Martha Burns returns to her roots
Until recently, Martha Burns hadn’t been on a stage in more than four years, a situation not unlike Alexandre Bilodeau keeping off the slopes for a similar period of time.
“I’m not very good at doing the same things over and over again,” is how she explains herself, but the important thing is that she’s back in the medium where she’s appeared with such distinction for Stratford, Shaw, Soulpepper, Factory and numerous other theatres.
She began her return last month with a virtuoso performance in George F. Walker’s latest entry, And So It Goes, while on Tuesday night, she opens at the Tarragon Extra Space in Theatre Smash’s production of A Boy Called Newfoundland.
“Well who doesn’t want to be in a play with a title like that?” she laughs, a sound like cut crystal being lightly tapped with a silver knife. “It’s a wonderful script by a wonderful young writer about what happens to a family when a dad doesn’t come home. A lovely coming of age story, written in a fresh, non-formulaic way.”
Fresh and non-formulaic would also be good words to describe Burns.
The 52-year-old wife of actor/writer/director/heartthrob Paul Gross and mother of Hannah, 20, and Jack, 16, still manages to look like a rare herb found in some artisanal garden: crisp, bright, appealing and possibly lethal.
Despite her undoubted warmth, one of the great Burns weapons - on stage and screen - is that basilisk stare of hers that could stop anyone dead with a single glance.
No wonder the character she feels closest to in all of literature is Jack Reacher, the fictional drifter created by Lee Child, who moves in his solitary way from crime to crime, somehow always managing to be in the wrong place at the right time.
“He always sits with his back to the wall and he didn’t have a visa until after 9/11,” volunteers Burns. “I admire the sparseness and honesty of his life.”
Sparseness and honesty are two more words useful in trying to paint a portrait of Burns.
Anyone who’s savoured her performance as diabolical diva Ellen Fanshaw in the mock-behind-the-Stratford-scenes epic Slings & Arrows will appreciate the way she manages to indicate excess without ever falling into it and makes even the most theatrical moments seem real.
“To me, acting is about two important things,” she says, draining her cranberry and soda after a late lunch at Globe Earth on Yonge St., “and those things are chemistry and commitment. You have to want to work with a certain group of people and you all have to have a real passion for what you’re doing.”
Burns discovered that passion fairly early in life. She was born in Chicago, while her father was working for Great West Life, but they soon moved to Winnipeg, where she spent her childhood.
“It’s a great city for the arts,” she enthuses. “It always has been. When I was young, I think every kid in Winnipeg went to theatre school. When I was in Grade 4, my friends said, ‘Do you want to go to theatre school with us?’ And I said, ‘Sure!’ even though I had no idea what it meant.”
She soon found out and loved what she discovered. Later, when her best friend, Kate Wylie had to move to Stratford because her father, Bill, Burns spent most of her summers there working around the theatre.
“My very first job was at the Lottario booth,” she recalls proudly. “I was 13 years old. The very first show I ever saw was The Three Musketeers and then A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I still remember Christopher Newton and Martha Henry as Oberon and Titania, they were so sexy, covered in nothing but foliage.
“And then I’ll always remember Cymbeline. I just knew I wanted to play Imogen and many years later, in 1986 I would, on that very stage.”
She auditioned to study theatre at the University of Alberta, but they turned her down. In a typically spiky Burns-like decision, she determined to go to school there anyway, only to study English. After that, she went on to the Vancouver Playhouse’s Acting School, when the theatre was run by the same Newton she had swooned over on the Stratford stage not that many years before.
After a few years there, she went on to the National Arts Centre, playing the title role in Trafford Tanzi, a play about a woman wrestler, set in an actual wrestling ring.
“That has been a highlight of my career. Sheer theatricality! I had to train, I had to become this incredibly physical creature. My neck actually doubled in size. Thank God it went back to normal in about a year!”
Thank God, indeed, because that was when fate intervened to change her personal life for good.
“I had finished my contract. I was literally standing at the bus station with my suitcase when they realized they didn’t have anybody to play the Indian Princess in Sharon Pollock’s play, Walsh, and so they came running to bring me back.”
And waiting in the rehearsal hall was a young actor named Paul Gross.
It was 27 years ago and they’re still happily together. But it didn’t start as romance.
“No, it was laughter right away. The first week of rehearsal we were just sitting around a table, being bored, so we started passing each other notes to make ourselves laugh. Paul was just this goofy, funny friend.”
But five years later, they were married. A few years later, Gross became a star in Due South and he’s been one of the few bankable Canadian supernovas ever since. He’s also a major crush for many women on both sides of the border.
Burns has no problem with any of it. “We were together for a long time before Due South hit. And when you know someone so well as a regular guy deep down, it doesn’t bother you. You have a different kind of connection.
“When people treat your husband as an object, however, that’s annoying. But luckily this is Canada and it doesn’t happen all that much. Besides, Paul has always been passionate about the work he’s doing, not about being a sexy leading man.”
She does admit that one of her happiest memories is working with him as a couple on Slings & Arrows.
“We’ve been making meals, walking dogs, washing cars for years and we brought all that with us to the set. We were able to find the ease that those two characters had in their discomfort with each other and that makes the comedy work.”
For the last two years, Burns has been reaching out in new directions as the producer of Little Films About Big Momentsa series of 10 short movies made by people in the industry who’d never written or directed before.
“I love learning, but I love teaching, too,” says the woman who also spends much of her time working on programs to bring young people into the theatre. “Being introduced to the arts at an early age made a huge difference to my life and I want every kid to have the same chance that I did.”
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