Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone’s Onegin a modern take on Tchaikovsky

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Veda Hille and Amiel Gladstone met in 2003 in the Honest Ed's parking lot, at a Toronto Fringe Festival dress rehearsal. Gladstone was directing Billy Nothin'; Hille, a musician, was in town on tour and stopped by. The two Vancouverites had first connected by e-mail; Gladstone inquiring about what it would cost for her to do music for Billy Nothin.' But her cold-call rate was about the show's entire budget, so it went nowhere.

Now Hille and Gladstone are a bona fide musical theatre team, co-creators who have found a groove with each other, and are behind the hit shows Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata (which Hille co-created with Bill Richardson and Gladstone) and the first two years of the East Van Panto (created with playwright Charles Demers).

Their first co-written musical, Onegin, has its world premiere next week at the Arts Club Theatre Company in Vancouver – directed by Gladstone, with musical direction by Hille, who is also one of the onstage musicians. (The cast of seven includes Meg Roe and Caitriona Murphy – both of whom were in that 2003 Billy Nothin' production.) A sung-through, two-hour adaptation of the Tchaikovsky opera, based on the Pushkin poem, this Onegin is most certainly not opera – there's a rocking band onstage and songs with a contemporary feel; as Hille wrote them, she imagined them being sung by Neko Case and Dan Bejar.

"I dreamt last night I was in a rehearsal with an anonymous band and the drummer said, 'I need charts!' I was like, 'I don't write drum charts; can't you just play it?' And she left," Hille said this week, before the production's dress rehearsal. "So that's where my trauma is."

Hille, 47, burst onto the scene in the 1990s with her indie release Songs About People and Buildings and has established herself as Vancouver music royalty with her quirky sensibility, deep understanding of music, tremendous performance abilities at the piano and a dizzying work ethic. She is everywhere, it seems – more and more so in the theatre.

Gladstone, 43, is a prolific playwright and busy director with a wide range of credits; everything from Tape – set in a small hotel room – to Vancouver Opera's grand Lucia di Lammermoor.

Gladstone had been one of four stage directors brought in by VO to train in opera. That led to a collaboration with Hille on the VO school production Jack Pine – which she composed. They've worked together on other productions, too, but it's the projects that have allowed them to really express their own voice that have really struck a chord.

"When we've been able to kind of get our way, the things have been unusually successful … those things where we were really pushing our own aesthetic," says Gladstone, referring to the critically acclaimed box office hits Craigslist Cantata and the Panto – which has become a big Christmas holiday show in Vancouver. "And the other shows that we worked on together haven't had that kind of box office success. … But now I feel like, as an artistic team, we're much more of a force."

Sitting in the lobby of the new BMO Theatre Centre – The Arts Club's new small stage – Gladstone and Hille clearly have an easy artistic connection, finishing each other's sentences and sketching out similar visions for this production and, they hope, the next one (they'll start thinking about that in the fall).

Back in 2013, understanding they had something special, Gladstone and Hille set out to find a new show to create together. Gladstone insisted on an adaptation – he says the biggest musical theatre hits have been adaptations – so they watched films, read books, brainstormed.

Gladstone finally hit on Onegin – he had served as assistant director on a VO production of the opera – and while he was sure it would be the right story for them, Hille needed some persuading. She said she would write some songs for it during a residency in Berlin – but she was reluctant and insisted: If the songs weren't well-received back home in workshops, she would not continue with the endeavour.

"Because it's so much work," Hille says. "It's three years of serious work to make a musical."

She got to Berlin, set up her little studio, and decided she would take a walk and explore the neighbourhood. She rounded the corner, and there it was – her sign from the universe: a restaurant called Onegin.

"I'm fully West Coast, and I went okay, I guess we're going to call it."

In Berlin, she wrote about half a dozen songs. Gladstone, in Europe for a family matter, was able to join her for a couple of weeks. He heard the songs, and he was certain they had their show.

"I didn't know if it was going to stick," he says. "Once we were in Berlin, once the songs started coming out, then I knew."

Onegin, now in previews, opens at the BMO Theatre Centre in Vancouver March 23 and runs until April 10.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story said the production Billy Nothin' took place in 1997. In fact, it was in 2003. This version has been corrected.