Despite the larger stage of the CAA Theatre, Inside American Pie is simply staged and intimate, putting the focus on the analysis and music.Buffie Boily/Mirvish
- Title: Inside American Pie
- Written and performed by: Mike Ross
- Company: Mirvish
- Venue: CAA Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: To March 30, 2025
Opening a show called Inside American Pie on Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14) seems appropriate for Harmony House, a company dedicated to celebrating the intricate meanings of words. Presented by Mirvish, the “docu-concert” – brainchild of Dora winners Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson (De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail; Rose) – explores the hidden references in Don McLean’s legendary track over the course of 90 minutes, as stories of artistic triumphs and tragedies are baked together with unique arrangements of related songs from the period.
Reminiscent of the type of impassioned university lecture that makes you want to actually go to class, it’s a sweet, heaping slice of the intertwining musical and political movements of the 1950s and 1960s that goes down easily even without a glass of milk.
The concert’s relatively stripped-down form was born of necessity. In early 2020, Ross and spouse Nicole Bellamy purchased the Harmony House performance space just outside their hometown of Charlottetown. When 2020 proved to be a poor time for large crowds to gather, they developed small-ensemble shows that could eventually be performed to growing audiences. Inside American Pie, the first of these works, premiered in 2021 and plays there annually.
Despite the larger stage of the CAA Theatre, this production is also simply staged and intimate, putting the focus on the analysis and music. Ross sits stage right at a piano, with singer/instrumentalists Alicia Toner, Brielle Ansems and Greg Gale on stools at the front and percussionist Kirk White in the back.
The only real decoration is Lorenzo Savoini’s backdrop of stars on a background that fades into navy blue or rust-red vertical stripes depending on Simon Rossiter’s lighting – a constant reminder of the inherent Americanness of the evening, if the title didn’t tip you off. The imagery reflects a United States that progressed from the easy but oppressive answers of the 1950s to the existential and often violent questions of the 1960s, a cyclical sort of revolution that Ross points out is particularly relevant to remember right now.
The highlights of Inside American Pie are its clever arrangements of classic songs, performed beautifully and with verve, particularly by Alicia Toner’s clear, powerful tones.Colton Curtis/Mirvish
He affectionately spins tales of McLean’s initial inspiration as a 12-year-old paper boy in New Rochelle, N.Y., reading the devastating headline “The Day the Music Died,” about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper – popular young singers who would find eternal fame in their early deaths. Ross goes on to create an expansive web that links 1950s car advertisements to church, folk and rock music and their associated political movements, looking at how the sounds of the time were inextricably entangled with the hearts and minds of a generation coming of age in the midst of constant change.
Little of this knowledge is especially hidden after more than 50 years, and you could probably find much of it by browsing sites such as Genius.com and other websites that similarly speculate on the meaning of songs. However, Ross has an appealing, earnest delivery that makes familiar material feel like a discovery, offering his own interpretations of certain phrases. When readings diverge, he presents multiple possibilities, telling us that we can fight about it on the trip home.
While the show will likely appeal especially to the people who came of age in the 1960s, that’s not to say that there’s nothing for all generations. The highlights of Inside American Pie are Ross’s clever arrangements of classic songs, performed beautifully and with verve, particularly by Toner’s clear, powerful tones and Ansems’s stunning soprano. In these mash-ups and covers, they distinctly make the songs their own. The only performances you could call impressions are Ross doing his best bombastic Big Bopper on Chantilly Lace (accompanied by Toner and Ansems on kazoo) and Toner echoing Janis Joplin in a reference to the song’s only significant nod to a female artist.
Amidst a trade war, Inside American Pie highlights the cultural tumult embedded into Don McLean’s classic
A particular highlight is the ensemble’s take on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Bad Moon Rising (a song with famously misheard lyrics) under Rossiter’s stark spotlights, with Ansems’s icy vocals – accompanied by White on tongue drum – turning the jaunty original into a creepy, almost mystical portent of things to come. Ansems also steers Ross’s arrangement of John Lennon’s ubiquitous Imagine, which alters some of the note progressions, demanding attention and consideration for what has otherwise become a musical cliché.
Mash-ups such as Marty Robbins’s A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation) into Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone serve as transitions, pulling listeners from country to folk and from sock hops to social change. A recording of this show would be a hot commodity, but, as Ross says while explaining the late-1960s switch to the supremacy of the album from the primacy of performance, there’s a little thrill that comes with things that are only available live.
While it’s probably wise to cap things at a tight, enjoyable single act, the show is slightly hampered by its 90-minute structure. Like a lecturer who suddenly becomes aware of the dwindling classroom clock, Ross starts to move more quickly as the period draws to a close: For the last couple of verses, analysis gives way to additional musical numbers. Given a little more time, the concert could probably answer a few more questions.
Still, Inside American Pie certainly makes an appealing case for the docu-concert form, placing music in context to remind us that a song never simply exists on its own; it’s just one piece of the pie.
