The Kid on the Stage
Courtesy of Canada.com
Mark McKinney: Canadian funnyman sees a future in more dramatic outings
By Frank Moher
National Post
January 24, 2000
NEW YORK - It's not easy getting in touch with once and future Kid in the Hall Mark McKinney. Not that he has an entourage or anything; it's just that his life seems a little -- hectic.
He's made a splash lately in the hit comedy Fuddy Meers at the Manhattan Theatre Club; The New York Times says he's "emerging as one of the top-flight actors on the New York stage." The press agent for the show, however, can't get hold of him because he's nipped out of town for a few days to do some filming, and isn't returning calls.
When I do reach him -- I send a note backstage at a performance of Fuddy Meers, once he's back in New York -- he agrees to meet for a half-hour after a voice-over gig the next day. But that's all, because his three-year-old son "doesn't like his babysitter" and he doesn't want to be away from him any longer than necessary.
And then there's the fact that he'll be out of town again for the Kids in the Hall reunion tour, which opened at Vancouver's Orpheum Theatre this month and is heading to some 25 other North American cities, including Toronto and Montreal. For those who wonder if there's life after Kids in the Hall for anyone who isn't Dave Foley -- buddy, there's too much life.
"We decided, foolishly or otherwise, to sort of f--- with with the winning formula," he says of the upcoming tour. "So we've written some new pieces -- based on old characters, but new pieces, and rented an elaborate rear-screen projection video system so that the audience feels more involved." McKinney, who's chunked out a bit since his TV days, and who's just as tall as ever, seems a little embarrassed at the thought of Kids in the Hall pulling a U2 and performing in front of a high-tech backdrop. Besides giving the audience that comfy feeling, he says, it'll be "with it and Y2K compliant and all that bulls---."
McKinney, 41 (we'll skip the obvious joke here), began performing seriously -- funny seriously -- in Calgary in the early '80s. Born in Ottawa, he'd done a bit of college radio comedy in St. John's before flunking out of Memorial University and ending up in Alberta in search of oil-boom wages.
He had the good fortune to run into University of Calgary drama professor Keith Johnstone, who had recently invented theatresports (perhaps Canada's most important contribution to the theatre world and one currently helping to line Drew Carey's pocket, thank you very much) and founded a company built around improvisational comedy, Loose Moose.
Says McKinney: "There's maybe been three geniuses, and I use that term loosely, that I've met in my life. One of them's Keith, another one is Lorne Michaels [McKinney appeared on Saturday Night Live for three seasons], and another one is the Kids in the Hall collectively, when we're on a roll."
McKinney performed in a Loose Moose version of Ben Hur and took Johnstone's first-year acting course at U of C, the only formal training he's had. Fellow Kid Bruce McCullough was also part of the company, and together they carted the Loose Moose style off to Toronto, and eventually to the cult series that ran from 1989 through 1994 (and continues to be seen in apparently inexhaustible rotation on The Comedy Network in Canada and Comedy Central in the States).
McKinney's dextrous performance in Fuddy Meers, as a demented yokel in a Blues Brothers suit with a puppet nearly welded to one hand, unavoidably owes a lot to his improv roots. "I can't take the play anywhere I want to go, but I can certainly try to keep the moments fresh. I'll play Millet in several different moods over the course of a week. In one he may be light and far more innocent, in another one he's just a bundle of screaming paranoiac nerves. And it all still sort of fits."
I ask him if he thinks Kids in the Hall had any role in shaping cultural products like the play he's in, which, with its combination of cynicism and goofiness, is a distinctly '90s affair. (That it's liable to run well into the new decade may simply be an indication that theatre often lags behind the pop-culture curve.)
But it's not his kind of question. "I don't know. That's strictly your job. I don't see where the tendrils of influence lead and stuff like that. I do know that when we we started there weren't a lot of small conceptual comedy shows on TV. We were, I think, one of the first, and we were very lucky that way. We had the CBC and HBO as this sort of protective tent ... But we didn't have a master plan."
He is, in truth, a tough interview -- guarded (the result of having a father who's a diplomat?), given to less-than-expansive answers (but then he's got that kid to get home to). You can almost see him editing his reply when I ask if he'd like to do some more classical roles, having made his New York stage debut two years ago in an acclaimed production of A Flea in Her Ear.
"I want to do some Sh ... some Shhh ... akespeare," he tells me, and I can only guess he's hesitating because clowns who want to play Hamlet are a stock figure of fun in showbiz. But he has in mind something more like Jacques in As You Like It, "or maybe on the darker edge, Iago. But I'll probably have to go to Texas or somewhere to do it."
Meantime, after the Kids in the Hall tour, he hopes to leap back into Fuddy Meers, which begins an open-ended commercial run later this month. KITH (as they're known to their diehard fans) may tour again next fall and they're talking of another movie, a successor to their first and, it says here, underrated film, Brain Candy.
But I have a better idea. Mark McKinney, Theatre Calgary, next season, Falstaff. He always was the best actor of the bunch, continues to prove it and, if he's going to play Shakespeare, he might as well do it in his theatrical home.
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