Cynthia Dale is donning a blond Jean Harlow–style wig for her role as Broadway diva Dorothy Brock in the Stratford production of the musical 42nd Street.
Of course, there’s little chance audience members won’t know it’s Dale. As one of Canada’s most recognizable actresses, she’s a Stratford veteran known to many Canadians for her rich body of work on stage and TV.
Set in the great depression, 42nd Street is a tour de force of big tap-dancing numbers and show-stopping melodies, celebrating show business and show people.
“It’s a show about the love of performing, the importance of that and the magic of that,” Dale says. “Yes, it’s a business, but there is something magical about it.”
Back at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival for her 11th season, Dale plays a character who is a past-her-prime Broadway star who begrudgingly mentors a young up-and-comer. Dale says although her character is “no spring chicken,” she “has a lot of moxie,” which the actress, at 51, says she can relate to.
She says she feels lucky to be working with such a talented team at Stratford at this stage of her career: the first time she sang with the orchestra in rehearsals it brought her to tears.
“It was so overwhelming — the power of the music and being in the moment of the show and this musical at this time of my life … it was pure joy,” she says. “I feel it every time I hear the overture.”
Like her character, Dale has also been acting as a mentor to young actors at the festival.
“You pass [what you know] on and it’s important,” says Dale.
The actress says pursuing a career in show business isn’t an easy decision to rationalize.
“It’s not a logical career choice. It’s from your gut and your heart and your soul,” she says. “You wouldn’t do it if you considered it with your head.”
Dale says her advice to young upstarts is to get a business degree.
“It’s important to know how you approach yourself as a business and market yourself and what you should expect as a performer.
“It will inform you as a human being and not just as an actor,” she adds.
Dale herself took a much different path to success, landing her first gig at the age of five. When Dale was enrolled in dance classes, her teacher knew the choreographer at the Royal Alexandra Theatre where they needed children to perform in summer stock. Dale spent the summer performing in the musical Finian’s Rainbow. She continued to find work in commercials and CBC shows and says she did it “because it was fun” but eventually took performing more seriously.
“It’s not a logical career choice. It’s from your gut and your heart and your soul.”
Born in Toronto, Dale grew up in Etobicoke with two older sisters (one sister is actress Jennifer Dale) and a younger brother. Although her parents didn’t work in the theatre, Dale says her mother took her to musicals and plays, and her father always remained silently supportive of her career. Dale took singing and dance lessons outside of school and remained committed to finding theatrical gigs, balancing her studies with what work she could find. In her final two years of high school, Dale attended summer school at the Banff School of Fine Arts. Growing up she says she also educated herself by watching every great classic MGM musical on TV.
“I watched Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Barbra Streisand — I saw them all,” she says.
As a young actress in Toronto in the early 1980s, Dale says she found work in dinner theatre, cabarets and regional theatre.
She appeared in the Canadian slasher film My Bloody Valentine (1981) and in the off-Broadway murder mystery Tamara.
Dale is best known to many Canadians for her role in the popular Canadian TV series Street Legal, where she played the sultry, aggressive lawyer Olivia Novak for seven seasons.
“She was delicious,” Dale says about her character. “I was blissfully happy.”
The actress’s Street Legal co-star C. David Johnson, who played the reckless criminal lawyer Chuck Tchobanian on the series, also appears in 42nd Street.
Having performed in many shows at Stratford, Dale has played lead roles in such major productions as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Maria in The Sound of Music and Eliza in My Fair Lady.
Dale credits her career longevity to hard work but especially to some good luck.
“I’m really lucky and I know it and I don’t take anything for granted,” she says.
Having worked in television, theatre and film, Dale says she doesn’t have a preference for the stage or screen but rather chooses her roles depending on what interests her.
“It’s all about the part,” she says.
Out of the many roles she has played, Dale says Maggie in Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof stands out to her as a highlight, mainly because it’s one of the biggest roles any female actor could play.
“She doesn’t shut up,” Dale says with a smile.
There were also moments in My Fair Lady, playing Eliza Doolittle, that Dale says she greatly enjoyed since it was a show directed by the late Richard Monette (the festival’s artistic director from 1994 to 2008) during Stratford’s 50th season.
“[The experience] was tinged with gold because it was a special time,” Dale says.
The most important role of her life, Dale says, has not been in the public eye but rather in her personal life as the mother of her 12-year-old son with Peter Mansbridge, her husband and CBC news anchor.
“I couldn’t imagine not doing what I do, but it pales in comparison to being a mother,” she says.
When it comes to what she wants for herself in the future, Dale says her “bucket list” is driven more by emotions than goals.
“The older you get the more focused you become on being with your kid or having conversations with your kid — things like that become far more important,” she says.
“In my next life I want 10 kids — it’s my favourite role in the world.”
