WATERLOO, Ont.—In the three decades since Terry Fox’s death, the amputee athlete’s legacy has endured through the fundraising run bearing his name and a steady stream of films, books, and stories chronicling the late Canadian icon.
Yet as the curtain rises on “Marathon of Hope: The Musical,” the creative team behind the new show promises to offer audiences fresh insight into Fox’s story.
“Most people don’t know that he trained for 14 months before doing the run. People thought that he just got the idea and he ran,” said actor Nathan Carroll, who was cast to portray Fox following a nationwide search.
“He ran the distance across Canada in training in B.C. He worked himself up from short distances a day to long distances. He was running up and down big mountains, big hiking trails.”
Fox was only 18 when he was diagnosed with bone cancer, and was forced to have his right leg amputated. In 1980, at the age of 21, he embarked on a cross-Canada run setting off from St John’s, N.L., to raise money and awareness for cancer research.
“Marathon of Hope: The Musical” premiered on Oct. 5 at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse in Waterloo, Ont. The production was developed in consultation with Fox’s family and charts his legendary journey covering 5,373 kilometres in 143 days—equal to 128 marathons. Fox died in 1981.
“The first half-marathon I ran, I felt like I couldn’t walk for three weeks. And this guy was running on one leg a full marathon a day for 140-plus days,” said the Toronto-based Carroll, 27.
“When you really think about the feat and really dig into what the physical feat was that he accomplished, it’s staggering.”
The musical will feature about 20 songs from composer and lyricist John Connolly, who said the show serves as a “new telling” in exploring facets of Fox’s life. The production sees the different groups of Canadians Fox encountered, from Newfoundland and Labrador through to Thunder Bay, Ont., and back to Vancouver, he noted.
The Charlottetown native said the songs are very much rooted in Canadian folk music, in the vein of iconic homegrown singer-songwriters Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young.
“Terry loved old-time country music, so I’ve tried to respect that. He also loved to speak directly and from the heart, so I’ve tried to do that in the lyrics. So, I would say the whole thing is rootsy.”
