Schwartz's: The Musical: Do you want it on rye or with the singing pickle?

Share

Schwartz's, the Boulevard St-Laurent delicatessen known for its smoked meat and steak spice, is a Montreal mecca of smell and taste. Hard to believe it was once a place saturated with sound, too - music, that is, not just the constant clatter of cutlery punctuated by the intermittent cracks of black-cherry-soda cans being opened.

"People would turn around, and there'd be an opera singer, giving full voice, right there," says George Bowser, turning around himself from a half-eaten steak and pointing to a small patch of floor that could barely fit a piccolo player, right next to the door that swings the notoriously surly wait staff in and out of the kitchen.

Bowser and his long-time partner in comedy Rick Blue have tapped into the hitherto neglected musical qualities of this cramped but iconic restaurant for an unlikely venture.

Schwartz's: The Musical opens at Montreal's Centaur Theatre on April 1, but it's no joke.

Well, it's a bit of a joke. "There is a pickle," says Bowser.

"There is a singing pickle," Blue clarifies.

"Actually, that could be him," says Bowser, motioning to a juicy half-sour sitting untouched in front of him, amid the standard Schwartz's sides of coleslaw, fries and half a red pepper.

Him? "A pickle just seems to be male," says Blue.

Adds Bowser: "He's a basso profondo."

Moving the singing trimmings aside for a moment. Bowser and Blue - as the two are known professionally if reverse-alphabetically - are hardly the first Montreal artists to succumb to the salty and savoury muse that is Schwartz's.

There have been several documentaries about the storied smoked-meat sandwich shop established at the centre of the city by Romanian Jewish immigrant Reuben Schwartz. Chez Schwartz - as it is officially named these days - even played a background role in an Academy Award-winning film, the 2004 animated short Ryan.

In 2006, Montreal Gazette columnist Bill Brownstein wrote Schwartz's Hebrew Delicatessen: The Story, a breezy popular history of the place that became the inspiration for his friends' musical. It was in the pages of that local bestseller that many Montrealers first learned of the offbeat musical heritage of the deli.

Schwartz opened the restaurant in 1928, but when he got in deep in gambling debts, local composer and Montreal Symphony Orchestra violinist Maurice Zbriger bailed the noted curmudgeon out and became a silent partner in his deli.

Zbriger, who eventually inherited the rest of the restaurant after Schwartz's death in 1971, used the profits primarily to bankroll concerts of his own compositions at places like Place des Arts.

"He wrote the music, rented the hall, hired the musicians, paid for the advertising, basically bought every seat in the house," explains Bowser. "The concerts were his life, and all the money came from Schwartz's."

It was after these highbrow affairs that the musicians and singers would make their way to Schwartz's for the reception, and a mezzo-soprano might be spotted singing at the back while other patrons chomped down on a medium-fat sandwich up front.

Bowser and Blue's original idea was to create a musical documentary tapping into the deli's curious history, but the Centaur's head honcho Roy Surette, who is directing the play, guided them to a more classic musical structure complete with love story. Now, the colourful past of the deli is background for the tale of a Toronto businesswoman who arrives in town intending to purchase the restaurant in 1998 and turn it into a franchise, much to the chagrin of the staff.

"She's the threat and, as it turns out, she is kind of seduced by Schwartz's," Blue says.

"The place, not the character," clarifies Bowser, noting that the famously bad-tempered original owner who gave his name to the restaurant "wouldn't seduce anyone."

Schwartz's: The Musical's plot is loosely based on what really happened when the deli's third owner - Armande Toupin Chartrand, who was willed the deli by Zbriger - decided to sell at the end of the 1990s.

Back then, fears for the deli's future ran wild before accountant Hy Diamond bought it and swore off the idea of a franchise as vehemently as Canadian politicians currently nix coalitions. "If the name was used coast to coast like Tim Hortons or McDonald's, it wouldn't be Schwartz's any more," explains Blue. "It is Schwartz's because it is unique."

Bowser and Blue have proved to be a unique and lasting Montreal phenomenon themselves. The baby boomers have been peddling their folk-music comedy to an enthusiastic anglophone fan base since 1979 and have made regular appearances at the English-language Centaur Theatre since their 1992 revue Blokes.

Schwartz's is only the second piece of full-fledged musical theatre they've attempted, however. The first was 2003's The Paris of America, a story of a young poet during the summer of Expo 67. It was no "critic's pick," they allow - the Gazette called it "a two-hour punfest, not really a play at all" - but it did sell out its run at the Centaur.

"We learned a lot of lessons," says Blue. "We're determined not to make the same mistakes."

"We're making different mistakes," adds Bowser, finishing up his meal, "new and more interesting mistakes."

Schwartz's: The Musical continues at Montreal's Centaur Theatre until April 24 ( centaurtheatre.com).