My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding was awesome

Back in August I posted about My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding, a new musical I’d heard about that debuted at the Toronto Fringe Festival earlier in the summer.

It had just been announced that Mirvish was going to host a production of it at the Panasonic Theatre in November, and that I simply must see it based on the name alone.

November came,¹ and indeed I did go to see it. And I’m surprised to say it was genuinely awesome and I loved it.²

MMLJWW is narrated by David Hein, the co-author along with his wife Irene Carl Sankoff, and is based on the true story of how Hein’s moms got together.

Hein’s mother Claire (played by Lisa Horner) was an atheist who came out to her son is as a lesbian after falling in love with Jane (Rosemary Doyle), a Wiccan. Claire later comes out a second time to her son, this time as a Jew. It’s funny and it’s clever, but it’s also sensitive and genuinely touching.

Favourite numbers included – well, almost all of them, but quite a few stuck out, like “Don’t Take Your Lesbian Moms to Hooters”, “You Don’t Need a Penis”, “Straight White Male”, and I’ll admit that “A Short History of Gay Marriage in Canada” made me tear up a bit – it’s amazing how long it took for such a basic human right as the ability to marry to be available to all.

One of the first things my husband recognized was that the band was incredible, which, upon reading the program, wasn’t terribly surprising. The band featured Timothy Bovaconti (Bachman-Cummings), Sarah Calvert (Que Sarah), Jeff Daze (The Interphase Project) and David Pontello (Evil Dead: The Musical).

I’ll admit I had reservations when I bought my tickets. The poster was terribly hokey, the premise absurd (even if it was based on a true story), and the idea of a musical being born out of it seemed even more unlikely.

And yet it’s easily one of the best shows I’ve seen this year. It’s solid from beginning to end, has excellent pacing, and it’s beyond hilarious. I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did, but I do, I love it.

Tickets are still available until the end of November. Don’t miss it, it really is worth seeing.

(I still think the poster is hokey.)

Footnotes:

1. It’s still here! Hi, November! [back]
2. My husband and I even bought the CD they recorded themselves in their living room. [back]

Psyche is the editor of ahrfoundation.org and the curator for the occult resource SpiralNature.com, Psyche also operates a tarot consultation business, Psyche Tarot. She has been published in The Cauldron, Konton, Tarot World Magazine, among other magazines, and her essay “Strategic Magick” appeared in Manifesting Prosperity (Megalithica, 2008).

Psyche's website is http://www.ahrfoundation.org.