Rosebud Theatre season opens with musical Bright Star

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Rosebud Theatre opens its 2019 season with the Canadian premiere of Bright Star, a musical by comedian and actor Steve Martin and singer-songwriter Edie Brickell.
“In the 1920s, a woman in a small town in the Blue Ridge Mountains has a teenage pregnancy… and has to give up that baby,” said Morris Ertman, Rosebud Theatre’s artistic director, who is directing this show.
Twenty years later, that teenaged girl has become the editor of a prestigious southern newspaper. A young soldier arrives, just back from World War II. He’s an aspiring writer, and he wants to write for her newspaper. Bright Star is their story.
“It’s the story of the restoration of a mother and her son,” Ertman said. “It’s the story about a community that makes a tough decision. It’s the story about that community and the woman’s father… and a story about restoration. It’s a story about things having gone awry and the story of things coming together, with the most incredible music you’ll ever hear.”
Ertman said we live in a time when people are just glomming onto the idea of adopted children finding their birthmothers and fathers. “So, I think this story will resonate for those folks. And it is a story with a gloriously happy ending. The restoration is beautiful, wonderful, filled with life. People will leave the theatre feeling like anything can be made right.”
Audience members won’t feel like this play was written by the same comedian who played in, for instance, The Jerk, Ertman said, but we’ll see a great deal of the same heart that’s in Martin’s comedies.
Steve Martin is also “a virtuoso banjo picker,” Ertman said, so the “music just rolls” in Bright Star.
“My goodness, these tunes are wonderful,” he said. “Blue grass music. It’s rippling banjo and amazing fiddle. And just incredibly wonderful songs.”
Alix Cowman, who played Percy in Spitfire Grill at Rosebud Theatre in 2017, is playing Alice, the editor. Felix LeBlanc, new to Rosebud Theatre, plays her son, the young aspiring writer.
Bright Star opens on the Opera House stage on March 29, playing through May 25. It will be followed by The Kite in the Opera House, June 7 to Aug. 31, while Lilia plays on the BMO Studio Stage, July 5 to Aug. 31. Later in the year, The Mountaintop will play from Sept. 13 to Oct. 19, and A Christmas Story from Nov. 1 to Dec. 22, also in the Opera House.
“We’re continually trying to find plays and put seasons together that really do touch the human heart,” said Ertman. “Stories that awaken hope and celebrate, even if they have to go through some tough places to get there. And I feel like this season does that. It celebrates people whose lives are huge.”
For more information about Bright Star and other shows in Rosebud Theatre’s 2019 season, see rosebudtheatre.com.