on a concert tour that will see him crisscross Canada and the United States before crossing the pond to Europe in October of 2022.
This kind of schedule is old hat to Doyle. He’s spent his adult life travelling and entertaining folks the world over but a quick look at his itinerary reveals a gap that starts in May 2022 and keeps him off the road until October of the same year, and it’s within this gap that he is excited to announce his live theatre debut.
Tell Tale Harbour makes its world- premiere headlining the 2022 Charlottetown Festival for the Confederation Center of the Arts, and although it’s not his first acting job, it is his first foray into live theatre, and Doyle, who plays the lead role of Frank Cavanaugh, couldn’t be more excited.
“This is easily the most collaborative and challenging thing I’ve ever done,” he says from a hotel room window somewhere between St. John’s and Quebec.
Doyle is no stranger to being handed a string, howver. He has previously found his way onto the big screen with credits such as playing Alan A’Dayle to Russell Crowe’s titular Robin Hood in the 2010 adaptation, as well as making appearances on television series like Murdoch Mysteries and Republic of Doyle.
Tell Tale Harbour could be any small, rural town in Canada. Doyle feels the tug of the show’s plot intimately as the decline of his hometown (brought on by Newfoundland’s cod moratorium of the 90s) sits in stark parallel to the story he’s currently telling.
It’s a heartbreaking story. Generations of families built these small communities and Doyle, who has walked through or driven by many of them describes them now as ‘ghosts.’ Many have tried to reinvent themselves; some have succeeded by thinking outside the box, but lots of others haven’t, and so Doyle, along with artistic director Adam Brazier, and writer Ed Riche set out to tell their story in the best way they knew how: with humor.
There is perhaps no other set of people more qualified to make us laugh. Newfoundlanders have been doing it forever; taking hard times in stride and finding the lighter side of them. Doyle is quick to point out, however, that they’re not making fun of the situation, but rather casting it in a humorous light to make it more palatable. “The ‘light’ isn’t the loss of the industry, but the way we tell the story that was born from it,” says Doyle.
The story itself has had a bit of a journey. The musical is based on the screenplay ‘The Grand Seduction’ by Ken Scott(2013) which, in turn, was based on a 2003 French-Canadian film, ‘La Grande Séduction’ directed by Jean-François Pouliot.
In this iteration, we come to know Doyle’s character Frank Cavanaugh, whom Doyle describes as ‘Tell Tale Harbour’s head conjurer.’ Cavanaugh is trying his best to have a new frozen French fry factory move to town. The factory is interested but insists that the town have a doctor as a full-time resident. The town does not have a doctor of course, but Cavanaugh tells them that they do. All manner of hilarity ensues as Cavanaugh tells one lie to cover another while trying to convince himself, the doctor, the locals, and the factory itself that moving to Tell Tale Harbour is in everyone’s best interest.
Through these missteps and mishaps we get to meet Frank himself; a man who has suffered loss on several levels. The loss of employment, the loss of his wife (who has left him for more promising prospects, and the loss of his sense of community.
You can be sure that Doyle and his collaborators have filtered this loss through side-splitting comedy, but the narrative is one that has touched so many Atlantic Canadians that Doyle is proud to touch on themes of finding home and the importance of truth. Doyle himself, whose band was taking off at the same time as the fishery began its monumental decline, remembers keeping a keen eye on the events at home.
“Newfoundlanders are homebodies,” says Doyle, who still lives in St. John’s. “If you ask one of my hundred cousins who have left if they would be happy never coming home you might get one who answers yes.”
That kind of loyalty, born of adversity and nurtured by the stories and songs of its people is hard come by. When asked if he felt his music was responsible for strengthening that resolve Doyle stops short of accepting the title of culture-bearer.
“We became culture-bearers, but it wasn’t by design,” says Doyle. In fact, he says he has had to almost apologize to people who are miffed by the fact that a quick Google search of Newfoundland often turns up images of himself and his bandmates.
It’s clear that Alan Doyle is just another kid from Petty Harbour, albeit one who has made quite a name for himself; such a name in fact that he has been asked to contribute, produce and collaborate on numerous projects that he feels, at first glance, unqualified for. Sure, he can bring an arena to its feet. Sure, he can write a song in the time it takes to fill his car with gas, but ask him to be part of a live musical theatre production, and we soon find Mr. Doyle just a wee bit out of his depth. This may be the reason that he didn’t plunge headfirst into the project right away. Instead, he did a little homework and wrote two songs for artistic director Brazier who had secured the rights to adapt the screenplay for the stage.
A curious thing happened along the way however when Doyle and crew realized that because of the pandemic everyone was basically home. All of the people needed to ensure the successful staging of the show were there; riding out the crisis with time on their hands and a desire to create. The timing was perfect and so after some edits and rewrites, they soon had a show on their hands.
“The twists of time made things line up in a way we never expected,” says Doyle who brings his acting credits to a stage that is unfamiliar to him, yet one he is bound to soon call his own.
When asked if he’d ever consider a more serious role for the stage Doyle hesitates. “I can’t really answer that,” he says. The answer he does give a lot more these days when asked to take on something is, ”I only want to do this because I don’t know how.”
It’s that sort of confidence and abandon that may well have gotten him where he is today, and will almost certainly assure the success of his latest venture.
Tell Tale Harbour, choreographed by Linda Garneau and directed by Jillian Keiley, will be performed in repertory with Anne of Green Gables–The Musical, opening on June 14 and running through to Sept 24 at the Charlottetown Confederation Center of the Arts.