TV host Todd Talbot revisits his triple-threat talents in Royal City Musical Theatre's Crazy for You
After years of HGTV and real estate, actor hones his song-and-dance skills again
Rabecca and Todd Talbot cut a rug in Crazy for You. Photo by David Cooper
Royal City Musical Theatre presents Crazy for You at the Massey Theatre April 27 to May 14th
IN THE 1930s-musical homage Crazy for You, Bobby Child is a banker who leads a double life—nurturing an inner artist who practises dance routines in his off hours, sneaks out to audition for Zangler’s Follies, and follows a dream to revive an old theatre.
The star who’s playing him in a large-scale new staging by Royal City Musical Theatre Society immediately sees the parallels in his own double-sided career.
Todd Talbot is instantly recognizable as one of the cohosts of HGTV’s Love It or List It Vancouver, where his West Coast realtor competes with designer Jillian Harris. And indeed, Talbot has long worked as a real-estate entrepreneur, buying and renovating multiple properties. But what many people might not realize is that Talbot is a triple-threat talent who’s trained in jazz, ballet, and tap. Over his career, he’s starred in everything from Lend Me a Tenor to West Side Story, where he met his wife, Rabecca Talbot.
“It’s very difficult, not only for myself, but for the public sometimes to understand that these seemingly different things coexist in one person,” the affable star reflects candidly. “It’s super difficult to explain what I do or how it came about. Especially in the media, people really want to peg you as one thing. It’s a bit tricky to navigate.”
And so it’s interesting to find today, now that the HGTV hit has stopped filming, Talbot is turning back to musical theatre. “I want to see if this is something I want to do,” he says. “It seemed weird to me to just randomly walk away from it. So it is to evaluate what would that look like?”
But first a bit of background. Talbot got his start acting when he was young, starring in the Nickelodeon series Fifteen. It was only after acting for a while that he got the chance to study musical theatre in London—as an “experiment”, the way he humbly describes it. “They wanted to bring in two actors and reverse-engineer the process, and backfilled our education in dance and music.
“It was sink or swim,” he recalls. “Over time, we managed to close that gap significantly.”
Returning to Vancouver and armed with tap and jazz skills, plus a now well-developed singing voice, Talbot was a regular fixture on the musical stage, playing everyone from Phil Davis in White Christmas to Cosmo Brown in Singin’ in the Rain to Arpad in Morris Panych’s She Loves Me on the Arts Club stage. He also sang, danced, and acted, in various capacities, across Carousel Theatre for Young People, Theatre Under the Stars, and Bard on the Beach.
Along the away, he always remembered the advice that Vancouver musical-theatre legend Jeff Hyslop once gave him for keeping his performance opportunities wide open: “He said to me, ‘Don’t tell people that you dance. Just keep it in your back pocket, and then just pull it out when you need it.”
HGTV intervened, and that stage career largely took a back seat for a few years; Talbot had two kids with Rabecca, and there were home renovations in there, too. It wasn’t till 2020 when Talbot grabbed the chance to take on Crazy for You when it was scheduled to hit the historic Massey Theatre. And then the world shut down.
Fast-forward three years later, and Talbot and crew have returned to rehearsing Crazy for You again—at a time when the actor feels ready to dive back into musical theatre in a more serious way. “Performing was fun, but it was really the community that I realized I missed,” he says. “The dressing room, the camaraderie: TV doesn’t have that team mentality about it.”
Todd Talbot works his show-biz side as Bobby Child. Photo by David Cooper
The role of Bobby Child has been on Talbot’s wish list ever since he saw Crazy for You in London’s West End as a young theatre student. Though the Tony- and Olivier-winning musical was written in 1992, it weaves in beloved golden-age showtunes by Ira and George Gershwin, from “Someone to Watch Over Me” to “I’ve Got Rhythm”. It’s a musical of the kind of large scale that’s rare these days: in this Royal City production, 30-plus cast members and an 18-piece band will bring it to life on the historic Massey Theatre stage.
Talbot admits there’s something about vintage musicals set in the 1920s to ’40s, and their characters, that seem to fit his style and demeanour. “I don’t know why; I don’t have any deep philosophical rationale for it,” he says with a laugh.
And the actor, known for impromptu jokes on the HGTV series, also finds himself increasingly drawn to comedy on the theatre side of his career.
“I’ve kind of embraced it more and more,” he says. “When I was a young actor I said, ‘I want to do serious things.’ But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized there’s nothing better than making people laugh.”
As funny as it is, Crazy for You is packed with a serious amount of tap, chorus-line, and ballroom numbers, and Valerie Easton’s choreography is putting Talbot through his paces.
Good thing he has a workout buddy trying who’s also trying to build up physical stamina: his wife Rabecca is playing opposite him, as Polly Baker, the sweet postmistress whose father owns the old Gaiety Theater.
“While I try to keep in shape to a certain degree, dancing is such a specific group of muscles,” Talbot says. “Because we rehearsed the show three years ago, I realized what it would require physically—and when they decided to bring it back again, I became keenly aware that I really needed to kick my own ass.
“Rabecca and I eliminated wheat and sugar, and for me alcohol as well–she doesn't drink anyway–and we made a commitment that we were going to dance every day.” Cue classes in everything they could find, from zumba to yoga.
And so Talbot is working hard as he makes the leap back into musical theatre again. It doesn’t entirely make sense, he allows with a laugh; he and Rebecca are busy parents, after all. But—like Bobby—this is a side of himself that he finds himself driven to pursue further.
“TV is the easiest thing in the world,” he says. “That’s all lovely. But it ran its course for me. With this, you have to be precious about your body, you’ve got to bring the best to the stage. And it doesn’t work with kids, because you have to be there in the evenings. But, I’m having conversations about some other shows coming up.” Looks like he's ready to pull it out of his back pocket again.
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