Actor Mark Mckinney to play Reveen on ‘Son of a Critch’

Mark Mckinney of ‘Kids in the Hall’ guest stars as hypnotist on ‘Son of a Critch’

When creating a hit TV sitcom about your childhood like Mark Critch has, there are naturally certain liberties taken with the tinier details. The timeline may skip back and forth a year or two, little tweaks to locations or plots could be made to help things flow better on screen, and names might be switched to avoid riling up bullies from the past who might still be inclined to come looking for you.

Sometimes the most entertaining, relatable way to tell a story is to mash it together with snippets of other memories, especially when you’re Critch and your life in junior high in St. John’s in the 1980s had too many good bits to leave much out.

Take the time Critch raised his hand to volunteer during a theatre show by famed hypnotist Peter Reveen and got busted for faking. Too good not to put in a “Son of a Critch” episode, but much more exciting than the notso-polished visiting performers on the junior high school circuit 40-odd years ago. The result? Hudaro, a red suit-wearing, goateed stage hypnotist in tonight’s episode who may look like Reveen but act like a sleeveen.

“Hudaro is not Reveen,” Critch says. “He’s a sort of wannabe Reveen. The dollar store version. When Reveen came to town with the flashy ads and the red suit, he always brought some magical Vegas stardust with him. (The episode) is defiitely a love letter.”

In the real-life story, Critch was called onstage with a group of other volunteers to be hypnotized. He says he felt himself starting to go under but got distracted and the hypnosis didn’t work, so he faked it and earned lots of laughs from the audience. When Reveen caught him using a prop — something a person under hypnosis apparently wouldn’t do — he gave young Critch a stern warning but let him finish the show, to Crich’s delight.

“You can’t get any bigger in Atlantic Canada than sharing Reveen’s stage,” Critch says.

When it came to finding the right person to play Hudaro, Critch thought of “Kids in the Hall” comedian Mark Mckinney, with whom he’d worked on “22 Minutes.”

“He has a vulnerability about him as well as a commanding presence, just the perfect mix to play a downon-his-luck hypnotist,” Critch says. “He’s an icon, so I was honoured he would do it.”

Mckinney, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member known most recently as store manager Glenn Sturgis on “Superstore,” didn’t require much arm-twisting to come back to St. John’s. He worked in St. John’s before on films like “Heyday!” with Gordon Pinsent and as a cast member of Mary Walsh’s “Hatching. Matching and Dispatching,” and had studied at Memorial University before that.

“My girlfriend at the time and I had just read a bunch of books about exotic travel and Newfoundland was as far as we could get. We wanted India,” Mckinney says, laughing. “I thought I was going to be prime minister at one point. I took English, some political science. There was a lot of course-dropping. I remember really struggling with the economics of the Newfoundland fishery. That was one of my courses. I did some general history and literature, but I was spending more time partying and swimming in the new aquatic centre.

“Eventually I flunked out, but I met a ton of great people and got a sense of the culture. It made a big impression and I was always happy to go back and work there.”

When it comes to film and television, Newfoundland and Labrador culture, reflected in productions like “Son of a Critch,” is unique but exports well, Mckinney says. Critch’s show, now in its second season, also has the advantage of being “kind of magical,” he says.

“I love this perspective. He has his alter-ego and all these incredible experiences, and my God, what a crowd he’s got helping him with this.”

Critch stars in the show as his own father, VOCM reporter Mike Critch, while British actor Benjamin Evan Ainsworth (“Pinocchio,” “The Haunting of Bly Manor”) plays 13-year-old Mark. “A Clockwork Orange” star Malcolm Mcdowell plays Mark’s grandfather, with Sophia Powers, Mark Rivera Claire Rankin and Colton Gobbo rounding out the main cast.

Ainsworth and Mckinney share the same favourite scene, in which young Mark visits Hudaro in his motel room, finding him un-wigged and eating Kraft dinner from a coffee pot, in a sort of Wizard of Oz-behind-the-curtain moment.

“I’m standing there, trying to get a kid to wash my clothes for me and eating mac and cheese out of a pot, but endlessly shining on, like there’s no greater thing you can be,” Mckinney says.

He’s not surprised “Son of a Critch” has caught on so well and would be up for guest starring again, if Hudaro makes his way back into the storyline.

“I think there’s a real hunger for non-twee but still very sweet at the core family-type stories,” he explains. “People respond because it’s a hard, cold, vicious world we’re living in, and they want something with optimism and heart. That’s not uncommon generally for stuff from Newfoundland.”

“Son of a Critch” airs on CBC-TV Tuesdays at 9 p.m. Newfoundland time. The show also streams on CBC Gem.