Graham Hicks review
The Invention of Romance
By Conni Massing - world premiere
Workshop West Theatre
La Cite Francophone, 8627 91 St.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Through April 13, 2014
Playwright Conni Massing can pull in an audience all by herself, because the turf she occupies is so darned honest, and sweet, and insightful … and pure prairie-grown cracked wheat.
Her writing stays comfortably within memories and stories of Central Alberta, of small-town incidents, of people who leave for the big-cities but the country never quite leaves them. Just look at the titles – The Aberhart Summer, Jake and the Kid, Gravel Run, Dustsluts, Homesick …
She’s the reason I made my first trek to a Workshop West Theatre production in many a year, for the premiere of her latest play, The Invention of Romance, playing in La Cite Francophones’s performing space through April 13.
The play I had no trouble with, though it’s a tad loose and will be better a much better scri ...
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Mary Poppins
A musical based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney Film
Shoctor Stage, Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada through April 20, 2014
Ticket information. (Buy quickly. This show is going to sell out, especially at the low-end $35 rate)
Review by GRAHAM HICKS
Posted at www.hicksbiz.com March 21, 2014
780 707 6379
graham.hicks@hicksbiz.com
@hicksonsix
How wondrous the Citadel/Theatre Calgary stage production of Mary Poppins (The Broadway Musical)!
How mysterious that Mary Poppins, despite the 1964 Walt Disney movie, the West End/Broadway production of 10 years ago, and at least five songs that have burned their way into the memories of most of the English-speaking world, remains a lesser figure in the pantheon of favourite children’s fictional characters. At least that’s the case in North America. The original book of Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers, didn’t travel well across the Atlantic, and the entire Mary Poppins’ series (eight books) made ...
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Gentlemen, the hours are counting down to the dreaded V-Day.
It’s not that we don’t love you, ladies.
We truly do. But we are men. We’re practical, unromantic. We are incapable of creating wondrous, exciting Valentine Day’s experiences every year, year after year.
In fact, we dread Valentine’s. No matter how you pretend otherwise, we know we are judged.
If he really loved me, he’d surprise me with a spa weekend at the Fairmont Banff Springs, or a week in Hawaii.
If he really loved me, he’d do more than buy a box of Turtles and cellophane-wrapped roses from the grocery store … which he does every year!
Gentlemen, I offer a low-cost (all things considered) solution.
Buy her top quality, hand-crafted chocolates.
Chocolates to drool over.
Chocolates so good that you stretch out the pleasure. Only one a week!
This past weekend, I earned major Valentine’s brownie points with Maria.
I booked a chocolate-making session at Peter Jo ...
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No, the sky is not falling.
Last August, Hicks on Biz reported a high-rise condo tower boom happening in the city, 27 high-rise proposals in design, permitting or construction stages, most of them over 20 stories, 10 of them north of 30 stories.
But in January, construction of the Glenora Skyline at Stony Plain and 142 Street came to a crashing halt. Of the four towers, only a few floors of poured concrete from the first had emerged.
Meanwhile, rumours have abounded of temporary stoppages in the construction of other downtown condo towers.
As for office towers, Edmonton commercial realtors were suggesting before Christmas that the city was ready for another office tower or two. Now, suddenly, a few analysts are proclaiming Edmonton to still be awash in office space!
Relax.
First of all, as a rule of thumb, only 25% to 40% of “proposed” condo towers actually ever get built, and those will be by highly experienced, reputable builders with good-quality financing.
There’s a ...
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The Chopped Leaf
Commerce Place, main floor
10102 Jasper Ave.
780 757 5323
www.choppedleaf.com
Food: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.4 of 5 suns
Lunch for two, $16 to $24.
What a relief, to see a truly healthy, fast-food restaurant — offering mostly salads, with soups, brown rice bowls, quesadillas and salad rolls on the side — without making a big, hairy, self-righteous deal out of it!
The Chopped Leaf, on the main floor of the downtown Commerce Place, doesn’t make pompous claims about being organic, or vegetarian (it’s not), has no trace of a ‘healthier than thou’ attitude. It doesn’t make outlandish health claims … it just happens to serve excellent healthy food, traits all too rare on the deep-fry circuit.
Given its bounteous servings, the Chopped Leaf is reasonably cheap. Eleven to $12 gets you a full salad with a protein — i.e. a handful of chicken chunks, or shrimp or tuna. Eight bucks gives you the s ...
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J'Lyn Nye of the 630 CHED Afternoon News show in Edmonton was kind enough to invite me on her show (while co-host Mark Scholz was on holiday) Feb. 13 for an hour-long chat about my 18 years of covering the city as the Edmonton Sun's "Hicks on Six" columnist. We had a wonderful wide-ranging conversation about Edmonton, charities and the transition into the less-hectic life of semi-retirement, if you can call it that! Nye, to my mind, is one of the best interviewers in town. She should have a column!
I keep forgetting to mention - on the Hicks on Six blog - whenever Mack Male (Mastermaq) get together to record our weekly (more or less) podcast Mack & Cheese. It's a lively 15 to 20 minute chat about anything and everything Edmonton between the young pup - that's Mack - and the old dog - that's me, the Cheese in Mack and Cheese.
Of late we've talked about Mayor Don Iveson's promising abilities as a smooth political operator, about what the heck will happen to Northlands once the Oilers/Oil Kings depart from Rexall Place, about that on-going bugaboo of co-ordinated regional governance when there's 24 municipalities at the table.
It's reasonably enteraining!
Entrepreneurs and senior business managers, this column is for you.
It’s not about money per se, it’s about who is buying your goods/services, what they are buying, and how they are thinking.
Last week, business consulting company Deloitte Canada brought its director of research Duncan Stewart to town to deliver his annual Deloitte’s TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications) predictions for 2014.
On the same day, Ipsos market research/polling company CEO Darrell Bricker delivered the keynote address at the Alberta’s Industrial Heartland annual Stakeholder Update. Bricker’s talk was about the “new” Canada, which, ironically, had the undivided attention of the “old” Canada (regional municipal politicans, 90% white, over 55 and male) in his audience.
There’s a thread here, an obvious one, a cliché fast moving to reality.
If your organization doesn’t adapt to the “new” Canada, it will die.
The new Canada&rs ...
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The Parlour Italian Kitchen & Bar
10334 Capital Blvd. (108 St.)
780-990-0404
Centuryhospitality.com/parlour
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two, excluding beverages, tips and taxes: Basic, $35; loaded, $80
Edmonton’s Century Hospitality restaurant group (Century Grill, Lux Steakhouse, Hundred, MRK and two Delux Burger Bars) knows the secret to its undeniable success.
It’s so smart.
It deliberately stays about 30% behind the culinary sophistication of high-end bistros like The Red Ox Inn or the Three Boars, knowing those outlets attract a very small market of high-end discerning foodies.
But the Century group venture far beyond the predictable conventions of the big-box chain restaurants.
It presents, and presents well, something for everybody at the table — from the I-know-what-I-like crowd to the adventurous foodie out with friends and family.
Even the tried ‘n’ true — pizza, steak, hambur ...
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It is the vastness of the contrast, between income, living standards, attitudes and quality of life.
I have just spent five weeks in Asia – three in the Philippines, one in Thailand, one in Cambodia.
By Southeast Asia standards, Canadians are rich beyond imagination. “I wish I’d been born into royalty,” my oldest daughter sighed during the trip. Looking out the van window at yet another slum, I replied “You were.”
According to the World Bank in 2012, Canada’s per capita income (gross domestic product divided by the population) was $52,219.
Thailand has come a long ways, now in the mid-ranks of the world with a per capita income of $5,480.
The Philippines is far behind, in the bottom third. The average per capita income is $2,587. Its greatest export and income earner are Filipinos living and working abroad – 12% of its people.
Cambodia is the poorest sister of Southeast Asia, at $946 annually per capita. Despite the horror of its history and th ...
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