“This is not 90 minutes of Ford bashing. We’re not anti-Ford. We’re not pro-Ford. We just tried to tell our story. We’d welcome Mr. Ford to come and do the opening night speech.” Brett McCaig, writer

They arrived in various states of blond, portly and pinstriped to the basement audition suites of the Second City training centre.

At least 40 candidates for Toronto’s next top mayor, the fictional variety, auditioned for a role in the upcoming production Rob Ford the Musical: Birth of a Ford Nation, which is slated to have a two-week run in September.

The casting call attracted serious actors, neophytes, fans of the Rob Ford spectacle and even one man who briefly played a part in the ongoing, non-fiction version of the political drama as it began to play out last year.

The musical involves a spiritual guide named Transgression that tries to show the chief magistrate the error of his ways — which include an admission to smoking crack cocaine and other substance abuse issues — but is based on facts, said writer Brett McCaig, describing the tale as Shakespearean, Dickensian and operatic.

During his audition, Dave Miller sang the Barenaked Ladies’ “Brian Wilson,” a song about the bloated and drug-addicted musician of Beach Boys fame. The judges seemed to like his professionalism. But they were also appreciative of Travis Hay’s slightly adjusted rendition of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab,” delivered in Ford’s own nasally tones.

The audition drew interest from across the country. Geoff Stone took the train from Belleville, after shaving part of his head and dyeing the remaining hair blond, and improv comedian Matthew Garlick flew in from Vancouver.

“It’s pop culture! It’s Rob!” he said before his audition. “And my buddies were bugging me. They seem to think I can do it.”

He planned to sing Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll,” though “Bad Reputation” might have been more fitting.

The play opens with Ford walking into a television camera but the last five pages of the script remain unwritten, McCaig said. With the mayor still in rehab, it’s impossible to know what kind of creative fodder his return will produce.

“It’s so absurdist. That’s why we went there,” he said. “All of this hullabaloo from the last year and a half, musical theatre is the only next step.”

“This is not 90 minutes of Ford bashing,” McCaig said. “We’re not anti-Ford. We’re not pro-Ford. We just tried to tell our story. We’d welcome Mr. Ford to come and do the opening night speech.”

Main characters include Ford and his brother, city Councillor Doug Ford, and author Margaret Atwood, who famously tussled with Doug over proposed cuts to library funding.

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Like the mayor himself, the play has already courted controversy. News of the Transgression character — shortened to “Tranny” and cast as a “transvestite” — sent some on social media criticizing the production as being transphobic.

Organizers said the fictional Ford refers to the character as “Tranny” to reflect his own real-life habit of making offensive and derogatory statements.

Monday’s event was advertised as “colour-blind casting” but someone with a stature similar to Ford’s was ideal, McCaig said.

Neil Sarel was one of the few untrained actors in the queue. Known as “Slurpy,” a childhood nickname he acquired due to a speech impediment, Sarel made the news last year when the National Post reported he had turned down a $50,000 offer to appear in a faux crack tape.

The Caledon man said he rarely plays up his similarity in appearance to Ford but thought he’d take a crack at the audition just for fun.

“Everywhere I go it’s unbelievable — ‘Robby, Robby, Robby,’” Sarel said.

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