It has been several months since I posted on this blog. Like Winter itself, I have been “missing in action,” mostly because in Lethbridge theatrical activity tends to diminish over the Christmas Season–with two exceptions, both by New West Theatre at the Yates, one of which I saw, the other I am sorry to have [...]
Lethbridge Musical Theatre’s annual offering was Oliver! the 1960 musical by Lionel Bart, made subsequently into a highly successful film, and more recently revived again as a musical in London. On the face of it, it should have been a sure-fire winner. The stage looked wonderful: silhouetted houses, with windows that lit up, street- signs [...]
Though making no claims as a musical critic, I must once more record for posterity a wonderful night at the opera last Friday, in which the talent displayed by University of Lethbridge singing students in the Opera Workshop never ceased to amaze me. Pæons of praise to their instructors, Drs. Blaine Hendsbee and Sandra Stringer [...]
The set was sparse: SR a chair, table, a telephone, liquor bottles; SL a stool at a wooden table, scattered with paint cans, jars, brushes, mixing sticks and the like. Around the walls, skeletonised frames of artist’s canvases, pots of size. In short the detritus associated with an artist’s studio. On this minimalist set stands [...]
Every playwright, it seems, wishes he had written The Government Inspector. Some–including Morris Panych–seem to imagine that they did write it. (The programme at the University says quite clearly, “The Government Inspectorby Morris Panych.” ) Now, I am quite a fan of Panych, both as a Canadian writer and director; but I would be lying [...]
Hats off to Hatrix! This troupe of players was unknown to me until the other night, when I joined about eighty other souls in the Moose Hall, on Lethbridge’s North Side, opposite the Sign of the Tiger. Here was presented The Gazebo, a play written by Alec Coppel, the screen writer responsible for such creepy [...]
The plum-coloured walls of the University Recital Hall were the right shade for Rossini’s flamboyant Mass, called, with conscious irony, La Petite Messe Solennelle. However whimsically titled, there is manuscript evidence that Rossini took the work very seriously; for, according to Philip Gossett (in his article for the CIAO, “Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle and Its [...]
From 29th September to October 1st, In the David Spinks Theatre, and dedicated to the memory of “our colleague, David Spinks,” who would have thoroughly enjoyed the performance, Sean Guist presented, in partial fulfilment of his M.F.A. degree, a distillation of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, named R&J: An Original Performance Creation. Its startling premise [...]
I simply cannot let the Summer drift away without tipping my hat to New West for its continuing high standard in the musical revue Born to Rock, which certainly made the stage of the Yates Theatre vibrate throughout August, allegedly to “music of the 1980’s.” How do we characterise that decade? If we are to [...]
The Summer months tend to be theatrically quiet in Lethbridge–except at the Yates Theatre. There, New West romps through its paces with two summertime shows annually, that bring packed houses to their feet night after night. This year we have Twist and Shout, and Born to Rock. The first of these, which began at the [...]
