Dixon Road at Musical Stage Company and Obsidian Theatre
NOTE: I attended Dixon Road on opening night. It started raining halfway through act one, the show paused, a rainbow appeared, and the second half of act one was done as a stand-and-sing concert. Then, act two proceeded as normal. In the end, we didn’t get out of there ‘til 3h 15m after the show’s official start time. But, still, it was a beautiful evening.
After Hamilton, an influx of hip-hop infused musicals felt inevitable. That influx hasn’t come. This isn’t exactly surprising: musicals take a long time to write, and it’s, uh, been a pandemic. Still, of all the attempts to rise to Hamilton’s challenge, Musical Stage Company and Obsidian Theatre’s Dixon Road comes the closest.
To be clear, I don’t think all musicals with hip-hop elements need to be compared to Hamilton. But Dixon Road wears its influences proudly: before the show and at intermission, a song from The Hamilton Mixtape plays. Plus, in a pre-show chat, writer Fatuma Adar mentioned In the Heights as an important influence. The shows’ most significant similarity, however, is probably their protagonists: like Alexander Hamilton, the young Batoul (Germaine Konji) is a writer. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to inject hip-hop into the score — words spill out of Batoul’s mind faster than she can sing them, so, to get them out, she must rap.
Dixon Road is a period piece. It’s set in 1991, and tracks a Somali family’s experience of immigrating to Toronto while the Somali Civil War is just beginning. Batoul is the youngest member of this family.
As a white man immigrating to America in 1776, there was boundless opportunity available to Alexander Hamilton. In many ways, he got to define what the word “American” meant. But coming to Canada in 1991 means dealing with pre-constructed ideas of “How to Be Canadian”. And these colonial ideals mean Batoul and her family have to start from the bottom: her father was a Minister of Heritage, but, in Toronto, the only job he can find is taxi driving. The show asks: how can we break this cycle?
Dixon Road marks the beginning of Canadian Stage’s “Dream in High Park”, a suite of annual summer programming that CanStage started during the pandemic to complement their usual Shakespeare in High Park. But unlike last year’s musical, Blackout, which was presented as work “in-process”, Dixon Road is a full-on production.
If there was any doubt whether a production of this scale could be mounted in the park, there need not have been. Brian Dudkiewicz’s giant set fills the ampitheatre, and its wooden textures blend into the surrounding trees. Plus, like the forest, this set feels alive; wooden panels covered in fabrics elegantly roll in and out of the space, and set changes happen under our very noses.
From what I saw, director-choreographer (and Muscial Stage Company Deputy AD) Ray Hogg provides equally spry staging — it barrels through different times and places with ease.
Before the show, it was mentioned that Dixon Road has been in development for five years. It feels like it. The show is economical, entertaining, and dramaturgically rigorous. But, after all this development, Dixon Road’s structure is very “American musical”. Though, in theory, the show tells the whole family’s story, it sometimes feels unnecessarily structured around Batoul’s objective — her “want”, which is to be a writer. At one point, someone in her family even tells her something along the lines of “You don’t get what you want! You don’t get what you want!”. I know that focusing on an objective is “how things are done”, but these characters are so interesting that the drama around Batoul’s objective is actually the least engaging part of the show — after all, everyone knows that her parents are eventually going to let her be a writer: that’s just how plots go!
But here’s the upshot: Batoul is a great role. It’s a good old-fashioned star turn, and who better to take it on than Konji? This is her show, and she nails it. They’re a recent Sheridan grad, but they don’t have the insecure forcedness of most young musical theatre performers — everything comes from a place of effortless presence.
Overall, Dixon Road is a magical night under the stars. And if you’re looking for a musical with that doesn’t just feel Canadian, but Torontonian? It’s right here.