Fun-loving peas return to the stage

Three Peas in a Pod’s Judy McFerran, Timothy Anderson and Sally Hunt are just that — a trio that clearly shares the same fun-loving vision of music.

And once again they’re back to their annual hi-jinks with Give Peas a Chance! at Catalyst Theatre on April 23 and 24.

Their sixth anniversary freewheeling cabaret brings to the fore works by A-list “B” composers like Jacques Brel, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Berlin, Mel Brooks and Jason Robert Brown.

And there are a few mixed alphabet renditions such as Raise the Roof from Andrew Lippa’s The Wild Party, Hello Little Girl from Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods and Les Poissons, the Menken/Ashman hit from The Little Mermaid.

McFerran, a former St. Albert resident with a three-octave range, has been high in demand as a singer/actor for the past 15 years. But as much as she likes developing stage characters, cabaret is a more fulfilling experience.

“It’s a much more relaxed atmosphere. We interact with the audience. We chat. We joke. We walk into the audience and play with them. You’re not apart from the audience. You even share feelings of certain songs more closely.”

And McFerran plans to go for laughs in Menopausal Mama and A Word on My Ear, a song about a tone-deaf woman that hits a lot of off-kilter notes.

On a more serious note, she sings Just One Step, a leaf from Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World where each character hits a wall and must make a life-changing decision. “This is about a woman who has a fight with her husband. She’s drunk and standing on a wall.”

And although it isn’t Christmas, McFerran fell in love with Rosemary Clooney’s sad and reflective Love You Didn’t Do Right By Me from Berlin’s White Christmas. “It’s a beautifully written, simple song.”

Summing up the cabaret, she says, “We have a lot of laughs. We don’t script the patter and we really enjoy what we do.”