Sharron Matthews: She Went to Sheridan College, She Knows What to Do

There’s something coming, people, something good. It’s Sharron Matthews in a divine polka dotted dress and she is coming to the Kings Playhouse in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island and the deCoste Entertainment Centre in Pictou, Nova Scotia and just for fun, she has been invited to an All-Woman Comedy Festival at the Kings Theatre on October 3rd at the King Theatre in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. So, hold on to your lobster bibs, people of the Atlantic, because you are in for an evening of laughter with Sharron’s Big Broadway Show!
Sharron performed said Big Broadway Show for a limited one-night engagement in Toronto at Tallulah’s Cabaret, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre on Sunday and it was a divinely fabulous evening of song and hilarious storytelling. Sharron Matthews is one of those performers who I could watch perform the same songs and listen to her tell the same stories over and over like one of those classic movies that you keep having to rewind and re-watch from the beginning.
In her Big Broadway Show, Matthews tells tales of meeting musical theatre giant Stephen Sondheim, Tina Fey knocking at her trailer door, working with John Travolta on the film version of Hairspray, a characteristically “Sharron” moment with Bette Midler and a peanut butter catastrophe with Matthew Broderick. And then, of course, she sings all the songs with her own, unique interpretations that suit her wide array of talent perfectly.
She sang an amazing rendition of “Life of the Party” from Andrew Lippa’s Wild Party, and a coquettish “I’m Everybody’s Girl.” I think that the casting directors for the National Touring Company of Show Boat called her back to audition seven times for the same reason that Torontonian audiences keep returning to her shows again and again. Once is never enough when it comes to Sharron Matthews’ Cabaret.
Everyone always casts Sharron Matthews in the comedic, character roles because she is deliciously talented at playing larger-than-life characters like Madame Thenardier and the Wicked Witch of the West. She is superbly funny, and she can infuse a song with so much character and so much hilarity, a casting director would be a fool to pass up the opportunity to utilize her comic expertise. And yet, Sharron Matthews is equally brilliant at delivering emotional, earnest, poignant songs that resonate through the theatre and leave the audience breathless. Her rendition of “Bring Him Home” from Les Miserablah (a beautiful arrangement by the very talented Wayne Gwillim who accompanies the Big Broadway Show); is always one such moment. I would love to see Sharron Matthews in a dramatic leading role in a musical someday. I know it would be extraordinary.
Sharron Matthews has never been on Broadway, but don’t think for a moment that this implies that she couldn’t take the Great White Way by storm. I will be so proud when the right show comes along and it catapults her into the American consciousness, but I hope that she will always return to Canada and to her Cabaret here and that Toronto will always be a place that is a conducive, profitable, supportive place for her to play, because she is one of our Canadian musical theatre treasures. If you’re in Nova Scotia or on Prince Edward Island, get in your car and drive out to Georgetown or Pictou to see her perform. I guarantee that you will be in for a treat!