Famous for belting out ABBA tunes in the hit production Mamma Mia!, musical theatre star Louise Pitre is now using her influence to introduce Canadians to lesser-known productions. Pitre recently co-founded Theatre 20, a Toronto-based theatre company, and is starring in their second production, Steven Sondheim’s Company.
The story follows a man in his mid-30s named Bobby who can’t commit to any one of his three girlfriends and whose best friends all happen to be married couples. Pitre plays one of those friends, a cynical type who loves to drink. She says the show is just as relevant today as when it first opened on Broadway in 1970.
“We’re still struggling with the same crap — everyone gets so worried about trying to find themselves and being happy,” Pitre says. “It’s pathetic — why can’t everyone just love each other and be OK with each other?”
It becomes obvious something that does give Pitre happiness is playing a role such as her character Joanne, who she describes as being “the obnoxious drunk.”
“There’s something deeply thrilling about being ugly because you know you don’t mean it — it’s not your life — but you get to be nasty without consequences,” Pitre says. “It’s kind of therapeutic.”
Taking refuge in a character that is very different from herself is something Pitre has done many times before. She has taken on roles as diverse as the French singer Edith Piaf in Piaf, the caustic wife Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the tragic figure Fantine in Les Miserables.
Pitre was born in Smooth Rock Falls in northern Ontario. She says her interest in music was sparked by piano lessons her mother enrolled her in at the age of seven. Eventually, Pitre started singing along when she practised piano and says she secretly dreamed of performing her songs.
But it was in university that Pitre got her first true taste of performing for an audience. She was studying music education at the University of Western Ontario with the aim of becoming a teacher. When she played piano to accompany a friend’s audition for a campus musical, the director noticed Pitre and she was cast in her first show.
Pitre says she loved it so much, she quickly realized performing was what she wanted to do.
After gaining more experience in smaller shows in London, Ont., Pitre decided, if she was really going to give show business a shot, she had to move to Toronto.
Her big break, she says, was landing the lead in the musical Blood Brothers in High Park. Pitre played Mrs. Johnstone, a working-class woman with twins who struggles with being a single parent and decides to give up one of her children.
“The show got great reviews,” Pitre says. “It was my coming out as a full-fledged musical theatre performer.”
The doors were now open for Pitre. Arguably her highest profile role has been Donna Sheridan — a former rock star turned single mom — in Mamma Mia! Pitre headlined the Toronto, Broadway and touring productions of the ABBA-themed musical and earned a Tony nomination (2002) for her performance.
“I’ve never felt so loved in my life,” she says of her time with the show, at which audiences were on their feet dancing every night to hits like “Dancing Queen” and “Take a Chance on Me.”
Married to actor Joe Matheson, Pitre spends much of her downtime at their farmhouse north of the city. And with Theatre 20 in the works, it sounds as if Pitre is looking forward to a new role altogether: that of mentor.
“I’m hoping the payoff will be educational,” Pitre says. “Theatre 20 is something that might just bring all of these gorgeous pieces of musical theatre forward to new performers who only know from Mamma Mia! on.”
Company runs from Jan. 2 to Feb. 3 at the Enwave Theatre. For information, go to theatre20.com.