Soulpepper - Michael Hanrahan

Biography
Interview

SOULPEPPER 2012: High Life, Home, The Royal Comedians, The Crucible, Death Of A Salesman

FOR SOULPEPPER: The Fantasticks, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Our Town, The Odd Couple, The Price, Oh What a Lovely War, Death of a Salesman, Loot, Awake and Sing!, As You Like It, The Odd Couple, American Buffalo, The Dumb Waiter/ The Zoo Story (2004 & 2005 tour), No Man's Land, Present Laughter, The Bald Soprano, Platonov, Twelfth Night (with Festival of Classics), Our Town, The Play's the Thing.

OTHER THEATRE: Last Romantics, As You Like It, The Importance of Being Earnest, Three Sisters, Great Expectations, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, The Tempest, The Miser, The Wooden Hill, A Chorus Line, Having Hope at Home, The Sisters Rosenweig, Fashion, Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, Juno and the Paycock, Charley's Aunt, Tiger at the Gates, The Magistrate, The Swan, Othello, Celebration, Dumbwaiter, Hothouse and four seasons with the Stratford Festival.

Michael Hanrahan is a founding member of Soulpepper, and has been involved with over 15 productions in the company's history including Oh What a Lovely War, Death of a Salesman, Loot, and Awake and Sing! In addition to many other theatrical credits, Michael has also appeared in four seasons at the Stratford Festival. Michael sat down to discuss returning to The Fantasticksand Our Town.

Nathan Kelly

With Soulpepper's new repertory model, you've been juggling as many as three shows at a time, with different plays running every week. The Fantasticks, for example, is continuing its very successful run after a brief break. Is it a challenge keeping track of all those performances and characters?

Michael Hanrahan

It is a challenge to a certain degree, but I don't think it's as big a challenge as most people outside the industry would think it is. Now doing The Fantasticks is going to be unusual - I've never done this before - where we've been in a musical and I've had that much time off. So I'll be surprised and hopefully delighted to get back into it! But it will all come back.

As a father, do you find yourself relating to the character of Hucklebee in The Fantasticks - a father trying to get his idealistic son to marry his neighbour's daughter?

Well yes, I am a father of two teenage boys so of course there are similarities. You have hopes and dreams for your child - some of them are just the basics; you want them to be good people, responsible, compassionate, and loving. But beyond that you have some ideas as to what might be a great life for them. And in the end you realize you have no real control over that! In the end they make those decisions.

At the same time, this musical asks you to remember what it's like when you were in your teens, falling in love. Do you think it succeeds? Do you feel a bit like a teenager when you're singing these songs?

(Laughter) I don't know if I feel like a teenager! But yes, I think it's nice to take those things out and remember them. I think that's maybe the sadness of life is that we get too busy with other things that we forget those simpler concepts. I think every generation says "Oh, it was so much simpler when I was young." I think that's only partly true, I think the world moves at much the same pace as it always did. But when you're a child, you don't have the cares and concerns that you have as an adult - which makes it seem simple when we look back on it, but really it wasn't.

Coming back to Our Town, a production that has a very long history at Soulpepper, what's different for you this time around?

It's fascinating for me because I'm playing a different character. The first time around I played Simon Stimson and that was in 1999. And now this time I'm playing Howie Newsome. It's also many years later for me, with a different production and a few different people. I think it's deeper and richer - it can't help but be deeper and richer, in fact. When you have the opportunity to come back to a show it grows somewhat exponentially, because you start off so much further ahead. Maybe other companies have the same history with a production, but not the same history together. Soulpepper really is a family, a community of artists and that definitely impacts the work we do.

In addition to your performances that are already on stage, what show or role are you looking forward to the most later on in 2011?

We had a great time doing The Odd Couple, it was so much fun - sometimes too much fun! And getting to spend time with all those people again will be wonderful. In terms of The Price, any opportunity to stand on the same stage with Stuart Hughes - just sign me up, I'll do that anywhere anytime. So I'm really looking forward to that, working with Diana Leblanc and the rest of the crew.