The production remains polished and even personally stronger on its second run.
During Divine Brown’s jaw-dropping interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Tower of Song,’ she drew sustained applause after building to a long, powerful note.
Pausing afterward, she told the audience, “Mama still got it.”
That remark captured the exuberant confidence of a production that has grown more assured since its Toronto engagement several months ago.
Co-created by Frank Cox-O’Connell, Marni Jackson and Mike Ross, The Secret Chord is particularly well suited to Cohen’s home city, where the setting adds a sense of place without overwhelming the material.
Staged in the Segal Centre’s intimate Sylvan Adams Theatre, the concert presents Cohen as a more varied artist than his reputation for melancholy might suggest.
His catalogue moves between wit, sensuality, spiritual inquiry and reflective melancholy, and the production draws on that range rather than settling into a single mood.
Arranger Mike Ross’s layered portrait combines familiar songs with biographical reflections. Compared with the polished Toronto staging, the Montréal production feels more immediate, largely because Andres Castillo-Smith’s sound design gives equal clarity to the spoken passages, featured singers and musicians. The result supports the concert’s recurring themes of love, loss, spirituality and the search for meaning without forcing an interpretation.
Castillo-Smith maintains that balance throughout the evening, directing attention to dialogue when needed and letting the harmonies and melodies fill the Adams Theatre without obscuring the words.
Director Frank Cox-O’Connell largely trusts the performers and the songs to carry the evening, avoiding unnecessary explanation. The five featured singers pay tribute to Cohen without resorting to sustained imitation of his distinctive gravelly voice. Andrew Penner and Michael Torontow occasionally echo Cohen’s phrasing and timbre, but these moments remain accents rather than impersonations. Each performer establishes an individual approach, and the audience responded visibly, often nodding or keeping time with the music.
The visual design remains close to the Toronto production. A raincoat resembling one Cohen wore hangs on an upstage coat hook, while the band occupies risers behind the singers. The performers move between a wingback chair, a piano at stage right, and a seating area at far stage left. David Costello’s original projections, executed by Frank Donato and Nathan Bruce, add texture without dominating the music. Simon Rossiter’s smoky, low-key lighting sustains an atmosphere of expectation.
The singers and musicians function as an integrated ensemble. Instrumental transitions support shifts in vocal intensity and give performers room to move without interrupting the concert’s pace.
Divine Brown, Beau Dixon, Andrew Penner, Emily Schultz and Michael Torontow, dressed in neutral black, bring distinct vocal and dramatic qualities to the material. Brown gives ‘Bird on a Wire’ a poised sensuality; Torontow emphasizes the raw, erotic edge in ‘Suzanne’; and Penner approaches ‘Dance Me to the End of Love’ with a rough, propulsive intensity. Schultz’s ‘Hey That’s No Way to Say Goodbye’ is controlled and intimate, while Dixon’s ‘Everybody Knows’ builds steadily toward the song’s central observation. The interpretations vary in emphasis but remain consistent with the production’s ensemble approach.
Cox-O’Connell’s director’s note explains “Hineni” as the Hebrew phrase for “Here I am.” That idea of presence provides a personal and useful frame for a concert concerned with faith, mortality and artistic self-examination.
The biographical material includes references to Cohen’s private life, including an intimate encounter with Janis Joplin that is perhaps a bit shocking to those who did not know. This detail broadens the portrait, although it might sit less comfortably beside the production’s more focused musical analysis.
Even so, The Secret Chord succeeds as live theatre rather than simply a catalogue of familiar songs. Its strongest moments emerge from the interplay of voice, musicianship and design.
In Montréal, that interplay carries additional resonance, particularly in the closing sequence featuring ‘So Long Marianne’ and ‘Hallelujah.’ The production is most persuasive when it lets those songs, and the performers’ contrasting interpretations, speak for themselves.
The Secret Chord remains a disciplined, musically assured production in an intimate, revealing concert.
Recommended.
Running time: approximately 90 minutes with no intermission
The production runs to October 25 in the Sylvan Adams Theatre in the Segal Centre for the Performing Arts, 5170 chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Québec. For tickets, call (514) 739-7944 or visit: segalcentre.org
A SEGAL CENTRE presentation of a SOULPEPPER CONCERT
The Secret Chord: A Leonard Cohen Experience
Created by Frank Cox-O’Connell, Marni Jackson and Mike Ross
Directed by Frank Cox-O’Connell
Arranger: Mike Ross
Lighting Designer: Simon Rossiter
Associate Lighting Designer: Tim Rodrigues
Sound Designer: Andres Castillo-Smith
Associate Sound Designer: Michael Wanless
Original Projection Designer: David Costello
Projection Designer: Frank Donato
Associate Projection Designer: Nathan Bruce
Assistant Stage Manager: Evan Reid
Stage Manager: Ava Bishop
Band Members: Jacob Gorzhalstan, Tom Moffett, Bret Higgins, Jamie Drake
Featured Performers: Divine Brown, Beau Dixon, Andrew Penner, Emily Schultz, Michael Torontow
