UnCovered is back – and so is Sara Farb, who performs in what has become one of the Musical Stage Company’s most anticipated shows of the year. What started out as a one-night-only fundraising event featuring covers of songs by The Beatles, has grown into a multi-performance event. In UnCovered, some of the biggest musical-theatre artists in Canada come together to cover – or rather uncover – songs by renowned artists that have been innovatively reimagined by Reza Jacobs.
Farb is an accomplished actor who has performed at the Stratford Festival and made her Broadway debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in 2019. Despite a routinely full schedule, she has been a staple in almost every UnCovered concert. As accomplished a singer as she is an actor, she made a striking turn portraying Nobel laureate Bob Dylan in UnCovered: The Music of Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen a few years back.
This September, she joined Jully Black, Beau Dixon, Hailey Gillis, Kelly Hollif and Andrew Penner to perform the music of country music legend Dolly Parton at the acoustically magnificent Koerner Hall. “Any opportunity to work with this group of people and at Koerner Hall is one I’ll welcome,” she offers. “This year, though, it felt even more meaningful to perform after mourning not being able to, for so long. And Dolly’s songbook is uplifting, so the combination felt perfect.”
True to tradition, UnCovered: The Music of Dolly Parton enjoyed its typical sold-out 3-night run. (Given the popularity of the series, three days are never enough to meet demands of a devoted audience that grows each year and easily now numbers in the thousands.) Ratcheting up demand was the fact that this was the first live UnCovered concert since the fall of 2019. The iconic stature of Parton’s music – and of Parton herself as the rags-to-riches artist, entrepreneur and philanthropist beloved worldwide – only increased this concert’s appeal. And returning artists like Farb, Black, Gillis and Penner are themselves major audience draws.
Given such overwhelming demand, plus the restrictions of COVID-19, the Musical Stage Company extended the run digitally by filming the concert and releasing it for audiences to enjoy from home November 24 – December 11. This is no ordinary on-demand streaming film, though. A Zoom room for Part One precedes the concert at 7:45 PM EST, with the Prologue beginning at 8:00 PM. In the Zoom room, guests who have purchased tickets to this performance are greeted by the Musical Stage Company host and treated to a live performance by one of the artists, before Part Two, The Koerner Hall virtual concert, begins.
This year’s concert is a little more scaled down than some of those in years past; however, the form remains comfortably familiar, with each artist singing one solo song and performing others in small ensembles. Farb’s solo this year is one of Parton’s earliest and most beloved hits, “Coat of Many Colors”, inspired by Dolly’s experience of being taunted as a little girl for wearing a coat that her mother lovingly stitched out of rags donated by a neighbour. Farb offers an especially poignant and vivid interpretation. Asked how her experience as an actor affects her renditions, she offers simply that she approaches everything the same way: “tell the story honestly and clearly. It doesn’t matter if it’s a song or a speech.”
In addition to her solo, she sings “Nine to Five” and “Islands in the Stream” with other performers. Why these songs in particular? “The truth is, the creators of the show assigned those songs to me,” she explains. “They know me and my voice, and I trust whatever reasons they have for those choices.” And there is “true joy among the performers” of UnCovered – which is a major reason for her participation year after year: “It was the first live show back for most of us, and we were all genuinely happy to be there with each other making music.”
In May 2022, Farb will be reprising her role as Delphi Diggory in the all-Canadian production of Harry Potter and Cursed Child presented by Mirvish Productions at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre. The spoiler-avoiding Farb describes Delphi simply as a determined young woman on a mission, who is a “blast to play”. She was invited to continue the role on Broadway or to come to Toronto to open the show here. In the end, she “chose Toronto pretty quickly. New York is incredible, but home is home!” Toronto audiences will no doubt respond in kind when the production, originally slated for 2020, opens at last.
Given all of Farb’s experience and charismatic stage presence, audiences might be surprised – even inspired – to hear that even now, she suffers from “pretty significant stage fright”. As live performances resume and public sentiment shifts from uncertainty towards optimism, she looks forward to renewing her battle with it. She also offers a succinct meditation on what she hopes the arts can grow to encompass, going forward: “I want the arts to reflect what we’ve learned over the last year and a half, both on stage and in the audience. I want to see greater outreach to all communities, including ways of providing opportunities for lower-income people to see and physically access otherwise faraway or expensive theatre events. I want actual action in administration to change our conditioning about the way things need to look and sound and feel.”
“But I also want everyone to remember that we love art, and we do this because we want to.”
Arts-loving audiences can enjoy Farb and her fellow artists in the live film experience of UnCovered: The Music of Dolly Parton until December 11.
© Arpita Ghosal, SesayArts Magazine, 2021
