“Perceptions,” by Gerry Warner

Op-Ed Commentary

World class is an expression that you don’t often hear associated with Cranbrook. Come to think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever heard or seen those words put together to honour anything to do with Cranbrook.

But that all changed last Saturday night in the Key City Theatre with “Walk Me to the Corner,” a glorious tribute to Brent Christopher Carver, a singer and thespian whose name has topped theatre marquees in Cranbrook, Stratford, the London West End and the pinnacle of the theatre world  on Broadway in New York City where in 1993 he won a Tony Award, live theatre’s equivalent of winning a Hollywood  Oscar.

I wasn’t kidding when I said “world class.”

New York Times film critic David Richards called Carver’s mesmerizing performance in Kiss of the Spider Woman “an electrifying Broadway debut” and said, “Mr. Carver gives a performance of such uncompromising truth that he qualifies instantly and henceforth as a star.”

High praise for a Cranbrook kid who earned his first acting chops at Mount Baker Secondary under the tutelage of drama teacher Paul Kershaw and all the eager, young actors he trained at our scruffy, downtown secondary school.

Carver, valedictorian at Mount Baker in 1969, told his classmates “Make your life worth living,” something he did with great gusto himself in a career of more than 40 years in which he inhabited the roles of many of the greatest characters in the Western acting canon including Hamlet, King Lear, Tevye (Fiddler on the Roof) Ichabod Crane (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow), Leo in the CBC sitcom Leo and Me where he starred with a young Michael J Fox as well as literally dozens of plays, films, musicals, TV shows and concerts as well as dozens of classic productions at the annual Stratford Theatre Festival where he was the top performer for years.

“Brent Carver personified my ideal of the performing artist – vulnerable, honest, fearless, unpredictable and entirely in the moment,” said Artistic Director Andrew Barashko, who shared the stage with Carver.

This writer had the unmitigated thrill of seeing Carver at the very beginning of his career in his breakthrough performance in “Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris” at the original Arts Club Theatre on Seymour Street in Vancouver. At that point, I’d never been to a professional theatre performance in my life and what an experience! Carver was ferociously romantic and nothing short of magical.

Just how magical he could be was mentioned in a Globe and Mail article Aug. 10, 2020 by theatre critic Susan Mackay who described his acting abilities as “otherworldly.” Watching him “was always a wrenching experience,” she said.

Fellow critic J. Kelly Nestruck added, “For me, his performances in 2010 at the Stratford Festival left me twisted up inside – as he demonstrated how to pack the emotional power of an entire play into a speech or a song,”

Is it any wonder then that in May 2014, Carver received a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, Canada’s highest honour in the performing arts, for his lifetime contribution to Canadian theatre? And he was born and raised in Cranbrook, a small, working-class town noted more than anything else for its hockey players, herds of deer roaming the streets and its never ending “strip” of fast-food restaurants, tire shops and cheap motels.

You can say what you want, but keep in mind this town also produces world-class artistic talent like Brent Carver and an artistic community tat’s second to none for a town  of 20,000. A lot of nice people live in Cranbrook and more than 300 of them are to be congratulated for taking the time at the Key City Theatre last Saturday night to celebrate the dazzling career of a home-town boy that made it to the bigs and remained a decent – and oh so talented – guy while doing it.

Let’s hope that some of that Carver talent rubs off on all of us. Thanks to Jim Cameron and Barry Coulter and all the others who worked on this most deserving tribute.

Above images: Images on display of Brent Carver at during the celebration at Key City Theatre. Gerry Warner photos

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist, who loves Cranbrook theatre.

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