HicksBiz Blog
West Side Story,
Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
April 23 to May 22, 2016
Featuring the participants of the 2016 Citadel/Banff Centre Professional Theatre Program
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, www.hicksbiz.com
Eight years ago, The Citadel Theatre and the Banff Centre embarked upon a professional theatre training program for young-ish actors well into their acting careers but taking time out to refresh their skills.
It’s been highly, highly successful, both for the actors and especially for Citadel Theatre audiences. Because after a month of general theatre training in Banff, the 20-or-so actors descend on Edmonton to continue their training within the context of rehearsing and performing a major show as a finale to the current Citadel Theatre’s season.
I couldn’t tell you how the economics work, but the fact is with the Professional Theatre Program, the Citadel has at its disposal some 20 fine young actors, full of vim and vigour and renewed enthusiasm, with the capacit ...
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Little Brick Café + General Store
10004 90 St., Riverdale
780-705-1230
littlebrick.ca
8 a.m. to 4 p.m., seven days a week
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3.5 of 5 Suns
Lunch for two: Excluding drinks and tip, basic, $20, loaded $40
High Voltage
10382-63 Ave. (corner 104 St. and 63 Ave.)
780-437-3202
Mon. to Fri., 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sat., 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Closed Sunday
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 2.5 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 Suns
There’s no character or personality on downtown Edmonton streets fronted by banks or office towers or inward-looking malls.
The average suburban commercial strip — out beyond the Henday — is dullsville incarnate.
So, please, raise a glass to new social entrepreneurs like the Little Brick’s Nate Box, who are as interested in community as they are in money.
And may crusty old guys like Taso, who has made the best donairs and gyros on the South Side at High ...
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It’s not about the political party that happens to be in power.
If Jim Prentice hadn’t called the Alberta election a year early, his Progressive Conservative Party would be in the same deep do-do as Rachel Notley’s New Democrats.
It’s about a near unalterable reality that Albertans must face.
This economic crisis isn’t going away.
Global energy analysts predict world oil and gas prices will not recover for a very long time, probably decades. World-wide demand for fossil fuels is dramatically slowing. Supply just keeps on growing.
There’s no way around it – Alberta’s over-all standard of living will have to drop.
By how much, nobody knows. For the sake of argument, let’s say, conservatively, 10%.
It matters not what party is in power. The gusher of cash from oil and gas is gone, not to return for many, many years. In Calgary, they call it the new “long low.”
The marketplace, that cold-hearted beast, has already reacted, s ...
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Cibo Bistro
11244-104 Ave. (Oliver Square),
780-757-2426
www.cibobistro.com
Tues. to Fri. 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Sat. 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Closed Sundays and Mondays
Food: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Dinner for two: Excluding drinks and tip, loaded, $120, basic, $50
Returning to a restaurant previously reviewed starts with worry. You mightily enjoyed that dinner four years ago, gave the establishment top marks. But, with so many other eateries out there worthy of attention, you have not been back.
What if the eatery has gone into decline? Been sold? Changed chefs? Started to cheap out? What if the restaurant had been guilty of inconsistency, one night to the next?
To report that Rosario Caputo’s Cibo Bistro in Oliver Square remains on top of its game is both satisfying and a relief.
In fact, with its service much improved, I would move Cibo up a notch. With one or two more improvements in the kitchen, Cibo would be ...
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A little bit of this, a little bit of that in Hicks on Biz this week – Living longer, bus depots in the middle of nowhere, cuppa coffee with the Oilers, job losses, farmland.
Another minute in the spotlight
Of the 133 former Oilers who gathered Wednesday to bid farewell to Rexall Place, about half the names were recognizable. The other half were here for a cuppa coffee, likely playing a few games before being sent back to the minors.
Most of the guys have woulda, coulda, shoulda stories – untimely injuries, the GM didn’t like them, too many players at the position, never given a chance.
Still, they made it to the Big Show, if even for a game or two, creating a treasured memory.
Friends and relatives all know Joe Schmo was an Oiler for a few games. Now, thanks to this collegial gesture by Oiler management, they all enjoyed another moment of recognition.
Farewell oil-patch jobs, hello McJobs
Interesting job statistics from a TD Bank study: The provincial job mark ...
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Lemongrass Cafe
10417 51 Ave.
780-413-0088
Facebook
Mon. to Fri. 11 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Sat. noon to 10 p.m.
Sun. 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Food: 4 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 3 of 5 Suns
Service: 3 of 5 Suns
When my family is in the mood for a light, tasty, filling meal, we inevitably turn to Vietnamese cooking.
It’s a gentle, delicate cuisine - less greasy than Chinese, not as spicy or sweet as Thai, less forceful than South Asian. More shy and retiring than other Asian cuisines, Vietnamese food is dependably tasty, rarely sits around in the kitchen, and usually uses the freshest of ingredients.
Then there’s the famous pho soup, a meal unto itself for which every self-respecting Vietnamese restaurant has a secret family recipe. I have a mental taste-fest, just thinking about pho!
Heading into the city from the Edmonton International on Saturday afternoon, the Lemongrass Café on the South Side, on 51 Ave. was calling our name - especially after a four-hour pl ...
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Other Desert Cities
Playing at the Citadel Theatre, Edmonton, Alberta Canada
April 9 to May 1, 2016
Review by GRAHAM HICKS, hicksbiz.com
In a 50th anniversary Citadel Theatre season that has exploded with so much theatrical brilliance - Boom, Evangeline, Christmas Carol, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Alice Through the Looking-Glass and the upcoming West Side Story, Other Desert Cities ranks as the season's only dud.
There are a handful of great American dramas dealing with family dysfunction - heck, American playwrights aren’t comfortable unless they are hurling grenades at the All-American family.
But Other Desert Cities, playing at the Citadel Theatre through May 1, 2016, isn’t one of them.
This is a lightweight play delusionally convinced it’s a heavyweight.
Other Desert Cities has universal themes, dwelling deeply on the right, or downright need, of writers to express their beliefs and opinions no matter the emotional damage to others. It's e ...
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Shumka Ukrainian Dancers
Kobzar and Travelling Chumaky
April 9 and 10, 2016
Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium
Review by Graham Hicks
You have to admire the restless spirit of Edmonton’s now 57-year-old Ukrainian Shumka Dancers, long considered one of the best, if not the best, Ukrainian folk-dance troupes in the world.
For its 2016 performances, sadly just two shows in the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium last Saturday and Sunday, April 9 and 10, 2016, Shumka didn’t just go with any old world premiere – you know, hire a choreographer, find the appropriate music, and off they go.
This time around, Shumka, in collaboration with leading lights of Ukrainian culture, decided to go for the Big Show - a massive allegorical tale of the suffering and triumphs of the Ukrainian people as a whole.
The music was custom written and composed by Ukrainian national artist and composer Yuri Shevchenko, recorded in Kiev with a massive choir and a 68-member orchest ...
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The Local Omnivore
10933 120 St.
780-660-1051
www.thelocalomnivore.com
Tues. to Thurs. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Sat. and Sun. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Closed Mondays
Food: 4.5 of 5 Suns
Ambience: 4 of 5 Suns
Service: 4 of 5 Suns
Lunch for two: Excluding drinks and tip, loaded, $35, basic, $20
Doing it right has never been more pronounced.
Mark Bellows and Ryan Brodziak started The Local Omnivore as a relatively low-cost food truck specializing in meat sandwiches and hamburgers. Having built an excellent reputation as a mobile operation, they moved that reputation into one of the city’s best sandwich shops, custom-built to their specifications. The Local Omnivore restaurant opened before Christmas and hasn’t looked back.
What do they do right? Mostly, they do it all themselves. They source their meat from a network of organic farms around Edmonton that specialize in range-free, hormone-free, grass-fed etc. etc. One of the Omnivore staffers actually butchers much of their mea ...
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Okay, so we are expected to suck it up and take one for climate change.
Soon, Alberta’s middle class families will be turning over hundreds more dollars a year in a carbon tax – i.e. much higher taxes on gasoline powering our vehicles and natural gas heating our homes, and who knows what else.
This will raise billions of dollars, which will all be re-invested, Premier Rachel Notley promises, into ways and means of becoming a “carbon-free” province.
Here’s my problem: Notley’s criticism of past Conservative governments for “not doing anything” about climate change is totally and absolutely wrong.
Alberta – our research institutes, universities, energy companies and our unique Climate Change & Emissions Management Corporation (CCEMC) – was a global leader in reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) well before Ms. Notley came to power, and continues to be a world leader.
Let me count the ways.
Up in the oilsands, most of the major ...
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