Robert Jeffrey

Robert Latham Jeffrey (May 3, 1934 – September 17, 2004) was a Canadian tenor, actor, director, producer, and writer born in the North Kildonan neighbourhood of Winnipeg, Manitoba, to William and Nellie Jeffrey. The eldest of three sons, he was later joined by brothers Donald and Martin. Jeffrey demonstrated vocal ability from an early age, earning appointment as head chorister at St. John's Cathedral in Winnipeg at age eight. That talent brought him juvenile guest appearances on CBC Radio's Sunday School of the Air, and as television arrived in Winnipeg, he became a regular presence on CBC variety programs broadcast from the city.

His stage career began at Winnipeg's Rainbow Stage summer theatre, where he performed in productions of Guys and Dolls and Annie Get Your Gun and took the role of Lieutenant Cable in South Pacific. In 1957, after Ettore Mazzoleni heard him at the Manitoba Music Festival, Jeffrey received a scholarship to the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. While studying there, he sang the tenor role in the Canadian premiere of Michael Tippett's A Child of Our Time, conducted by Mazzoleni at the University of Toronto's Convocation Hall. He also performed classical repertoire with choirs across Ontario, including the tenor roles in Handel's Messiah and Mendelssohn's Elijah in Sudbury. In 1958 he won the Kiwanis Music Festival Award in the Male Lieder category at Eaton Auditorium.

In 1960, Jeffrey was invited to join the Stratford Shakespeare Festival production of H.M.S. Pinafore, directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, serving as a chorus member and understudy to the leading role. Guthrie recognized Jeffrey's developing stage presence and encouraged his interest in musical theatre. The production transferred to New York for a limited engagement at the Phoenix Theatre, where Jeffrey was highlighted as One to Watch in Dan Blum's Theatre World publication. The following year, Jeffrey returned to Stratford for Guthrie's production of Pirates of Penzance, which also traveled to New York and undertook a three-month U.S. tour. H.M.S. Pinafore subsequently traveled to London in 1962 for a Command Performance before Queen Elizabeth II at Her Majesty's Theatre.

During his time in London, Jeffrey was offered the role of Tony in H. M. Tennent's Scandinavian tour of West Side Story, replacing David Holliday in Copenhagen and continuing opposite Jill Martin as Maria in Oslo, Gothenburg, Stockholm, and Helsinki. In 1963 he appeared in the new musical House of Cards at London's Players' Theatre. Returning to Toronto in January 1961, he had already starred in Bernard Slade's musical The Gay Chaperone at the Crest Theatre, and in 1964 he appeared as Mr. Ringo in Susan Douglas Rubeš' Young People's Theatre production of The Dandy Lion.

In 1968 Jeffrey joined a touring revue, Spring Thaw, alongside Canadian musical comedy performers including Jack Creley and Rita Howell, touring with the production for three consecutive years. That same summer he appeared in Your Own Thing at Toronto's Bayview Playhouse, and in November he was part of the quartet that gave the Canadian premiere of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, alongside Stan Porter, Arlene Meadows, and Loro Farrell. The production's success led to an invitation to open the show in Boston at the Charles Playhouse with Arlene Meadows, Robert Guillaume, and Judy Lander. Jeffrey remained in Boston for two years, performing the Brel show with artists including Denise LeBrun, Sally Cooke, George Ball, and Shawn Elliott. He subsequently appeared in productions of the show in Montreal at Place des Arts, Ottawa at the National Arts Centre, and Philadelphia with Elly Stone, with a return to Boston in 1981. In 1972 he participated in a Carnegie Hall fifth anniversary celebration of the show, a Homage a Jacques, with Jacques Brel in attendance.

Also in 1972, Jeffrey played Sancho Panza in Heinar Piller's Grand Theatre production of Man of La Mancha in London, Ontario, with Michael Fletcher and Denise Ferguson. That year he also returned to Winnipeg's Rainbow Stage, having previously appeared there in Finian's Rainbow in 1964 with Burt Wheeler, and returned again in 1972 for Mame in the role of Patrick Dennis, opposite Libby Morris.

On his return to Toronto from Boston in 1973, Jeffrey co-devised the song revue Of Moon and June and Honeymoon with director Ron Ror, set to music by Doug Randle, which opened at Old Angelo's cabaret with a cast including Christine Chandler, Brian McKay, and Barbara Barsky. The production was subsequently staged in Cleveland and opened Hamilton Place Theatre in Hamilton. His work that year also led to a long association with the Muskoka Festival in Gravenhurst, Ontario, where he appeared in productions including Dames at Sea, Flicks, I Do! I Do! with Jamie Ray in 1974, and Eight to the Bar with Nancy Palk in 1979. In 1983 he directed Michael Burgess and Kate Hennig in Side by Side by Sondheim for that company, and in 1984 co-directed with Paul Russell a workshop production of the new musical Robin for Good, which received a fully staged production the following year with Marianne Woods, Jonathan Whittaker, and James Fagan Tait.

Throughout the mid-1970s Jeffrey was active in Toronto's cabaret scene. In 1974 he appeared in Roderick Cook's One More Time with Connie Martin and David Brown at the Colonial Tavern. In 1975 he performed In Gay Company with Susan Keller at the Teller's Cage, where he also directed and performed in a revival of Jacques Brel. In 1976 he appeared in David Y.H. Lui's Vancouver production of Ben Bagley's The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen through the Eyes of Cole Porter with Ross Petty and Roma Hearn. In 1977 he directed and appeared in another Jacques Brel revival at the Bayview Playhouse with Barbara Collier, Nora McClellan, and Rudy Webb, a production that continued at Toronto's Prince Hotel and at the Sly Fox Cabaret in Ottawa.

In the late 1960s Jeffrey served as cantor at St. Thomas's Anglican Church in Toronto under the direction of Walter MacNutt, and researched a CBC Radio programme on religious music under Brian Freeland. His final concert stage appearance came in 1994 in a production of Amahl and the Night Visitors for music director Lloyd Bradshaw at St. Anne's Anglican Church in Toronto.