Kinky Boots
Broadway Across Canada touring show
Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium,
February 14 to 19, 2017
Tickets $30 to $180
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Watch out Edmonton!
If the whole city starts rockin’ and rollin’, dancin’ down the streets and prancing about in outrageous sequinned boots, it’s because the energy and spirit of Kinky Boots exploded out of the Jubilee Auditorium and is cascading across Edmonton.
Not since Hairspray has a touring Broadway show been this much fun, so high calibre and so socially relevant. Kinky Boots is a bodacious blend of sassiness, social message, social relevance, an intriguing story-line, great songs (thank you Cindy Lauper), astounding choreography and bigger-than-life talent.
How did this plot get dreamed up? Its bones are about a reluctant heir of a dying English shoe-making factory, who accidently discovers a niche market for drag-queen boots. But for the business to surviv ...
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Baskerville – A Sherlock Holmes Mystery
Mayfield Dinner Theatre, Doubletree by Hilton Hotel,
16615-109 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
February 7 to April 2, 2017
Tickets (including buffet dinner), $75 to $100
Mayfieldtheatre.ca
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
There is something enticingly relaxing about an evening out at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre.
You are not supposed to think critically, not supposed to debate the show’s inner meanings, not be upset or outraged.
You are simply to sit back, satiated after a good buffet dinner, sipping on a nice glass of wine, and be entertained.
And the entertainment value doesn’t get much better than the comedic farce/whodunit now playing, Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.
Five actors, 30-plus characters, dozens of scenes introduced by the actors sneaking scenery on stage, a farce with many doors equally carried on stage for actors to jump in and out of.
It truly is a laugh a mi ...
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Commentary on the Citadel Theatre's unveiling of its 2017/18 season
by GRAHAM HICKS, Hicksbiz.com
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
February 13, 2017
The sigh of relief was audible last week among seasoned Citadel Theatre fans in Edmonton, as, play by play, new artistic director Daryl Cloran unveiled the 2017/18 season.
This kid, the grizzled veterans of Edmonton theatre thought to themselves, is for real.
Until the 2017/18 season announcement, we didn’t know quite what to think of Cloran.
The Citadel board search committee had plenty of time, almost a full year, to find a replacement for past artistic director Bob Baker. Baker had announced his retirement after 17 excellent years at the helm of the theatre. He continues an association with The Citadel as artistic director emeritus.
The board was excited about Cloran, who during six seasons as director of Kamloops’ innovative Western Canada Theatre had built a national reputation for both innovation and aud ...
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Heartening news is emerging out of the oil patch.
According to two of the best energy analysts in Alberta, Peter Tertzakian and Jackie Forrest of Calgary’s ARC Energy Research Institute, plus anecdotal evidence from those working in the oil patch, things are picking up.
Not like the halcyon days leading up to the Great Crash of 2014, mind you. But way better than 2015 and 2016, when barely an oil-patch wheel was turning and the Canadian energy industry had losses of $52 billion and $32 billion, respectively.
Right now, 200 drilling rigs are out there in Alberta — up 50 per cent from a year ago. The drilling is for higher-valued natural gas, liquids (ethane, propane, butane) and oil. Oil biz CEOs are banking on $50 US (or more) a barrel for West Texas oil — $70 Canadian — being steady for the next few years.
Improved technology has dramatically lowered drilling costs and increased production per new well. The returns have piqued investor interest. Conventional oil, gas and l ...
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OTTO Food and Drink
11405-95 St., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
780-477-6244
ottofoodanddrink.com
Hours: 5 p.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, No reservations
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Price: Dinner for two (excluding beverages and tip): basic, $20; loaded, $45
Beer drinkers, sausage eaters and conversationalists, rejoice.
You now have the perfect Edmonton eatery – OTTO Food and Drink.
OTTO is friendly, modern, clean, easy on the wallet and without pretense. It’s in a solid working-class neighbourhood a few blocks north of Little Italy on 95 Street.
OTTO is designed for conversation. There are no televisions, no loud music. What a concept!
Other than the usual sides (fries, mac & cheese, coleslaw, potato and house salads) and desserts, OTTO sells nothing but sausages. (Actually a “veggie of the day” is on the chalk board. The beets on horseradish-seasoned goat cheese were inspiring.)
You also go to OTTO to dri ...
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We the general public are like sheep, our wool unceremoniously shorn year after year for use by others.
Not for the greater good – not for those truly needing help, but for groups and individuals who don’t need our money.
It’s not the government, but government as conduit. Governments pass along your tax money to others in the form of grants (or tax credits, which are grants by another name).
But the people getting those grants - in businesses, not-for-profit organizations, or individuals – don’t need your money any more than you do.
They’re just smarter! They figure out where the money is, and they go get it!
They research government programs, figure out how to apply for whatever grants are on offer, pay a professional grant-writer to write the application, and bingo, wind up with a $10,000, $50,000, $100,000, $10,000,000 grant!
There are literally hundreds of government-sponsored, grant-giving agencies - Emissions Reduction Alberta, Sustainable Developme ...
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Crash Hotel Lobby Bar
10266 103 St.
http://crashhotel.com/lobby/
(780) 719-3807
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 stars
Dinner for two (excluding beverages and tip): basic, $25; loaded, $50
Breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week
Urbansparq Hospitality, meet Nathin Bye, meet the Crash Hotel.
Nathin Bye, meet Urbansparq and the Crash Hotel.
Urbansparq is a low-profile hospitality operation based in Edmonton with the Midas touch – witness the proliferation of its flagship The Pint pub operations across Western Canada and into the USA, plus dozens of other well-run hospitality operations.
Nathin Bye is one of the city’s leading chefs, first at The Wildflower Grill, then Ampersand 27. He won the prestigious Gold Medal Plates Edmonton culinary competition in 2012 as a wet-behind-the-ears 26-year-old.
The Crash Hotel is a prototype for a possible new Urbansparq hotel division. The company bought the decrepit 70-room three-story G ...
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It’s a chronic problem that never seems to go away.
The term “bed-blockers” is no longer used, but the issue remains.
At any given time, around 400 hospital beds in Alberta (one-third in Edmonton) are taken up by bed-ridden seniors waiting for placement in long-term care/nursing home/assisted-living facilities.
The wait times aren’t readily available from Alberta Health Services, but in some Ontario hospitals, the wait time has grown longer and longer, from an average 18 days in 2004 to 69 days today.
The cost per patient per day in Alberta hospitals is $1,500 per day. Long-term institutional care cost is $100 to $200 per day.
The NDP government is fulfilling an election promise to create 2,000 more long-term care beds by 2019, with $500 million committed to date.
The cost to the health care system won’t drop – those hospital beds will be filled the moment they are vacated. But with beds freed up, horrific emergency room wait times could be reduced.
It’s a para ...
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Disgraced
Hope & Hell Theatre Company
Citadel Theatre, Shoctor Stage, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Jan. 21, 2017 to Feb. 5, 201
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, HicksBiz.com
Tickets
Disgraced is a damned fine play, with its current production at the Citadel Theatre being good, but not great. It is part of the Citadel’s season, but is produced by the Toronto-based Hope and Hell Theatre Company. In other words, nobody from the Citadel Theatre had any input into what’s on stage.
If one of the Citadel’s past cadre of directors – artistic director emeritus Bob Baker, former associate directors James MacDonald and Tom Wood – had been at the artistic reins, this would likely have been a great show. All three directors are masters of this particular style of play. (I can’t yet include new Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran. His directorial debut won’t come until the 2017/18 season.)
Disgraced is one of those relentlessly contemporary dramas that ticks off all ...
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Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes
Cardiac Theatre at the ATB Arts Barns
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
A retrospective by GRAHAM HICKS, HicksBiz.com
If you missed Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes, performed at the ATB Arts Barns by the Cardiac Theatre company from Jan. 10 to 22, 2017, I’m sorry for you.
It was an intriguing one-man show. One live actor, Bradley Dore playing Peter Fechter, with three pre-recorded voices coming from strategically located loudspeakers in the PCL Studio Theatre. The voices were those of Peter’s mother, father and best friend, and almost as important to the show as Peter Fechter himself.
This intriguing theatrical experience was conjured up by leading young Canadian playwright Jordan Tannahill. Fechter is a true historical figure, who at 18 was one of the first East Germans attempting to flee from East Berlin to West Berlin across the recently constructed Berlin Wall in 1945. Fatally wounded by East German guards in the no-man's land along the wall, he bled to death ...
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