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Two summers ago Brian Sewell, the executive producer of Mirvish Productions, was vacationing in PEI, where his brother has a summer home. One night, his brother told him he was taking the whole family to a new music hall that had become all the rage on the island.
Called Harmony House, it is it in a converted church and can accommodate 120. It's located in Hunter River (pop. 400), about 40 minutes outside Charlottetown.
The show they saw was described as a docu-concert and titled Inside American Pie. The cast of five Island singers and musicians dissected Don McLean’s classic rock song, riddle by riddle. Along the way, the show explored the cultural and political history of the USA from late 1950s through the 1960s, a time of tumultuous change. Besides the title song, the cast also performed songs by artists referenced in the song and played pivot roles in the new society that was developing, everyone from Buddy Holly to the Big Bopper, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Janis Joplin and more.
The show made an indelible impression on Brian and when he returned to the office he couldn’t stop talking about it.
Harmony House is owned and operated by a married couple, Nicole Bellamy and Mike Ross. Both were born and raised in PEI, but they built careers in music and theatre in Toronto. When they started a family and when the pandemic hit in 2020, they decided to escape the big city and move back home to raise their children and be close to their aging parents. They started Harmony House to continue working in the performing arts. It’s been a roaring success and could truthfully be called Canada’s best-kept musical secret.
Mike and Nicole were skeptical about bringing the show to Ontario, but Brian’s enthusiasm convinced them to return to Toronto for a three week run of Inside American Pie at the 700-seat CAA Theatre. Harmony House operates from May to October, and as March has a weeklong school break, they choose that month to perform the show in Toronto (because they could bring their kids).
No one knew how Toronto would react to this show, but from the very first performance it was obvious people loved it. By the end of the three-week run it had played to over 15,000 people.
Other theatre people heard about the show’s success and some from NYC and the UK came to see it in the final week of Toronto engagement.
Chris Stafford, the chief executive of Curve in Leicester, one of the UK’s leading regional theatres whose shows often transfer to London’s West End and tour the country, was one of those who made the trek. He was impressed enough to offer to host the show’s UK premiere for a three-week run.
As they were about performing in Toronto, Nicole and Mike were at first reticent about doing the show elsewhere. But they came around and last weekend they and the rest of the company — the singer/musicians, the sound and light technicians from PEI — took the daytime flight from Halifax to Heathrow and then piled into a van that took them and their instruments to Leicester.
Inside American Pie begins performances tonight, February 26, and officially opens on March 3 and plays until March 14 in Curve’s 350-seat studio theatre. Advance sales are strong and everyone is eagerly awaiting the response from UK audiences and critics.
We wish Nicole, Mike and everyone else from Harmony House a great time in Leicester. We think their story of the little show from an out-of-the-way community breaking into the international performing arts industry offers hope for everyone in Canada’s vibrant performing arts community. It’s a great boost to the artistic talent of PEI in particular and Canada in general.
P.S. The closing date of Inside American Pie’s engagement in Leicester, coincides with March school break in PEI. Nicole and Mike’s children will join them for little UK holiday before returning home to the Island.
Then the Inside American Pie company comes to Toronto for an encore engagement of the show at the CAA Theatre, April 14 to May 3, 2026.
The following year, Harmony House will be performing their latest docu-concert, Inside The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Told Through the Songs of Gordon Lightfoot in April and May 2027 as part of the Mirvish Main season Subscription.
About the show
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