Stratford Festival Artistic Director Des McAnuff and his partner Bryna McCann sit in the living room of their Stratford, Ont. home. The couple completed a full-scale reno of the home last year.
For Des McAnuff , home is a refuge from the demanding directorial duties that keep him hopping at least six days a week, often between continents.
The artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the multiple-award-winning director of the hit musical Jersey Boys, which has grossed over $800-million and been seen by more than seven million people worldwide, doesn't get much down time, but when he does he loves to be at home.
These days, that's a spectacular, remodelled 4,000-square-foot house in Stratford, Ont., overlooking the Avon River across from the Festival Theatre. He and his partner, Bryna McCann, spend half the year in their Stratford home; the rest of the year they split between their Lower Manhattan loft and travelling.
"The house and the apartment in New York are sanctuaries for us," says McAnuff. "I do work very hard and so does Bryna, so they're the oases in our lives. We put a lot of thought, work and resources into our home environment because we can control that. The rest of our lives seem very chaotic and anarchic at times. It's a great pleasure to be able to control a small piece."
McAnuff became artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 2008. Born in Illinois, he grew up in Guelph and Scarborough and went to Ryerson University to study theatre before launching into a career as a composer and lyricist, eventually moving on to playwriting and directing. The flamboyant and prolific award-winning writer and director has a list of credits as long as your arm.
At first, the couple rented in Stratford. But one day while out jogging, McAnuff spotted a house he liked on one of the city's most beautiful streets. It hit a chord. He thought it might be the time to buy. Excited, he called McCann in New York. The trouble was when she arrived in Stratford, he couldn't find the house again. He called local real estate agent Annette Vyge and explained they were hoping to buy a house along the river. She took them to see one that was available, and as it happened it was the same house McAnuff had been drawn to, although no for-sale sign had been posted.
"It was meant to be," says McAnuff. "Bryna claims I had some kind of vision for this house - and I did."
They bought the house in 2008 for $1.1-million and began remodelling immediately. Most of the work was done while they were away, which meant they weren't around for the mess but also not around to oversee the process. They moved into the house in March, 2009, and everything had turned out beautifully. They were thrilled with the work done by Stratford's Belliveau Construction and local tradespeople. And there was lots of it.
McAnuff and McCann changed almost everything - from the doorknobs and floors to the doors and cabinets. With help from Stratford-based architect Terry Marklevitz, they also reconfigured the house and put on an addition. The interior, which had been painted five different colours, was repainted a creamy white throughout. The main arched entrance over the front door was also completely redesigned and the hall ceiling raised. "It looked like someone had punched the house in the nose," says McAnuff, who had the arch replaced with a peaked roof, inside of which is a brilliant red, stained-glass maple leaf he commissioned.
Everything is spread out on one floor and there's no basement. The house is spacious, modern, elegant and teeming with natural light no matter which room you're in. It's also very open-concept. Because of that, say McCann, "it's a great house for entertaining." The couple estimate they spent about $300,000 remodelling and landscaping the three-bedroom, three-bathroom building, which sits on a half-acre of prime real estate. One of those bedrooms is used whenever McAnuff's 85-year-old mother or his 19-year-old daughter come to visit.
The great room in the house consists of an enormous ultra-modern, state-of-the-art kitchen, dining area and a large living room, where McAnuff keeps his grand piano and five of his guitars. An accomplished musician, he often spends some of his down time making music. It's one of the talents explored in a recently released documentary about his life called Des McAnuff: A Life in Stages.
McAnuff and McCann's taste for art and Art Deco adds to the overall elegance of the house. In the hall is a Deco chair by the late Donald Deskey, one of America's leading interior and industrial designers and the man who designed the interior of Radio City Music Hall in New York. The enormous, glistening dining room table is also distinctly Deco, as are various dressing room pieces, tables and chairs elsewhere in the house. The artwork is bold, colourful and mostly contemporary. Much of it is a reflection of McAnuff's theatre life, his family life and the past. There's a stunningly realistic painting in the living room, by local artist John Gould, of a jar of Robertson's marmalade (it was McAnuff's father's favourite preserve). There's a poster from The Who's Tommy and Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, both of which he directed, and a poster from Troll, which he wrote very early in his career.
His favourite painting (an image of giants red lips) hangs over the piano. Entitled Lagos - In the Beginning was the Word, it was painted in 1946 by artist, designer and illustrator Eric Aldwinkle, who was also the festival's first promotional art director. McAnuff's mother bought the painting from Aldwinkle but gave it to McAnuff because he loved it so much. He claims he designed their entire living room around it.
Sitting at the dining room table before heading off to Toronto for a screening of the new documentary, McAnuff points out a rusty-orange rug in the living room, which they bought from their favourite rug dealer in New York. "This is the one thing that makes us look like design geniuses," he says. "We put in these three maples out front - two sugars and a northern maple - and in October that little sugar turned exactly the same colour as this rug - exactly. It took my breath away. For about three weeks it really looked like we knew what we're doing, but it was total luck."
The couple also filled in the swimming pool, replaced it with a hot tub and re-landscaped, which included adding a pond and cascading waterfall. "Bryna has a green thumb so she had a big hand in designing the outdoor space," says McAnuff, who enjoys feeding the birds and squirrels. "Bryna accuses me of being Dr. Doolittle."
McCann, who met McAnuff in New York and is originally from Long Island, is a former massage therapist and fit model, meaning she posed for fashion designers so they could check the fit of their clothes. She was so much in demand it left little time to be with McAnuff so she gave it up. She's now studying the Alexander Technique, a method of changing movement habits to discover a new balance in the body and release unnecessary tension, which will no doubt come in handy for the busy couple.
It's a big change living half the year in Stratford, a small city of roughly 30,000 people surrounded by farmland. While McAnuff is undoubtedly more used to places like New York, and London, Stratford is a natural fit. "For a theatre professional, this is Mecca," he says. "Stratford is certainly the most important of the resident theatres in North America and really became the role model for many other theatres.
"It's also in my blood, because I was a student of John Hirsch [former artistic director]and Michael Langham, who hired me to teach at Juilliard when I was just 28. [Langham was also an artistic director and former director of New York's Juilliard performing arts school.]So I feel like I'm part of this great continuum and I want to keep their work alive and moving forward - and those of course are the main reasons for being here."
The couple is also touched by how welcome the locals have made them feel since they moved in. "People have been very good to us," says McAnuff, launching into a story about how the local Indian restaurant, Raja, often stays open late just to accommodate them since he frequently works until 10 p.m.
There's no shortage of restaurants in Stratford but McAnuff and McCann also like to cook and entertain, and their large, state-of-the-art kitchen makes it a pleasure. "I'm the kind of cook that never looks at a recipe," says McAnuff. "But Bryna's dad, who teaches the restaurant business and runs a hotel and restaurant in upstate New York, has been giving her cooking classes as gifts. Now, she's streaking past me like a fighter jet. We just had Christopher and Elaine Plummer to dinner and Elaine is a terrific cook, but Bryna just did a fantastic job.
"As much as we like to go out to any of Stratford's fabulous restaurants, the nicest place to eat is right here in our own home."
Special to The Globe and Mail