No more swing shifts Winnipeg actor uses juicy role at home to recover from Stratford experience By: Randall King | Photos by Ruth Bonneville Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Friday, May. 17, 2019

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This article was published 17/05/2019 (2118 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At the age of 26, Winnipeg-born actor Reid McTavish is a little young for a comeback story.

But that’s the feeling he gets as he prepares to take on the role of Molina, a gay prisoner who finds himself sharing a cell with a Marxist revolutionary in a military-controlled Argentina in Dry Cold Productions’ Kiss of the Spider Woman. The show is a musical adaption of a 1976 novel by Manuel Puig, which was turned into a 1986 movie by Hector Babenco. The stage musical was written by Terence McNally with music by Kander & Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago).

The role of Molina, you may recall, won actor William Hurt a best actor Oscar and also won Brent Carver a Tony for the 1993 Broadway production.

But the role was its own award for McTavish, who returned to his Winnipeg hometown after spending three years at the Stratford Festival, which is typically more of an endgame proposition for Canadian theatre actors.

“It’s funny because when you get to Stratford, a lot of people think that’s the be-all and end-all,” McTavish says prior to a rehearsal in a hall at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film at the University of Winnipeg. “It’s Stratford!”

McTavish got a different perspective after working as a “swing” for three consecutive years. A swing, he explains is “the insurance policy of a show.

“Basically if anyone gets sick or injured, I go in for them,” he explains. In his first two shows at Stratford, he was the designated replacement for 11 different actors. For a production of The Music Man, he could have subbed for seven different performers. So, yes, the swing does get some opportunities to go on stage. But it can also feel like being trapped in a kind of insidious limbo.

“What nobody talks about is that it’s extremely isolating,” McTavish says. “When you’re learning the show, everyone else is on stage having fun learning the show and being creative together, while the swing is offstage, frantically writing notes.

“Then during the show, when everyone’s on stage having a good time and the swings are off by themselves.

“It’s so isolating to do three years in a row,” he says. “My breaking point was when it affected my mental health. I actually had a mental breakdown… in secret because I didn’t want my reputation to be affected.”

McTavish sought counselling and ultimately packed up and moved back to Winnipeg in November to avail himself of the support system of his family and friends. At that point, he says, it was touch-and-go if he would ever act again.

“When I was at Stratford, I said: I’m done in the industry! I quit! I don’t want to do this anymore. I want to be an actor. I want to be a performer. I didn’t want to be an ensemble all the time, which is what I was being.”

But then the role of Molina appeared on his horizon and with it, the opportunity for his first lead role on the professional stage.

“This audition came up and it’s like… OK one more audition!” he laughs. “And if I don’t get Molina, I am done in this industry.

“So then the universe was like: ‘You’re not done.’

“This is been like soul-feeding for me,” he says. “It’s a hard role and it takes a lot out of me, but it’s been so rejuvenating

“Molina is such a fantastic character especially for a gay man to be playing,” he says. “Being a gay man, there are so many things I can draw on in my personal life. I understand how Molina feels in this situation and it’s been exciting to discover who Molina is.”

He has kept that journey a solitary one, he adds.

“I haven’t watch the bootleg performances of Brent Carver or the movie or anyone else’s performance because I want to focus on who is Molina is to me instead of re-creating someone else’s version.”

McTavish relishes doing a Kander & Ebb musical too.

“I love their shows,” he says. “They’re so good because they’re dark and they have actual depth to them.

“I kind of hit a wall in my career when I said I can’t do fluffy musical theatre anymore.

“With so many theatre companies, they think we need to make money, so we get Mamma Mia, Beauty and the Beast, The Music Man… all fine shows but they have no intensity to them.

“So this show is really wonderful,” McTavish says. “Because they’re not afraid to go there.”

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

Randall King
Reporter

In a way, Randall King was born into the entertainment beat.

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Ruth Bonneville
Photojournalist

As the first female photographer hired by the Winnipeg Free Press, Ruth has been an inspiration and a mentor to other women in the male-dominated field of photojournalism for over two decades.

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