Actor Tom McCamus a tyrannical teacher in Warehouse comedy

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This article was published 21/10/2015 (4003 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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Theresa Rebick’s Seminar is about a quartet of aspiring writers who hire a famous novelist to take them through a master class. To their growing horror, they discover their expensive would-be mentor is a harsh, hard-drinking taskmaster, more inclined to cruel, searing honesty than gentle encouragement.

When the comedy opened on Broadway in late 2011, the role of Leonard, the venomous instructor, was played by Alan Rickman, an actor with no small experience playing an acid-tongued teacher, if you’ve seen the Harry Potter movies.

Respected Canadian actor Tom McCamus takes the role in the Warehouse iteration, co-produced with Mirvish Productions.

Though this comedy is set among the literati, McCamus says he can relate to it as a story “about art and what it costs.” In his long experience, including 14 years with the Stratford Festival, he acknowledges the theatre world has its share of caustic personalities like Leonard.

“I’ve dealt with directors in particular who have been kind of vicious,” he says. “There was a period of time all these British directors would come over and it was a style of directing, that kind of brutishness.

“I don’t have any time for that kind of thing,” McCamus says. “I don’t think that’s a great way to teach.”

Seminar is a homecoming for McCamus, 60, and not just because he’s returning to an RMTC stage after playing the role of Rhett Butler in the 2013 production of Gone with the Wind. McCamus was born in Winnipeg, and raised in Silver Heights and Tuxedo Park for the first decade of his life, until his dad, who worked for Labatt, moved the family to London, Ont.

“Even though I was only 10 when I left, it still feels like home,” McCamus says during a rehearsal break in the lobby of the Warehouse.

If the role of Leonard sounds like nasty fun, McCamus says it doesn’t come easy “even though I kind of understand it.

“They call him a ‘rock star’ editor, and he was a great writer at one time, and he’s not doing that now. He teaches kids and he also goes to Africa and writes all these magazine articles about what’s going on in Somalia and places like that, and then comes back and tells these kids they’re totally irrelevant.

“He’s looking for the truth and he’s brutal about the truth,” he says. “But it all has to do with his own flaws.

“He’s a real son of a bitch. He takes some enjoyment in messing these kids up and then says, ‘When you get in the real world, it’s going to be 100 times worse than anything I can do to you.’

“But it’s been really difficult to find the right tone of that, because somewhere along the line, you’ve got to see into the guy enough so that you can understand why he’s doing this.”

The role is demanding, but it probably helps that the busy actor comes to it rested, after taking the summer off to vacation in Scotland and the south of France.

“It was really nice not to have lines in my head,” he says.

Following the Winnipeg run of Seminar, the comedy will move to Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre from Nov. 14 to Dec. 6.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter @FreepKing