Hannah Mirvish is joining her father as the head of Mirvish Productions.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
The Lion King is, on one level, a cautionary tale about just how horribly wrong succession planning can go.
But if you look closely at the programme for the current Toronto stage production, you’ll find an example of the process going smoothly according to plan.
“David and Hannah Mirvish” are the names above the title of the Disney musical – the spot long-time producer David Mirvish has been listed solo in recent years, and where he once shared billing with his late father, Ed.
For a business that trades in razzle-dazzle, Mirvish Productions has been remarkably low-key about the rise of Hannah, David’s 37-year-old daughter, to co-impresario of Canada’s largest commercial theatre company.
She had been working toward being a producer for pretty much her entire life – and then one day, last spring, her name simply was credited alongside her father on Player Kings, a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays by director-du-jour Robert Icke on London’s West End.
Similar billing followed for Mirvish Productions’ Toronto show this fall – but there has been no big announcement.
Hannah’s elevation, nevertheless, answers a question that has long hung over the company and the city’s theatre scene: What on earth will happen to Mirvish when it’s curtains for David Mirvish?
“I had no backup,” says David, who recently turned 80, and says he plans to live to 107, in an interview with Hannah in a boardroom at the Mirvish Productions offices on King Street West. “You need somebody who could, you know, do the job if I got hit by a car.”
“Don’t put that in the article because my mom will have opinions,” says Hannah.
Mirvish Productions runs four venues in downtown Toronto, sells around two million tickets a year and has a subscriber base for its main stage seasons that regularly tops 40,000, one of the biggest in North America.
But it is also a family business – one for which the relatable, albeit rich, human beings behind the brand are part of the appeal for many of its ticket-buyers.
Hannah, dressed all in black for what is her first interview as producer, details the work she’s been up to behind the scenes, determined not to be an example of the third-generation curse where the kids of the kids mess up dynasties.
“I wanted to make sure I could do the job, that I understood what the job was and how to do it and that I had the experience to back it up – because everyone will assume I’m given it,” she says.
“So even if that is the assumption, I wanted to know for myself that I knew how to do the job.”
Hannah is the middle child of three that David has with his wife, Audrey – but there was no Succession-style competition to run the company. “They’re supportive of what we do but they have their own interests,” she says of her siblings, Rachael and Jacob.
Hannah had to learn the ins and outs of every aspect of the business to be able to succeed her father.Galit Rodan/The Globe and Mail
Hannah was a self-described “theatre kid” from a young age, showing interest in performing on stage in elementary school, though discouraged from pursuing acting for too long – for reasons that had nothing to do with her talent.
“We hate the idea of becoming an actor; it’s almost as bad as becoming a painter,” says David, with a heavy dose of irony, given he is someone who employs hundreds of actors every year and a noted art collector.
“We do love our actors,” says Hannah, jumping in as daughters do when they’re worried their father’s jokes aren’t landing. “I was encouraged to maybe look at other sides of theatre.”
Hannah’s first stint at Mirvish Productions was working the phones as a receptionist at the age of 16. After earning a degree in English and art history at the University of Toronto, she returned to the company – and ended up spending at least three months working in almost every department, from front of house to finance. (The only exception was IT – where, she says, she was kicked out after three days; it’s there that her husband, father of her three children and the man who taught her to ride a motorcycle, works.)
Hannah shadowed managing director David Mucci for 15 months too – as part of an apprenticeship that culminated in her being made general manager on the 2015 Mirvish production of the movie-turned-musical Once, a role that is hands-on in everything from production to marketing to casting.
Mucci, who along with Mirvish Productions executive producer Brian Sewell (who hasn’t given an interview in 37 years) is part of the quiet core team that runs the company behind the family, says the younger Mirvish scion isn’t going to be in the trenches making spreadsheets going forward.
But she needed to know the ins and outs of every aspect of the business in order to be able to analyze the risk of every presentation or production suggested by staff like him. Because ultimately the final decision to present or produce any show lies with her family, he says: “It’s not my money, it’s not Brian’s money, it’s Mirvish money.”
The Mirvish family’s money has been in the not-always-profitable business of Toronto theatre since 1962 when Ed Mirvish, David’s father and the much-loved founder of the now-defunct Honest Ed’s discount department store, purchased the Royal Alexandra Theatre on King Street West and saved that 1907 architectural gem from destruction.
For decades, Ed operated the Royal Alex primarily as a road house to present touring shows from the U.S. and Britain – and operated a string of restaurants nearby such as Ed’s Warehouse that fed its audiences a fixed-menu in a time when downtown Toronto had little in the way of preshow dining.
It was really only when David Mirvish joined up with his father in the 1980s to create the company Mirvish Productions that the family got more serious about producing – owning and operating the Old Vic in London for a spell, and investing in new Broadway and West End shows.
The company then built the Princess of Wales Theatre in 1993 – so, starting in the brief period when rival producer Garth Drabinsky’s house-of-cards Livent was a going concern, it could present long-running tourist-drawing “sit-down” productions of megahits such as Miss Saigon while continuing with its subscription series.
In 2008, Mirvish Productions grew again – outmanoeuvring rival Aubrey Dan to purchase what are now CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre and the CAA Theatre on Yonge Street. (The smaller of the two was sold to developers in 2015 but Mirvish continues to lease it back for its “off-Mirvish” season of plays and less populist musicals.)
These days, the company has 50,000 seats to sell in a week when all four venues are operational – which has slowly become most of the year. “We used to feel that we were doing well if we could fill 135 weeks out of 208,” says David. “We’re filling close to 200 out of 208 weeks at the moment.”
Mirvish production Come From Away is back on stage in Toronto and is playing with a Canadian cast.Matthew Murphy/Supplied
Taste and discernment of the producers at the top plays more of a role in what gets on stage than it once did. Ed Mirvish would, according to his son, read Variety – and if a show was selling out, try to present it at the Royal Alex. “The public still makes the choice in many instances, but not without us having seen it,” says David. “Between Hannah and myself, we see all the shows before we actually put them into the season.”
How Hannah’s elevation to producer might influence what Toronto sees on its stages in the decades to come is what audiences will be most interested to find out. She confesses to having been excited by & Juliet, the hit Broadway jukebox musical written by Scarborough, Ont.-born David West Read that will return for a Canadian sit-down in late 2025 – and professes to have a stronger interest in Canadian creatives than her father. (”I don’t think the audience cares whether the shows are Canadian or not, quite honestly,” says David.)
It’s possible Hannah might already have something to do with the fact that Mirvish is employing more Canadian actors – and featuring more Canadian shows in its main stage and “off-Mirvish” subscription series – than ever before.
This month alone, homegrown hit Come From Away, The Lion King and the camp Celine Dion jukebox musical Titanique are all playing with Canadian casts.
Mucci says Hannah represents a generational shift of power in the room where previously he, Sewell and David made most of the decisions about shows. “It’s crucial to the evolution of the company,” he says. “We need a new generation of people – I think she will be leading that.”
That’s a role Hannah is happy to play. “I want to run a successful theatre company where we are a cultural destination – and my focus is to be the slightly different voice in the room that says, ‘I think we can get younger people in.’”
