Man of mystery

Legendary escape artist Harry Houdini, circa 1899. (Associated Press)

Though not a big believer in magic, Ben Gonshor is hoping for a healthy dose of it this week. On Sunday, Feb. 10, the Montreal stage actor saw the curtain rise on his first self-penned play, about the great Harry Houdini.

“I didn’t grow up with magic, really,” explains Gonshor, during a recent break from rehearsals in the lobby of Montreal’s Leanor and Alvin Segal Theatre. “But I did grow up with show business. And everyone who works in show business is in some way a descendant of Harry’s.”

Houdini was a magician of little note when he began performing escape routines in 1893; as his popularity grew wilder, so did his escapes. But he was every bit as astute at publicity as he was at magic. Houdini once convinced a brewery to sponsor his act — the gimmick was that he had to escape from a vat of their beer. It is thought to be the first marketing tie-in of its kind.

Gonshor, who has performed on stage since he was a child, was approached to write a Houdini musical by Bryna Wasserman, artistic director of Montreal’s new Segal Theatre. Wasserman had directed an original Yiddish musical about Houdini in 2000. Gonshor’s version, an ambitious $300,000 production, will be the venue’s inaugural show.

“Bryna had directed me, and she knew that I’d written creatively before, so she asked me to take this on,” says Gonshor, who penned the musical’s book.

Gonshor says this latest version incorporates new wrinkles in the Houdini mythology, thanks largely to William Kalush and Larry Sloman’s 2006 biography, The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero. Their exhaustively researched, critically lauded book raised new allegations about the man, including suggestions that he had been a spy for the British government, and that he may have been killed by members of a cult.

Gonshor was particularly intrigued by Houdini’s connection with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the creator of Sherlock Holmes) and the spiritualist movement.

“Doyle was a spiritualist, meaning that he was convinced you could talk to the dead,” says Gonshor. “This was a movement that was growing in the late 19th century and early 20th. The movement really picked up a lot of steam after the First World War — many men didn’t return from battle, so people held out hope that they could actually talk to the dead.”

From left, Alison Gelinas, Kevin Kraft (Harry Houdini) and Gab Desmond (Theo Weiss, Harry's brother) in Ben Gonshor's musical Houdini. (Randy Cole/Saidye Bronfman Centre)

As the story goes, Doyle invited Houdini to attend a seance, where the author insisted they would connect with Houdini’s late mother. The magician had an extremely intense relationship with his mother, one Gonshor says was “not quite Oedipal, but almost.” The seance proved a fiasco. “As [it] went on, Houdini told Doyle he was an idiot. He said that it was clear his mother had never been in the room, that the responses purported to be hers never could have been. She never would have responded in proper English, he argued, because she was a Hungarian immigrant. And it was her birthday on the day of the seance, but she never mentioned it. It was after this seance that Houdini went on a crusade to debunk the spiritualist movement,” Gonshor says.

His play includes part of this bizarre episode — namely, Doyle’s attempts to convince Houdini that he was actually communicating with his late mother. “It’s really quite a spooky scene,” says Gonshor, adding that “it’s strange to have these two famous historical figures in the scene together.”

Interestingly enough, Houdini’s anti-spiritualist fervour actually led to a career comeback. “He had reached the age where less people were caring about his magic,” notes Gonshor, “and his film career had tanked with The Man from Beyond. Now one of his main objectives was to debunk the spiritualists. He had elaborate new shows in which he would disprove their claims of being able to talk to dead people.”

Houdini’s demise has always had a strong Montreal angle. On Oct. 22, 1926, after a performance at McGill University, Houdini agreed to pose for a portrait by an art student. Another student reportedly entered the room and asked Houdini if it was true that he could withstand any punch to his torso. After Houdini said yes, the student began pounding away at him. Eventually, Houdini asked him to stop. Two days later, the magician had to cut short a performance in Detroit; he eventually died of acute appendicitis. “The punch may not have killed him, but it sure didn’t help,” says Gonshor.

Kalush and Sloman’s The Secret Life of Houdini entertains the idea that spiritualists, who felt threatened by the magician’s repeated attacks on their credulity and credibility, had him poisoned. “There had been death threats, and there were even Molotov cocktails thrown at his home,” says Gonshor.

While Houdini is a period musical, the show features a live, six-piece band and has a contemporary feel to it. Composer Elan Kunin, who wrote the music and lyrics, refused to restrict himself to the music of the period. “Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim have definitely been influences,” says Kunin. “Like any musical theatre lover, I’ve been guided by them — they have to play a role.”

“When we were writing, we didn’t concern ourselves with how people would have sounded precisely in that time,” says Gonshor. “Authenticity was less important than making sure audiences could connect with the work. If we’d worked to be entirely authentic in that respect, I think that what you’d have would be more of a museum piece. Like one of Houdini’s shows, this is about entertainment.”

Houdini runs until March 2 as part of the Montreal Highlights Festival.

Matthew Hays is a writer based in Montreal.

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