The acting is great, the writing is funny: Paul Gross on acting in The Seafarer at Alberta Theatre Projects

The curtain rises on Alberta Theatre Project’s 50th season with opener “The Seafarer” on Friday, Oct. 18, starring Paul Gross.

When 660 NewsRadio’s Andrea Montgomery caught up with Gross, rehearsals were more than halfway through, a point where he says everything usually seems to be hopeless and dreadful.

But, Gross insists despite the mid-rehearsal challenges, not all hope is lost — the script has great bones.

“So much is really a consequence of the writing. The playwright’s name is Connor McPherson; he’s Irish, it’s an Irish play and it’s got all that kind of Irish mysticism, and fantastic poetry and hilarity and alcohol and they’re all mixed together,” he explained.

The show is called “The Seafarer.”

The story is about five guys spending Christmas Eve together in a house north of Dublin. They pass the time playing cards but soon realize someone at the table has raised the stakes past mortality. It’s labelled a dark comedy.

Gross shares the stage with other veteran stage actors you may recognize such as Christopher Hunt, Chirag Naik, Shaun Smyth, and David Trimble.

He says all of them are great at acting but awful at addition. This makes the card games on stage a particular challenge to rehearse.

“It’s really a great slice of life and these characters are really well-drawn and the actors in this show are fantastic,” he said. “So far I think it’s really going to be good.”

This will be Gross’ debut performance with Alberta Theatre Projects, and his first performance on a Calgary stage in over four decades.

He became involved after speaking with artistic director Haysam Kadri, whom he knew from past work together at Stratford Festival. It’s Kadri’s first fully programmed season at the helm of ATP.

Gross speaks in glowing terms about Kadri, saying he always knew he would do well.

“I thought he was great, very smart… you know when you run across somebody and you think, ‘That’s it, they’ve got it, whatever it is.'”

Gross says ATP is a very fun place to work.

At this point in his career, Gross says he has no particular agenda, and is following projects that he thinks would be fun to do, and theatre in particular is something he is finding very fun.

“The thing is with film, you have no relationship at all to the audience… because there isn’t one, and you have no way to have a conversation with them,” he explained. “So, the thing about acting live is they are with you, and without them the play doesn’t mean anything, and with them you have this conversation that makes the evening either good or bad.”

Laughingly, Gross also blames his bad memory in making sure the show stays fresh as he doesn’t often do the same thing twice: “What is going to happen tonight?”

But, while the cast works on perfecting lines and fine tuning the pace of the piece, he says the audience is what truly defines the show.

He recalls that while playing Hamlet he had a bit of a nervous breakdown, and he told the director he couldn’t do it.

“Just get Colm Feore, he knows all the lines and I can just go home,” he said at the time. The director said, ‘OK, but do me a favour and just do one performance with an audience.'”

Gross says he figured it out in the first scene, leaning on the audience to further the conversation.

“It is that other voice you don’t know is there when you are rehearsing it, but is there when you are doing it,” be added.

So why should people join the audience of “The Seafarer”?

Gross’ pitch is that it is beautifully written, the actors are local and wonderful.

“We are great, the writing’s great, the writing’s funny, it is really shocking and surprising and very moving and I think you’ll have a really tremendous evening,” he said.

After “The Seafarer,” Gross is off to Toronto to perform in “Who is Afraid of Virginia Wolf,” alongside his wife, Martha Burns.