Linda Barnett and Natalie Bartello aren’t anything like your typical Broadway producers.
You won’t find their names attached to glitzy musical adaptations of blockbuster movies or well-known IP. Almost all the shows they’re invested in, such as this season’s “Maybe Happy Ending,” started out as unknown entities that later found critical and word-of-mouth success.
They’re also one of the few Canadian producers in a landscape dominated by American and British titans.
The pair, with their company Yonge Street Theatricals, have a clear ethos: “We have a soft spot for original material,” says Bartello.
It’s an ethos that has served them well, earning them multiple Tony and Oliviers awards, including for productions like the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop” and the recent Broadway revival of “Cabaret.”
Now the producing partners are back in Toronto for their latest project: an ambitious, Broadway-budget production of the new Canadian musical “Life After,” playing at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre this spring.
Barnett and Bartello will be the first to admit that this nearly month-long run is a big gamble. “Life After” is a completely original new musical, not based on any existing work. Its creator, the incredibly talented Britta Johnson, is largely unknown beyond a small gaggle of diehard Canadian musical theatre fans. And it features no A-list stars nor a particularly memorable title.
But “Life After” is in good company. It shares all these qualities with another Canadian musical that went on to be a runaway success: “Come From Away,” which Barnett and Bartello also helped to produce.
The two shows have had a startlingly similar trajectory. Both were initially developed in the GTA — “Come From Away” through the now-defunct Canadian Musical Theatre Project at Sheridan College, and “Life After” through the Paprika Festival and, later, the Musical Stage Company’s Crescendo Series.
Both musicals then made their U.S. premieres in California — “Come From Away” at the La Jolla Playhouse and “Life After” at the Old Globe Theatre — before receiving further regional productions across that country.
And both subsequently returned to Toronto for homecoming runs. For “Come From Away,” that was in the fall of 2016 at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. Several months later, of course, the show went on to open on Broadway, where it ran for more than 1,600 performances.
“Life After” might very well follow a similar path to New York City. While Barnett and Bartello have been mum on what’s next for Johnson’s musical following this upcoming Toronto bow, there’s no doubt there are tacit intentions for the production to play on the Great White Way, especially with its current cast of many Broadway veterans.
It’s a musical that has long been in gestation. Johnson started writing “Life After” when she was 18 years old, then a student at the University of Toronto studying music. The story follows a 16-year-old girl named Alice who’s forced to reckon with her father’s untimely death and their complicated relationship — even when it seems that everyone around her has already moved on.
Barnett and Bartello first saw “Life After” at the 2016 Toronto Fringe Festival, where it won the prestigious Paul O’Sullivan Prize for Musical Theatre.
Barnett, however, almost didn’t catch that production. At the time, her husband was in hospital and very ill. (He died less than a year later.) But, at Bartello’s urging, she and her eldest daughter went to see the show, which proved to be a cathartic experience.
“I was in the grieving process already and it was actually healing for me to see it. It helped,” Barnett recalled. “You know, every family experiences some form of grief. And sometimes you have to face it head on. I’m really glad I did so then.”
Yonge Street Theatricals picked up “Life After” shortly after that sold-out Fringe production. A year later, the musical received a larger run at the Berkeley Street Theatre, in a co-production with the Musical Stage Company and Canadian Stage.
That it’s taken so long for “Life After” to return to Toronto is partly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Barnett and Bartello say they also did not want to rush the show’s development, as it’s grown from a show in a blackbox venue to the Broadway-sized CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre.
“The process is so important to us,” said Bartello. “The final product is great, but the process is something that we take great pride in: creating an environment where people can do their best work.”
The producing partners come from different backgrounds. Barnett started her career as a middle school French and music teacher for the former Scarborough Board of Education. But she then left that to pursue her passion for theatre, going on to write several shows and establish Stage Kids, a company that provided youth with free musical theatre education.
Bartello, meanwhile, worked backstage at various summer stock theatre companies in rural Ontario as a teenager. She did almost everything: building the props, painting the sets, overseeing the show as an assistant stage manager. She later went to York University to study acting before transitioning to producing shortly after graduating.
While Barnett and Bartello are deeply involved in the Broadway landscape, helping to develop new works is an important part of what they do. “The idea of developing new work — it really cannot get more exciting than that,” said Bartello.
As for “Life After,” their biggest project yet, the pair say it’s important to bring the musical back to Toronto before any further steps.
“A part of this is going to be how well audiences in Toronto embrace the show,” said Bartello. “If we’re being really honest, that’s an important element in how we’re going to propel this forward … But I think Toronto audiences are ready to participate in that experience: of growing a show before it goes somewhere else.”
“Life After” runs from April 16 to May 10 at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre, 244 Victoria St. Visit mirvish.com for tickets and more information.
