A Grateful Look, in Halting Rhyme, At Winnipeg in Fifty-Nine

 Standing here with eager feet

Where Fifty-Nine and Sixty meet,

We contemplate with purest pleasure

The past months’ overflowing measure

Of Blessings that came showering down

On You, on Us, on all the Town.

A Happy Backward look we throw

At the Royal Visit, not long ago,

And the Royal Couple, who made their way

Through Winnipeg, that Summer day.

We ask them now, as we asked them then…

…”Will ye no’ come back again?”

Looking around we raise our eyes

To a notable change in Winnipeg skies.

Not Sputniks, Muttniks, or missiles in space –

But a Building Boom that’s changing the place.

Just look around and what do you find?

Winnipeg’s getting a new skyline!

To the Great West Life a hearty salute,

A loud Hurrah, and a Rooty-Toot.

Likewise we’re happy to applaud

The Provincial Building, next the “Aud”…

And motorists are greatful daily,

For our new bridge, the Disraeli.

Hotels, motels, apartment blocks,

New buildings rise where’er we walk.

The U. of M. grows on a pace,

At Polo Park no horses race.

While over all, one Vision gleaming,

Of a Downtown Plaza we are dreaming!

In this year that’s nearly done

There was fun for everyone…

So much fun at the Red River Ex

We’ll see you all at the next.

The Bombers proved they were the best

And kept the Grey Cup in the West!

Success came to the Rainbow Stage,

Aunt Sally’s Farm pleased every age.

Crowds were at the Symphony,

Art Galley, Ballet and M.T.C….

(But the thing that’s caused the greatest talk

Was whether to WAIT or whether to WALK!)

And here’s to the loveliest gift of all,

The Winnipeg design for our City Hall.

Congratulations in all this bustle

To Messrs. Green, Blankstein and Russell!

The job is ready, now let’s do it.

(We only hope we live to view it!)

In counting Blessings each year-end

Our very warmest thanks we send,

To all who work at EATON’s here,

Friends and fellow-workers dear.

Next, our customers, may we never part –

All are dear to our grateful heart.

May you always count us a Blessing, too –

Our constant aim is serving you!

EATON’S

"No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." A special THANK YOU to all our volunteers over the years!

Feminine Force Works Off Stage for Rainbow

July 5, 1958 – Winnipeg Free Press Archives

VOLUNTEERS will be serving hot coffee to Rainbow Stage patrons and here Mrs. S. J. McKay gets some practice.  She fills the cups of actors and production crew members taking a coffee break from rehearsals.  Left to right are: Miss Frances Williams, Don McGregor, Miss May Ostapowich and Georges La Flache.

Behind every worthwhile endeavour it is quite usual to find a group of hard-working women.

The Winnipeg Summer Theatre association which starts its season at Rainbow Stage Monday is no exception.  Behind the scenes many Winnipeg women are donating their time and talents to the dozens of jobs necessary to ensure the success of any theatrical production.

MRS. RALPH G. YOUNG creates a papier mache
dog for a dance sequence in The King and I.
The dance depicts the Siamese version
 of Uncle Tom's Cabin.  A sculptress, Mrs. Young
 is working on the masks in her home on Somerset Avenue.

Sewing for the costume department is one of the really big projects the volunteers have tackled and the women are putting in many hours at sewing machines in the Strathcona Curling Club rehearsal headquarters for the Rainbow Stage shows.

Large papier mache masts for the Siamese dance in The King and I are being created by Mrs. Ralph G. Young, Mrs. Harold Stubbs and Mrs. John Holmes.

Rainbow Stage patrons like their cup of coffee at intermission time so the women sell hot coffee on the pergolas on either side of the theatre and the profits are turned into the association.

Square dancers who use Rainbow Stage for their dances sell programs and usher in the customers.

There are many other jobs handled by the women’s house committee and other volunteers – the ticket blitz, which is most important, hunting properties or even driving the costume department supervisor around the city as he gathers together  his materials.

It all goes to make a good show.

THE SUMMER THEATRE Association needs women who are handy with needle and thread.  There are many costumes to be sewn.  Here, three volunteers lend a helping hand.  Left to right they are: Miss Anne Stevenson, Miss Lorine Hodgson, chairman of the women's house committee and Mrs. Douglas McKay, founder of the women's committee. 

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It’s Skill Behind The Scenes That Keeps The Play Rolling

A Story Of The Rainbow Stage

By Jerry Walmsley – Winnipeg Free Press Archives

July 12, 1958

From an old wedding gown and a red sash Bernard Polly styles
a costume for Ziegfeld Follies queen Mary Wallis

“The play’s the thing” said Will Shakespeare.

Ah, but there is more to it that just that, Mr. Shakespeare and we need go no further that the Strathcona Curling Club to prove our point.

There, amidst cardboard cartons, yellowed bridal gowns, greasepaint and musty frocks and suits, the Winnipeg Summer Theatre association is creating the fantasy to weave around the plays.

And key man in that purposeful disorder is Bernard Polly, a lean, spectacled fellow with a divine faculty for creating something out of nothing.  He is the costume designer and co-ordinator for the Rainbow Stage productions.

With a $600 budget to work with, Mr. Polly right now is designing and making 225 costumes for one show – Hells-a-Poppin.

- - - - - -

WHERE DID he begin?

Well, in the first place Mr. Polly was a dress designer in a fashionable Los Angeles shop for two years.  He came back to Canada because he “likes working with Canadians.”

Styling 1880 hats and feathers and not are designer
Bernard Polly, his assistant Rocky Grant (right)
and an unidentified helper.

Until recently he was a commercial artist in Winnipeg but he had a real soft spot for costume designing.

Finally, the firm he was working for decided that he couldn’t devote full time to costume designing and it too, so they suggested that he might give the Summer Theatre all of his time.

Because Summer Theatre in Winnipeg had a financial setback and is struggling, Mr. Polly is strapped to an almost impossible budget.  So his first call was to the Junior League Thrift Shop, which was closing for the summer months.  He cleaned them out of bridal and evening gowns, tuxedos, and tails and dress shirts.

Next stop – the Harlassah Bargain Centre.  Then the Goodwill Industries where one purchase alone included 65 evening gowns.

- - - - - - 

MATERIAL from three gowns provides the designer with the basis for one costume.  Add to this – lace, sequins, net beads and maybe feathers and you have a Polly original.


There are 40 hooped crinolines with full bouffant skirts with three rows of six inch net stitched around the 30 feet of hem in each skirt Mr. Polly has been poking through the lanes of Winnipeg, stripping scrap steel off wooden packing cases with which to make his hoops.

For four weeks now they have been sewing down at the curling rink but Mr. Polly still needs women who would happily donate some sewing time.

One scene in which the cast does the song With a Little Bit Of Luck, requires 12 pearly hats and a pearly suit.  Close to 20 pounds of white buttons are being used for this.

Another is an extravagant sequence which might be termed the Polly Follies but actually is referred to as the Ziegfeld number, which according to Mr. Polly stars 10 of Winnipeg’s most beautiful and curvaceous women.

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Nadine Kelly demonstrates eye makeup for
Judyan Gustafson and Carole Cohen.
The model is Lane Carswell a Ziegfeld
girl in Hells-a-Poppin.

UNDERNEATH the big beautiful hats and the silk foppers are the faces of the singers and dancers and a versatile school feather with a Schilizy hairdo is responsible for them.

“Anybody here seen Kelly?” is a common cry backstage in any of Winnipeg’s theatres.  The girl who answers to the call is Nadine Kelly, supervisor of make-up for the Summer Theatre.  Kelly has done makeup for so many theatrical endeavors in Winnipeg that it would take a column to list them all.

But as every actor in Winnipeg knows, Kelly is much more than a makeup artist.  Kelly has worked in every phase of the theatre.  She’s been an actress, singer, stagehand, prompter, wardrobe mistress and a shoulder to cry on.

“I’ve been a baby sitter too, for adults, children, dogs and other animals,” she says.

- - - - - -

WHEN SOMEBODY presses the panic button it’s invariably level-headed Kelly who untangles the mess and puts things right.

In the Rainbow Stage production of Annie Get Your Gun a worried dancer came off stage screaming K-E-L-L-Y. Calmly, Kelly surveyed the situation.  The dancer’s tight fitting cowboy pants had split down the back.  In minutes he had to be back on Stage.  Kelly put the young man over her knee and quickly stitched up his trousers.

Whenever a director is casting around for a bit character player he often puts the finger on Kelly.  In I Remember Mama last season, Kelly with bucket and mop in hand, ambled on stage as a weary, old scrub-woman in a hospital.

Last winter with Death of a Salesman was staged in the city, a cast member who was ill did not show up one night.  Kelly was busy making up the cast when the director told her she’d be going on as the secretary.  She did – for two nights.

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KELLY IS TRAINING the Summer Theatre actors to do their own make up as much as possible because she knows if they go elsewhere to act they will be expected to do their own faces.  She is also training some assistants to help her out through the three shows.

Hells-a-Poppin in WInnipeg - the next Rainbow Stage
production - features Grant Cowan, Daphne Karol
and Murray Senens.

Makeup for The Kind and I, with its Siamese setting is the biggest task Kelly has to tackle this summer.

“Eyes are an actor’s greatest asset” says Kelly, who likes to pay special attention to eye makeup.

She says people should remember that if they sit in the first few rows of a theatre, actors may look overly made up, even to the point of being grotesque.  This exaggeration is necessary so that the people in the rest of the theatre can see the actors facial expressions.

Rainbow Stage presenets a difficulty that is not encountered in an indoor theatre – having to makeup for daylight and artifical light both.  But Kelly is equal to that problem too.

Kelly probably knows more faces than anyone else in Winnipeg.  They pass her on the street and say hello, and although she can’t always pin a name on the face she knows at one time or another she made it up.

And when you are out at Rainbow Stage taking in Brigadoon, Hells-a-Poppin or The King and I one of those faces will likely belong to some panic stricken actor backstage, roaring through the wings screaming “K-E-L-L-Y.” 

John Hirsch pulled out all the stops for the 1957 Rainbow Stage production of Chu Chin Chow.

Chu-Chin-Chow Starts Monday

Khuzayma (Douglas McIntosh) a member of Abu Hassan’s band of robbers threatens the life of Kasim Baba (Ted Korol) a wealthy merchant, in a scene from Chu-Chin-Chow, musical extravaganza which opens Monday at Rainbow Stage.  Mr. Korol, as well as acting in the show, has designed the sets for it.  John Hirsch is director, Nenad Lhotka is choreographer and Eric Wild is music director.  The production will run all this week and Monday and Tuesday of next week.

Here There and Hollywood

With Frank Morriss

If I can take the word of John Hirsch, and I’d very much like to, we’re going to have animals, acrobats, jugglers, snake charmers, fireworks, fountains and the Indian rope trick on the Rainbow stage in Kildonan park this summer.

John even promises to auction off some women, which seems very shocking until you realize the show he is talking about is the venerable Chu Chin Chow which will bring the Rainbow stage to a finale blaze of glory for the summer.

John is back in Winnipeg after a winter and spring of drama study in London, and he has been engaged to do three musical shows for the Rainbow stage.  They are Can Can, Do You Remember? and the aforementioned Chu Chin Chow.  Now I had some misgivings about Chu Chin Chow because it was popular during World War I but I suspect has aged.  The good old tunes like Any Time’s Kissing Time.  The Cobbler’s Song, etc, have survived but what about the book and lyrics?

It was then that John mentioned his startling innovations, although the auctioning off of the women is actually in the show.  I remember being taken, as a very little boy, to see it at the Walker (now Odeon) theatre and hearing the gasps of the audience when the ladies walked onto the draughty Walker stage, protected only by a gauze curtain.

Note to Mr. Hirsch, James Duncan and the rest of the Rainbow stage people:  It can be very chilly on an evening in Kildonan Park.

Enough of frivolity however.  The facts of the Hirsch case since he left Winnipeg some time in January are these:

He has been studying at the Central School of Drama, whose principal is Gwyneth Thurburn, coach for Sir Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave and other eminent actors.  John’s teacher was Oliver Reynolds, who taught with Michael Saint Denis.  The school, incidentally, is solely for professionals, not beginners.

He also worked at the Unity theatre in St. Pancras and has a 19^th century farce which he is reading at the moment and might do for them next season.  The Unity theatre premiered Jean Paul Sartre’s Nekrasov, which will be staged at the Edinburgh festival this summer.

John was closely in touch with John Allen, Andre van Gyseghem and other theatre people.

At the moment, he says, the theatre is undergoing a tremendous change in Britain.

The first factor in this is the emergence of Arthur Miller, such directors as Elia Kazan and the realistic school of the Actor’s theatre.

Secondly the emergence of such a British playwright as John Osborne is giving the people a lift.  John feels that Fry, Elliott and some of the other writers aren’t influential any more.  Osborne, however, is giving the people something to hang on to.

One of his plays, Look Back in Anger, was about a working man whose education brought him out of his class and made him unhappy.  Another Osborne play, which will have Sir Laurence Olivier at the helm, deals with music hall people and their frustrations.

Thirdly, the visit of Berthold Berliner Ensemble from Germany has proved tremendously dynamic.

John also has admiration for Terrence Rattingar’s virtuoso writing in such a play as Separate Tables.

When John stopped briefly in New York he saw Paddy McIntyre, who is working to establish himself there.  Lawrence Gradus, another former member of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is with City Centre Ballet.  John hears that Georges Balanchine is doing two of Ruthanna Boris’ works… Cakewalk, and an untitled one.

In London he saw Evelyne Anderson in the musical , Free As Air, says she was wonderful.  Evelyne is understudying the leading lady and did the role for a week in Bristol to great acclaim.

Peter Perebinczuk, who acted a great deal in Winnipeg is now Peter James and has appeared in A View from the Bridge.  He is now with the Sir Laurence Olivier production of Titus Andronious which will tour Europe.

Bernard Behrens, another ex-Winnipegger, is with the Old Vic and will be touring the Near East with the company.

It’s nice to have John Hirsch back, if only for the summer.

Chu Chin Chow Wows Crowd

By C.G. Dafoe

Free Press Staff Writer

A bomb exploded at Kildonan park Tuesday night and sent vivid color flashing about Rainbow stage.  The bomb was called Chu Chin Chow and the near-capacity audience roared its approval when the fireworks ended.

Last spring when the summer theatre announced that Chu Chin Chow would be one of the productions this season, many patrons groaned.

“That old thing,” they said. 

“Who wants to see a show written in 1914?”

Now, however, “that old thing” has turned out to be a the best thing the summer theatre has done in its two years of operation.

Director John Hirsch and his crew of assistants have given us a show that has almost everything; color, wild and tame animals, talking birds, jugglers, a gala parade, and other numerous surprises.

LASCIVIOUS SLAVES

As usual, the dancers are the most skillful performers on Rainbow stage.  The finale of Act 2 features the ballet music from Borodin’s Prince Igor and some of the best dancers in Canada swirl about the stage to the wild Tartar music.  The female members of the company make some of the most lascivious slave girls ever put up for sale.  It was a wonder there were no bids from the audience. (only in 1957, how times have changed)

Director Hirsch has chosen his cast well.  All the major characters were more than able to handle the tasks assigned to them.

The team of Roy Firth and Wendy Hicks in particular, stood out.  Mr. Firth combined a mellow and pleasing singing voice and a flare for outrageous comedy to give the outstanding performance of the evening as Ali Baba.

Miss Hicks as Ali’s lover has a way of smiling that makes every man in the audience think she is smiling at him.  Delightful.

MAKE-UP EXCELLENT

As the robber chief, Leo Brodeur is a villain to the core.  His make-up is excellent and he shifts character nicely when he changes his disguise.

Harry J. Enns and Nora MacLean make a charming pair of lovers when they are in a crowd.  Alone on stage however, they tend to become wooden.  The director may be to blame here.  Give Hirsch 50 people rushing about the stage and he is as happy as a lark.  Give him two and he panics.

Merle Pelcher gives a good account of herself as the willy Zahrat Al-Kulub although her voice tends to be shrill now and then.

As the aged cobbler, Geoffrey Davies gives some of the best singing in the show.  The famous Cobbler’s song comes his way and he makes the most of it.

SIGHT TO BEHOLD

Ted Korol as the wicked merchant Kasim Baba is a green beard and a pair of gracefully moving hands.  He is always at his best when he lets his hands speak for him and they are often far more eloquent than the tongue could ever be.

Murray Senens as the slave dealer is an Egyptian temple painting come to life and Colin Walley sings splendidly and moves with a regal dignity as the steward of Kasim Baba.

Ramona Mcbean is the ultimate in shrews as Ali Baba’s wife Mahbubah.

There is seldom a dull moment in this giant of a show.  Hirsch moves his cast on and off stage like a ring-master with a well trained equestrian act.  The costumes are a sight to behold.

Anybody who stays home to watch television this week is crazy.

Len Cariou, Broadway's Original Sweeney Todd, Reveals His Canadian Roots

(L-R) Len Cariou, actor Tom Selleck, Leonard Goldberg and actor
Donnie Wahlberg attend the "Blue Bloods" Screening at The Paley
Center for Media on September 22, 2010 in New York City

By: Myra Chanin @ The Huffington Post
Len Cariou may well be the most persistently employed performer on the planet. Just printing his credits takes up a half ream of multipurpose paper. Len leaps fleetly from role to role, format to format and venue to venue -- theater, film, television, recordings, narration, voiceovers, documentaries and audio books. He can dance, sing, weep, laugh, direct and what-have-you. Police procedural TV fans adore him in the current CBS hit show, Blue Bloods, as Henry Regan, the always-in-the-kitchen-cooking-something-delicious retired former New York City Police Commissioner, granddad of the clan that always dines together and father of the present Blue Bloods police commissioner played by Tom Selleck. Len is actually only five years older than Tom Selleck but Tom is more devoted to Grecian formula.

Len's roles have run the gamut from cabbages to kings. The two biggest cabbages? Louis Tobin, the Bernie Madoff-ish third-season-of-Damages no-goodnick Ponzi schemer, and Iago, Shakespeare's immortal manipulative villain. As for kings, Len's portrayed Coriolanus, Darius, Oedipus, Henry V, Lear, Macbeth and Oberon -- everyone but Richard III, which gives him a gig to look forward to. Len also thinks he might be ready to take a crack at Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Len grew up near Winnipeg in modest circumstances, with music always around the house: "I was a boy soprano with a natural kind of voice. My mother made sure it was trained it after it changed." By 10th grade Len was directing/starring in school plays at Miles MacDonnell Collegiate, and made his theatrical debut there playing Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore. A few years later he turned professional in the chorus of Damn Yankees at Rainbow Stage, an outdoor venue where the weather and the audience were co-dependent. Performing in local nightclubs and theaters kept him solvent until theatrical visionary John Hirsch established the Manitoba Theater Center and supplied Len with employment during its October to January season, augmented by performing the Classics at the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival between February and October until Len joined the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

Then Broadway beckoned. As Bill Sampson, Lauren Bacall/Margo Channing's director/lover in Applause, a hit musical based on All About Eve, Len received his first Tony nomination and enjoyed a yearlong run. Then it was back to Guthrie for a double feature -- playing Oedipus and also replacing Frank Langella, who'd left the company, as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

When Hal Prince asked Len to audition for a featured role in a new Stephen Sondheim musical, A Little Night Music, Len grabbed the opportunity to sing for Sondheim, who Len considers a genius, even though Len wasn't keen about playing Count Carl-Magnus. Instead Prince offered him the leading male role -- Fredrik Egerman, a succesfull widowed middle-aged lawyer married to an 18-year-old who wanted-to-remain-a-perpetual-virgin. Len was on Cloud Nine until he realized that rehearsals for Night Music would interfere with his prior obligations to perform at Guthrie and leave the company in the lurch.

He called Prince personally to explain why he was unable to accept his offer and so impressed Prince with his integrity that Prince postponed the rehearsal start date to one that worked for Len, albeit with tricky logistics. Len flew to New York on Monday morning, rehearsed until Thursday afternoon when he flew back to Minneapolis to play Oedipus. The upside? Len received his second Tony nomination. Also, a phrase in Bring in the Clowns -- "me as King Lear" -- inspired Guthrie director Michael Langdon to star Len in King Lear. The downside? Probably because no Hollywood hunk could deliver Sondheim's clever lyrics as crisply as Len did, Len co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky in the now-not-even-available-for-streaming-on-Netflix film version of A Little Night Music.

Best of all, Steven Sondheim wrote his next masterpiece, Sweeney Todd for Len and Len finally took home a Tony for Todd.

Len's show at 54 Below reprises his original nightclub act. Why? "It gave me a reason to get my singing voice back in shape." Also 54 Below was a perfect place to return to his roots, he adds, "because 54 below was the usual winter temperature in central Canada." Len arrives on stage to great applause, a relaxed pro, attired in elegant but casual black, and opens this show with the same upbeat opening numbers he sang 55 years ago. He talks about his life, his Broadway years, his meetings with great composers, pays homage to them by singing their songs, before he blows everyone away with spectacular renditions of Sondheim's Now, with Egerman deciding whether to (a) once again attempt to ravish/seduce his bride or (b) take a nap, and the exquisitely lyrical Pretty Women, both difficult songs which Len delivers with mind bogglingly perfect dramatic passion. Even though Glynis Johns was awarded the 11 o'clock number Len had been promised, Len takes this opportunity to sing it, Send In the Clowns at 54 Below at 11 pm.

Remember, pretty much everyone at 54 Below is a class act, including the upcoming Maurice Hines, Charles Busch, Maureen McGovern, Linda Eder, Patti LuPone and in mid-January, the incomparable Linda Lavin -- my personal favorite.
Originally Posted: 12/21/2012 @ 11:02am

Rigorous Grant Park High School training set students on route to Broadway shows

Hugh Panaro as The Phantom with
Samantha Hill as Christine Daae.

By: Kevin Prokosh @ Winnipeg Free Press
NEW YORK CITY-- In 2003, Grant Park High School presented what was then the largest student production ever produced on a Manitoba stage.

The school's cramped gym could no longer contain the mass of electronic equipment, booming talent pool and expanding audiences required of an ambitious musical, so artistic director George Budoloski relocated to the 1,600-seat Burton Cummings Theatre. The idea was to give his triple threats, teens who could sing, dance and act, an experience they would not ever forget -- the opportunity to perform one of the great theatre works on a historic stage where the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Harry Houdini, Bob Hope and Winston Churchill had stood.

Fast forward almost a decade and a couple of those student performers are sitting in a stylish meeting room in the office of Cameron Macintosh, the man behind the international stage hits Les Miserables, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Mary Poppins.

Samantha Hill and Josh Assor remember Grant Park's Les Miz as the starting point for careers that have landed them both on Broadway. Hill, 25, is the Christine Daaé alternate in The Phantom of the Opera, while Assor, 24, plays the featured dance role Neleus in Mary Poppins.



Josh Assor.

They are the second and third local Les Miz cast members who have debuted on Broadway this year. Jaz Sealey was a member of the Jesus Christ Superstar production that came from the Stratford Festival and closed July 1.

"We were working on the assumption that if we gave them everything we can to make them great, they will rise to that," says Budoloski in a recent interview. "We wanted them to know what it's like -- whether they went off to be lawyers -- to be in as professional a show as we could create."

After Les Miz, Hill and Assor took radically different routes to the Big White Way, never really allowing themselves to boldly dream that it was even possible. Hill, content with her thriving stage life in Canada, remembers a family trip to New York City being cancelled and her father promising her they would go when she was on Broadway.

"I got angry, saying, 'Dad, people just don't go to Broadway,' and told him I'm not going to be on Broadway," says the fresh-faced soprano from River Heights, "He said, 'Yes you will.'"

The Hill family will join her for Christmas in New York City this weekend.

Assor, who grew up in Garden City and Tuxedo, was a world champion tap dancer and was the only Canadian to win a scholarship to train in Los Angeles with top choreographers. In 2008, he left Winnipeg for Toronto and the following year scored parts in West Side Story and Cyrano de Bergerac at Stratford Festival, before returning home in 2010 to play Benjamin in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Rainbow Stage. In 2011 he won the part of Neleus in the North American tour of Mary Poppins.

"Broadway was never really part of the plan," says the diminutive, dark-haired Assor, who originally thought of a future in architecture. "It was too far-fetched."

While on the road as far south as Mexico, Assor began to contemplate the possibility, because the dancer he was replacing on tour had been promoted to Broadway. When he heard his predecessor was leaving the New York production, he knew the Mary Poppins producers might come calling. They did and six days later last February he was making his Broadway debut at the new Amsterdam Theatre.

"Opening night was a crazy blur," says Assor. "It was the most surreal moment ever, but it wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. Getting the big tour in the United States was where the pressure was. The transition to Broadway was easy. They hired me to do what I had been doing."

Hill made her Broadway debut Nov. 12 as the innocent chorus girl who becomes the obsession of a mysterious disfigured musical genius in The Phantom of the Opera at the Majestic Theatre.

"I was prepared but every time I stumbled, I was thinking, 'This is Broadway, people don't make mistakes,'" says Hill, who last season appeared in August: Osage Country (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), Annie (Rainbow Stage) and Spring Awakening (Winnipeg Studio Theatre). "I'm told that's definitely not true. It was crazy, but the bow was one of the biggest thrills I'll ever get."

Hill regularly performs twice a week but has performed as many as five days in a row when needed. She is contracted through February in Broadway's longest-running show but her stay could be extended now that she has recently received the endorsement of Phantom's original director Harold Prince, a towering figure in American theatre and winner of 21 Tony Awards. Earlier this month he came to see Hill perform.

"Hal Prince came at intermission to tell us all we had done a great show," says Hill, a graduate of the universities of Winnipeg and Alberta. "Then he turned to me, kissed my hand and said I was marvellous and that he wanted the whole cast to hear it. I feel very relieved and honoured that the original director has given me his blessing so graciously."

Assor is on an open-ended contract that sees him performing eight shows a week as a statue that comes to life with a major dance routine. He needs 20 minutes in the makeup chair to get his body painted silver and his face painted with tiny cracks. The physical demands are a continuing challenge.

"It requires constant maintenance for your body," says Assor. "You have to be on top of it; you never can be lazy. You have to stay in shape because you never know when you will be out of a job and have to start auditions again."

The pair is ever grateful for the training they received from Budoloski, his wife Robin Dow, Kimberley Rampersad and others. They set the standards that students like Assor and Hill have built their careers upon.

"We had dance in the morning, singing after school," says Hill. "I worked harder in high school. It set me up for the hard work that's required in my career."

Assor dedicates a lot of his success to the teaching of Rampersad, a dance instructor who also often performs at Rainbow Stage and RMTC.

"That they are on Broadway at the same time is the fun thing, but I'm not surprised," says a proud Rampersad. "We are a city of 700,000 and I could name half a dozen people off the top of my head who are on Broadway."

Besides Hill and Assor, Jeremy Kushnier, one of Winnipeg's most successful Broadway stars, is back there in Jersey Boys. Another Grant Park performing arts grad, Sam Strasfeld, was in Mary Poppins before moving on to the Kathie Lee Gifford musical Scandalous, which closed abruptly Dec. 9 after running less than four weeks. Former Winnipegger Jayne Paterson was also a replacement in Mary Poppins.

What Assor and Hill have learned is that Broadway is just another stage, not all that different from the ones back home.

"I've tried to bring a Broadway performance to every show I've done," says Hill. "It's not like I've got to Broadway and now I'm going to work so much harder.

"I've worked with some amazing people in Winnipeg who have never been on Broadway."
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 20, 2012 C1

Jeremy Kushnier performs at the "Macy's 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular!" (1999)

Midsummer Forecast: Stars On The Rainbow Stage

Story By Frank Morriss

Pictures By Jack Ablett

Saturday, June 23, 1956 - Winnipeg Free Press

(Article below picture)

A: Paddy McIntyre rehearses a wild Indian dance for Annie Get Your Gun.

B: James Duncan, Peggy Green and Des McCalmont keep an interested eye on a rehearsal of Annie Get Your Gun.

C: Pat Armstrong, Vinie Lifchus and Jack Weremy are Annie’s brother and sisters in this rehearsal shot.

D: An arresting moment in Annie Get Your Gun.

E: Evelyne Anderson, who plays the title role, is obviously infatuated with Gordon Parker.

F: Joan Karasevich and Bob Jeffreys are giving out with one of the Irving Berlin hit numbers… this one being Who Do You Love, I Hope?

G: Arnold Spohr, Choreographer, puts the chorus through its paces.

H: Sid Perimutter is directing Ken Winters (Buffalo Bill), George Werier (hotel owner) and Murray Sennens (Chief Sitting Bull) in a comedy scene for Annie Get Your Gun.

Midsummer Forecast: Stars On The Rainbow Stage
If you see people gazing skyward these summer evenings they’re most likely connected in some way or another with The Rainbow Stage, which nestles in leafy Kildonan Park.

If the nights are balmy and rainless, it might well mean that Winnipeg has taken the first big step to rival Vancouver’s famed Theatre Under the Stars.

After a fitful and fateful beginning, during which an outdoor theatre was erected at the prodding of the Civic Music League, the Rainbow Stage is going into business with three elaborate musical comedies, each with a budget of $15,000 for a week’s showing, plus a play, concerts and dances.  Local singers, dancers and actors who have been waiting for a chance to show their stuff have been mustered into the production mill.

The Rainbow Stage officially opens June 27 with a concert, but the big, most-hoped for premiere is Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, in which Ethel Merman successfully strutted her stuff on Broadway for several seasons.  It opens July 2.  Interspersed with the concerts and dance events will be The Wizard of Oz and Kiss Me Kate, both big-time musicals, and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

It’s a varied menu, and the Summer Theatre association, operating with the blessings of the city and under the general chairmanship of Prof. J.A. Russell, hopes that it will intrigue Winnipeggers enough to keep the 3,000 seat theatre full enough to pay the bills and put away a tidy sum for bigger and even better plans in years to come.

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The summer theatre is operating in the best-posible way by getting the best possible people.  James C. Duncan is acting as production co-ordinator and director. Musical directors are Eric Wild and Filmer Hubble, choreographers are Arnold Spohr and Nenad Lhotka, dramatic directors are Mrs. Peggy Green, Sid Perimutter and John Hirsch.  Set designers are Jack McCullagh, John Graham and Ted Korol.

The Theatre is operating under the old theory that the play (or musical comedy) is the thing and instead of importing expensive stars, the leads are going to local people who have had experience on TV, radio, the Little Theatre, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet is supplying Paddy McIntyre and other dancers.

There will be, however, the return of a local girl who has made good in other spheres.  Evelyne Anderson, who has been with the Bristol Old Vic school and played the lead in the Bristol production of Oklahoma is coming here to play the Ethel Merman role in Annie Get You Gun and will also be in other productions.

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Trying to gauge public taste these days is a job that nobody can solve… least of all Hollywood, TV or the concert impresarios.  However, the summer theatre people have dug into their hats and pulled out the best that is procurable on the current entertainment market.

And, in the more flamboyant attractions of the musical comedies, don’t overlook Our Town.  For this writer’s money, the Thornton Wilder work is the loveliest and best of the modern plays.

Good luck, and good weather, for the Rainbow Stage.