Blyth Festival 2024: Randy Hughson is back in Blyth, this time to direct again
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
One shudders to think of what malignancy of fate would bear a world that would even consider celebrating the Blyth Festival’s 50th anniversary without Randy Hughson. Since he first took to the Memorial Hall stage in the early 2000s, Hughson has become an all-time Festival favourite, directing some very well-received plays and delivering a wide-range of memorable performances that have never failed to hit home with the audience in Blyth. He’s stomped across the stage as a pitch perfect Tom Connors, immortalized the Festival’s history as Angus in The Drawer Boy, found festive redemption as Scrooge in A Huron County Christmas Carol, and anchored last year’s ambitious three-part adaptation of The Donnellys Trilogy as beleaguered patriarch James Donnelly.
For the Festival’s 50th anniversary, Hughson is returning to the director’s chair with Resort to Murder - an ambitious escape room twist on the classic murder mystery, penned by writer and actor Birgitte Solem. The Citizen stopped by Hughson’s home in Stratford to talk shop about the show and how it feels to be directing a play for such a milestone season.
Hughson had just returned from getting his chainsaws sharpened. No, he’s not planning to strike fear into the hearts of Festival-goers by populating his impending murder mystery with dangerously realistic props - Hughson likes to spend his spare time away working on trees, an activity he’s enjoyed since he was in university. “I remove trees, cut trees down, prune, trim trees... It's something I enjoy. I’ve mostly been taking down ash trees, because of the emerald ash-borer. Coast to coast, there’s very few ash trees left. I like ash trees because they’re becoming rarer, and rarer, but I still like the more conical trees. The firs, the evergreens. Hemlock is probably my favourite tree.”
Clearing the carnage caused by the advent of the ash-borer has been set aside for now, and Hughson’s focus has shifted from nature to murder. As the play’s director, there’s much preparation to be done before rehearsals start. “With acting, you’re really focused on that inner work, what you have to bring to the character. With directing, I’m responsible for all of it,” Hughson explained. “Preparing for this is a long process of work before one gets into the rehearsal hall, there’s design meetings - coming up with costume and sound and set design, basically the entire process has to be worked out months ahead of time. So that is what I’ve been doing.” There’s a lot more on his plate this year as the director of a brand new play, but to Hughson, that’s a big part of the appeal. “In the end, the responsibility is mine, and the success or failure of this play is mine. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, but my favourite thing about directing is the responsibility. It’s the level of control, to a certain extent. Interpreting a play, and bringing my take, my direction, my taste, my choice… I enjoy the mystery of solving the problems of a new play.”
While he’s always excited to head to Blyth for the summer, Hughson is feeling the significance of this season. “I’ve been associated with the theatre for 20 years, but to be asked to direct for the 50th season is a real honour.” Over those 20 years, Hughson has found a lot of reasons to keep bringing his considerable talent back to Blyth. “I love the audiences there, and their connection to the rural-themed material. The audience often hangs around to chat afterwards. They’re a loyal audience. And I love the little town of Blyth. The facility is wonderful there, the theatre is wonderful, but that outdoor space, the Harvest Stage, has been an absolute joy to be on... it’s just an incredible place - it’s almost like a natural amphitheatre, with the hill and grass all around, like being tucked into a Greek amphitheatre.”
Hughson has already spent two seasons performing on the Harvest Stage, in last year’s adaptation of The Donnellys Trilogy, and the 2022 production of The Drawer Boy. “When we did The Drawer Boy out there, my character counts stars as one of his things - he’s a very simple person - he had a brain injury in World War II, and he would often go outside and count stars. And to go out from the house on the stage, and actually count the real stars, and be able to count them... I’m following the script, but I’m actually counting stars, the audience in front of me - it’s magic. Absolute magic.”
The Blyth Festival attracts a lot of extremely skilled designers and builders, but even they would have a hard time turning the open air Harvest Stage into a believable escape room set, so this season he’s heading back into Memorial Hall to direct Birgitte Solem’s Resort to Murder. What attracted Hughson to this piece was both the atmosphere it creates and the strength of its construction. “There’s a frightful, scary nature to this piece,” he explained. “It has an ethereal, ghostly element to it.” He’s also a bit of a murder mystery aficionado, so he knows when he’s got a good one on his hands. “I’ve always enjoyed a good murder mystery. The first books I read when I was a young lad were the Hardy Boys, and those kinds of books that involved a whodunnit. Then there was Sherlock Holmes... I gravitate to films and movies that have a twisted plot, or a murder plot. I try to guess, and figure it out.”
When he read through Resort to Murder the first time, he was genuinely surprised at the ending, and thinks the audience will be as well. “I’m a big fan of Birgitte’s writing, and I want to do right by her, and I want her to be happy, and give her the best production that I can. There’s a lot of humour in it, but it will be scary. When things are tense, when things are at a high frequency, it can turn to the hilarious.”
Resort to Murder’s escape room setting may be a first for the Festival, but Blyth’s history with murder mysteries goes way back. Not only did its inaugural season feature a production of the Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, but it also raised funds in the off-season of the early years by mounting murder mystery dinner theatre productions, written by local man of letters Rob Bundy, and occasionally featuring future Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro in a semi-incognito role.
Hughson is well aware that Resort to Murder is an ambitious undertaking - exactly the sort of high-stakes gamble worthy of the risk-taking Blyth Festival’s 50th anniversary. “I’m not going to say I’m not nervous about approaching this project - it’s a new play that’s never been done before, and it’s a style of theatre that’s not really been done before. It’s got a twist and an edge, and it isn’t perhaps as rural-themed as the plays that have been successful there. It will be up to me to sort of up the comedy, and scare people at the same time... I really hope we pull this thing off.”