THEATRE: FEATURE INTERVIEW
Kate Hennig returns to Great White North from the Great White Way
23 FEB/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Good theatre is never predictable, but then neither is a good life in the theatre. For proof, look to Kate Hennig. “I had no expectation of being on Broadway — not since I was 22 years old,” the 48-year-old actress recalls, matter-of-factly, despite a career etched on some of Canada’s finest stages.

Despite her lack of expectations, here she is, sitting in the lobby of Toronto’s beautiful Canon Theatre, preparing to reprise her Broadway performance as Mrs. Wilkinson, the spunky ballet teacher in BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL. The Tony Award-winning show opens March 1. With a good-natured laugh, she recalls how it all started, which is to say reluctantly, for when it came to casting, Hennig always saw herself more in the smaller character roles, rather than in the leading-lady, name-up-in-lights turns that lead to the big time. “But my agent said: This part is coming up, and I think you should go out for it,” she recalls, adding that the audition seemed to go very well indeed.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one who thought so. She immediately got a call to go down to New York. “I spent two days (there) doing what I call extreme sports,” she says with a laugh, recalling that they put her through several different kinds of paces. Turns out she was in the running for the role of Mrs. Wilkinson, which ultimately went to Haydn Gwynne, who had played the role in the West End. It was when Gwynne stepped down that Hennig got the part, and she’s just fine with that. “They didn’t know who the hell I was,” she says philosophically.

A lifetime in theatre has taught her to handle such things. “If it’s not you, it’s someone else, and it has nothing to do with whether you’re good or bad.” Hennig would perform the role on Broadway for just over a year — and had a whale of a time in the process, despite the fact that the role of a seasoned dance teacher was more than a bit of a stretch.

“Nooo, I’m not a dancer, but I play one on TV,” she cracks. “But I’ve worked hard. It’s physically the hardest work I have ever done.” And the payoff was New York, but not in the way she expected. “I had this naive illusion that doing eight shows a week would be a snap. Doing eight shows a week of this, you can’t do another thing.” But even just working in New York had its rewards. “You walk through Times Square to go to work. You see your name on a marquee. It was insane!” And after a year, she was ready for a break. “I wanted a hiatus. My actor’s brain is not used to doing a show for a year.”

Fate had other things in store for her. Offered the opportunity to open the show in Toronto in front of a hometown audience, Hennig re-upped without a moment’s hesitation, although she insisted on a two-month break. She’s now raring to go, once again. “I think Toronto is going to love this play,” she says of the story of a young man and a dancer’s dream, growing up in an economically depressed area of Britain. “It’s such a Canadian show in a way. We will see in this play the devastation of Newfoundland’s cod fishery, and the problems in the Oshawa auto industry. And I’m really proud of the show. I think it’s a great piece of theatre.”

Great enough that she’s prepared to give it another year of her life? She shrugs. “You know what it will really depend on is my body,” she says, seriously. “I’m 48 now and I have injuries that make it difficult to do this show. I don’t want this to be the last show I ever do.” As for the next, well, that’s too far in the future to say, she insists. But now that she has had her name in lights on Broadway, she’s prepared to admit there is a chance that those lights burned her name into someone’s memory with enough force that she’ll be invited back. “I’d be there in a heartbeat,” she says, “Because you get to work with some of the best directors in the world and, please God, some of the best actors.”

But she’d be just as happy working in Canada and returning to the Shaw and Stratford Festivals, both of which have been her performing home. “The reason I see myself back in those places is because I love great theatre and great plays,” she says. For now, she’s content working and playing with Billy Elliot. “I will enjoy this for the time that it brings, but what the next chapter is, I have no concept right now,” she says.

After all, a good life — like good theatre — is never predictable.