Joni Mitchell revealed in song: ATP performs famous singer's work

by Bob Clark
Calgary Herald
October 28, 2004

Tim Williams admits he wasn't a big Joni Mitchell fan.

"I've been a roots musician all my life -- I was totally into Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins by the time I was 13 or 14," the well-known Calgary blues artist says.

But now, after putting the trio of Alberta Theatre Projects cast members through their musical paces in preparation for ATP's new production, Joni Mitchell: River, opening Friday at the Martha Cohen Theatre, Williams regards the famous Canadian singer/songwriter differently.

The show consists of three actor/singers performing 28 songs from the extensive Mitchell canon, accompanied by a four-piece band -- Ron Casat, keyboards; John Hyde, bass; Brent Van Dusen, percussion; and Williams himself, using the large number of guitars necessitated by Mitchell's idiosyncratic open tunings employed in the creation of each of her songs.

"When I took this job (as musical director) I was familiar with a handful of really good Joni Mitchell songs," says Williams, who based his own arrangements of the material on the show's original arrangements by guitarist Greg Lowe.

"Over the rehearsal period, however, I've come to have a huge respect for her as a poet.

"I keep finding lines in her songs that I had just taken for granted -- for instance, in A Case of You, she writes, 'Just before our love got lost, you said/ I am as constant as a northern star/ And I said, constant in the darkness/ Where's that at?/ If you want me I'll be in the bar.'

"That's brilliant -- and brutal.

"And in Chelsea Morning, there's a line where she says, 'Oh won't you stay/ We'll put on the day? And we'll talk in present tenses.'

"Now no one speaks in present tenses -- we always say things like, 'We're going to,' 'Remember when we,' or 'If you stay with me. I promise we will,' and so on.' "

There's no dialogue in Joni Mitchell: River -- only the intimacy of songs such as Big Yellow Taxi, Shadows and Light, Hejira, and Both Sides Now.

"I've heard her explain her early songs like Both Sides Now and The Circle Game as (expressing) the end of her childhood," says Jeff Gladstone, who together with fellow performers Onalea Gilbertson and Sharon Stearns -- all under the direction of One Yellow Rabbit's Denise Clarke -- brings the songs to life onstage.

"It's funny, because they're also the songs which she's gone back to even now, in her 60s."

The show was conceived by Allen MacInnis, who was inspired to do for Mitchell's songs -- Mitchell has influenced and inspired generations of musicians from Elvis Costello and Prince, to Sheryl Crow and Alanis Morissette -- what he had seen actors do in a production based on the songs of Leonard Cohen.

Although the actor/singers in the ATP production use gesture and movement to enhance the songs' innate narrative quality (Mitchell herself has admitted to writing her songs from movies in her head), Gladstone says that the cast has found the simplest and most effective approach to putting the meaning of the show's material across "was just to say the words, and tell the story of the song-- with stillness."

Since its premiere at Winnipeg's Prairie Theatre Exchange in 2001, Joni Mitchell: River has also played to enthusiastic audiences in Vancouver. "It's a play about love and losing it, and about fame and insanity -- you know, all the good stuff," says Williams.

He points out that although Mitchell's songs express an amazing sadness, "She also clearly looks to find the joys in life -- and like a lot of people with more than half a brain -- is depressed by everything in between. But she's honest enough to write it down as she sees it."

bclark@theherald.canwest.com

Preview

Alberta Theatre Projects presents Joni Mitchell: River, conceived by Allen MacInnis, with arrangements by Greg Lowe of 28 songs by Joni Mitchell, Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. (Saturday and Sunday matinees, 2 p.m.), Oct. 29 to Nov. 13 at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Tickets: $14-$72, through Ticketmaster, 299-8888, or the ATP box office, 294-7402.