Everyone loves The Sound of Music and Annie … and they’re even better together, with a smidge of Sister Act and Chicago thrown in to liven up the plot!

The Broadway Chorus is thrilled to present its latest musical mashup, as the nuns of the Convent of the Token Part send young orphan Annie off to join the Von Trapp family. She arrives to find a motherless family, and the plucky orphan determines she will find them a mother. As the nuns at the Convent are unmarried, Annie schemes to lure them to the Von Trapp family Castle, but no sooner do they arrive than mysterious visitors from the Vatican, and a surprising return from the dead, threaten to unravel Annie’s plans.

Will Annie triumph? Is the Pope Catholic? Find out in this hilarious spoof featuring songs from such shows as Young Frankenstein, The Drowsy Chaperone, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Chicago, and more!

The show runs Thursday through Saturday, December 11, 12 and 13.

To reserve tickets e-mail ashley.lm@ubc.ca or call 778-322-7182. Tickets are $15, and $12 for seniors, students, and children. All shows begin at 8:00pm.

The Roundhouse Community Centre is located at Davie & Pacific in Vancouver’s Yaletown district; there is paid underground parking available under the Community Centre (access through the lane) and across Davie at the Urban Fare grocery store. Here’s a Google Map.

The Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture is holding their annual banquet on Sunday, December 7. The theme is a celebration of the Jewish wedding – and as part of the festivities, five couples will be renewing their vows under the Huppa, the traditional wedding canopy… and dancing the Hora!

The Kol Halev Performance Ensemble is appearing as part of the evening’s entertainment. I’m part of the performance, providing some narration and also joining in the “Klezmer Dance”.

Location: Peretz Centre, 6184 Ash (near 41st and Cambie), Vancouver. Here’s a map.

Admission: Adults/Seniors: $30. Children 6-13 and B’nai Mitsvah grads: $15.

Menu: Brisket or vegetarian lasagna, salad, green beans almondine, kash and varnishkes or baked potato, and dessert.

Tickets: Advance reservations are required. Phone (604) 325-1812.

So come out to the Peretz to eat, drink, sing, dance and celebrate! Hope to see you there!

I auditioned for a Vancouver Film School project entitled “Straight To Video”. In it, a somewhat hapless aspiring rock star is working the late shift at the video store when an old videotape of a self-help “guru” magically transports him into a vision of his rock-and-roll fantasy come true – but even in this preview of music superstardom, things don’t go nearly the way he had imagined.

The role I auditioned for was that of the outrageous, turbanned “Guru Goulby” – the smarmy self-help swami whose videotape appearance sets the plot in motion.

For the audition, I worked up a makeshift turban (out of Christine’s gold-fabric wrap), threw on a few baubles and beads, and did my best Punjabi accent. Yes, this may come across as a politically incorrect stereotype, but I like to think I’m maintaining a venerable comedy tradition that runs back to Peter Sellers in The Party (albeit the less said about Mike Myers in The Love Guru, the better). At any rate, any trepidation I might have had about this approach had evaporated at the audition, as the multi-ethnic production crew cracked up heartily at my antics.

That night – just this past Wednesday – I got the phone call from Leslie Chang, the AD on the project, saying I’d got the role!

I met with them yesterday for a pre-shoot conference and script read-through. Then, this morning at 9am, I was back at VFS, with a bunch of costume options, ready to act a role on my very first film set!

This was the same large room in which I’d auditioned a week ago, but now it was transformed, with areas dressed up as sets and lights and equipment everywhere. When the fluorescent lights went off, and the only illumination came from the lights on the set, a more serious and intense mood pervaded the room.

I set up my props and things on a small table in the far corner, and soon the makeup artist, a young woman named Komel Sajdeh appeared with one of those gigantic, picnic-basked-sized makeup kits and proceeded to make me “ready for my closeup”. What that meant in this case, I was amused to hear, was darkening my skin tone to match my character! What fun… a real transformation. When she was done, I was well on my way to really becoming “Guru Goulby”.

Next it was time to work on wardrobe. A black robe was the foundation, then a bright red sheer cloth was draped over that and pinned in the back. I added some gold beads collected at a Pride Parade. We played around with different comic glasses that I’d brought, but it was decided in the end that we didn’t need any of them. Finally, a long red strip of cloth was wound around my head for a “turban”, and the transformation into Guru Goulby was complete!

The vibe on the set was of dedicated and earnest students, following professional procedures while still clearly in a learning mode (as befits a student film production). Overall, the feeling was very much of being on the set of a professional production as everyone set out on their respective tasks. The director, Ernesto Ahmad, checked in with me every so often to discuss my lines or my character, or to advise me about what was coming next. Everyone without exception was very friendly and supportive.

Now I was called over to the set (located, in this case, on the other side of the room). I sat myself down cross-legged on the cushion, with a golden curtain behind me (a small square of cloth on the plain wall, but filling the background on-screen). The audio man swung his boom mike toward me on a pole. In the dim light, people fussed over the camera and the lights. Then we ran through a couple of rehearsals (which helped me practice and coordinate my line readings and hand movements).

This may not have been a megabudget Hollywood production, but with the lights and reflectors on each side of me, the camera in front and pointed right at me, and everyone scurrying around focused on their tasks, I felt very much “on set”. It was exciting, but I only allowed myself a fleeting moment of glee taking it all in, and then I kept focused on the task at hand.

I’m lucky in a way, as my role is just a small though memorable one, the “deus ex machina” that sets things going in the story, and thus I only had a few lines – most of them near the start of the film, and one line at the end. All of it is within the “videotape” seen in the store, so it was all on this one set. Things seemed to go well, Ernesto told me he liked what I was doing, and before I knew it, I was done!

Everyone thanked me, and I them. Then I headed for the men’s room and washed the dark makeup off my face and hands, and my eyes. Back to reality!

They tell me I’ll be getting a copy of the finished film on disk, so when that happens, I will hopefully be able to post a clip here. Stay tuned. Meanwhile…

Here is my gallery of on-set photos!

(Pics of me in full costume coming soon.)

Well, it’s funny how you come across things you never would have known about otherwise. While preparing to hit the streets for a tin can fundraiser for Vancouver Rape Relief early this year, I was thumbing through the only available reading material – an issue of Senior Living magazine. And what should I come across but an article on an old-time radio museum, run by a group called SPARC – the Society for the Preservation of Antique Radio in Canada. A massive collection of antique radios, phonographs, and radio-related paraphernalia from the last 100 years, maintained by a group of enthusiasts, many of them of an age to have used the exhibits when they were new!

This sounded like my kind of place.

It took a while, but finally, over the Labour Day weekend, I made my pilgrimage to this temple of vintage technology. And what a wonderful place it was! 

The moment I stepped in the door, I was welcomed by John Wicks and Jack Watson, two genial fellows who had been shooting the breeze and waiting to greet visitors. In an instant, we fell into a conversation about the history of radio, with John enthusiastically sharing his knowledge and answering my questions. Soon we checked in with his elder-statesman colleague Jack Watson, who provided a few answers based on his direct recollection!

The museum is amazing -  I spent an hour and a half strolling around the place and getting the grand tour, and there was still much more I could have seen. It’s truly sprawling, and has some unique features, like a simulation of a WW1 foxhole stuffed with vintage wartime radio equipment, and a recreation of the radio room of the Carpathia, the ship that rescued passengers from the Titanic, full of nautical radio equipment and Titanic memorabilia. (It was a gift from a movie production company.) 

All in all, it was sheer heaven for a fan of all things vintage like me. And it’s well worth a visit if you share an interest in the history of broadcasting and in the charming and quirky equipment that has brought us our entertainment over the last 100 years. It was all high-tech at one time!

The SPARC museum is located on the Riverview Hospital grounds and is open Sundays from 10 to 3. Visit the SPARC Antique Radio Website for more details. 

Visit my Flickr set of the SPARC radio museum.

“The World Goes ‘Round” is an evening of songs written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, one of the most influential teams to leave their mark on Broadway in the latter part of the 20th century. They’ve written a bunch of songs you know – and several are included here – but this show focuses mostly on their lesser-known creations, and that was fine by me. It meant there were lots of surprisingly funny and touching moments that I didn’t see coming. But even familiar lyrics are often given a fresh twist through clever staging and the subtle interactions of the actors. The mood is constantly shifting, high comedy one minute and heartbreak the next.

The Pacific Theatre space has audience seating on both sides of the performance area, so the staging is a battle on two fronts. But the choreography deals with this well, partly by taking the show’s title literally and keeping the actors moving ’round. I rarely felt I was missing out on anything.

A comic highlight was “Isn’t This Better?”, in which a famous Broadway actress and a fan meet on the street and compare their lives – each one envious of the other. It was spiked with some choice local references that had the audience in stitches.

Director Shane Snow doubles on clarinet in a band that sounds bigger than its three members. And Musical Director Gordon Roberts even steps up for a number of his own, walking a perfect line between comedy and pathos on “Mister Cellophane”. (This is a song that’s near and dear to my heart, thanks to my own rendition in The Broadway Chorus. However, Gordon, much to his credit, did not attempt any high kicks.)

And when, at show’s end, they tackle the familiar classics “Cabaret” and “New York, New York”, there are some great musical surprises in store that make them utterly new again. “Cabaret” takes a dizzying turn into jazzy five-part vocalese, and as for “New York”, well, let’s just say they give it an international spin before fully delivering on the traditional razzmatazz.

“The World Goes ‘Round” is at Pacific Theatre through August 30. It’s not to be missed! Tickets can be purchased online at Tickets Tonight. Showtimes are 8pm, with a 2pm matinee on both Saturdays.

Well, after 14 years of West End living, this was the first year I received not one, but two invitations to enjoy the annual fireworks extravaganza from a lofty vantage point. The highlight had to be the final night, when I viewed the show from a friend’s 15th-floor balcony directly across Beach Avenue from the fireworks barge. It was a remarkable perspective on the event and a real thrill. I’ve posted my best photos – have a look!

They’ve really pulled off something extraordinary here, since the play is quite technically complex. Besides captions and visuals that appear throughout, there are constant, lightning-fast scene changes. Somehow they make it all work, using judicious staging and lighting, plus a little of that ol’ stage magic. And if I do say so myself, the captions add a whole other level – plus some real visual surprises!

Here’s a slide show of behind-the-scenes photos I took at the technical rehearsal!

So what can I say? Go and see this Canadian gem, Poor Super Man, while you can! There are upcoming shows on the 8th, 12th, 14th and 16th. Tickets are available in advance through Tickets Tonight or 604-631-2872. Or visit their website, SavingMetropolis.com!

This Sunday, March 2, I will be performing along with the Kol Halev Performance Ensemble in the Chutpah! Festival’s 2nd annual Community Dance Show. Three local dance troupes in total are performing.

Our 20-minute presentation is called “The Forties: Life on the Home Front”. It includes a thrilling tap dance number, songs, poems of WWII, and wraps up with “Yiddishe Blues”, a big, expressive finale.

The show is this Sunday, 10:30 am and 12:30 pm, at the Jewish Community Centre. Tickets are a deal at only $10. I hope you can make it!

Last Sunday night was the always-delightful Ovation Awards, where the best in local musical theatre talent is honoured by their peers. It’s a ton of fun and a chance to see virtually everyone I was in a show with in the past year!

Adding to the fun this time, I participated in not one but two group numbers during the show – “There You Are” from “The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and “Anything Can Happen” from “Anne Murray of Green Gables” (the latter a fine excuse to wear my glittery “cheesy TV Host” jacket again!)

Here’s some pics I took at the reception, intermission, and even one from the show itself. Enjoy!