PTE gets $100-K donation from theatre co-founder

Colin Jackson gave the Prairie Theatre Exchange audience reason to cheer before the show began Wednesday when he announced a $100,000 donation to the downtown arts organization, located since 1989 in Portage Place mall.

Theatre review: Stellar cast doubles down on hilarity in PTE's Liars at a Funeral

Dearly beloved and decidedly estranged gather for overdue hellos and forced goodbyes in Liars at a Funeral, a genial comedy about changing characters that’s carried by a perfectly selected cast faithfully committed to the undertaking.

Uneven musical drama Kiss of the Spider Woman gets caught up in its own web

In this unlikely, uneven but intermittently fabulous musical drama, a Marxist revolutionary and a gay window dresser end up as prison cellmates during Argentina’s Dirty War.

Since the two men have nothing much to do but talk, we get a lot of back-and-forth about esthetics and politics, sex and love.

We also get big musical production numbers, which can be occasionally terrific, often distracting and sometimes just off-putting. (Do we need a snappy song-and-dance take on prison torture? No, we do not.)

American filmmaker Bill Condon has worked on several movie musicals, scripting Chicago, helming the live-action Beauty and the Beast and writing and directing Dreamgirls. Here he’s adapting a 1990s Broadway and West End hit, which was itself adapted by playwright Terrence McNally from the 1976 novel by Argentine-born writer Manuel Puig.

Life of Pi's magnificent puppet menagerie ready for adventure at RMTC

The orangutan, the hyena and the Bengal tiger took millions of years of evolution to reach their modern forms. Their zoological counterparts that take the stage in Life of Pi came to life after about 3,500 hours of 3D printing.

Earlier this year, Calgary studio Puppet Stuff Canada began recreating the anthropomorphic characters that populate Yann Martel’s Booker Prize-winning novel and Lolita Chakrabarti’s Olivier Award-winning theatrical adaptation, which opens at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre tonight.

But the four-person team had strict instructions: its menagerie couldn’t replicate the originals used in England or during its Broadway run. From tooth to claw, each creature had to be designed, printed and assembled from scratch.

“When these Broadway shows become available for other theatres to produce, there’s two ways the rights holder will go about it. The rights holder for Little Shop of Horrors, for instance, will say this is how we built the Audrey II. Go ahead — do it. Go build the plant. In this case, the rights holder said, ‘We don’t want you to copy what we did for the first show. We want you to put your own spin on it,’” Puppet Stuff co-founder Brendan James Boyd says.

Netflix greenlights Canadian period romance series ‘The Granville Girls’

Netflix is betting on love in the Canadian Rockies with “The Granville Girls,” a new period romance drama.

The streamer says it has commissioned the eight-part Canadian series based on U.S. author Cat Cahill’s “The Gilbert Girls,” a romance novel series set in rural Colorado — though for the show, the story has been transplanted to Canada.

Adriana Maggs, known for her work on “Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent,” will serve as showrunner and writer, with production handled by Shaftesbury, known for “Murdoch Mysteries.”

Set against the construction of the great railway in the Canadian Rockies, the series follows Emma Daniels, one of the few women hired to work at the Granville Hotel. When she falls for the hotel’s mysterious builder, she navigates a forbidden romance that could prove costly.

Celebrated Manitoban author Miriam Toews attempts to unpack why she writes in latest work

The question at the core of Miriam Toews’ latest book is one she’s been asked many times. It’s a question with no neat and tidy answer, but one the Manitoba-born, Toronto-based novelist felt compelled to try to unpack: Why do you write?

The result is A Truce That Is Not Peace, Toews’ first work of non-fiction since 2000’s Swing Low, a memoir told from her father’s perspective about his life and eventual suicide in 1998.

Toews is in Winnipeg Thursday to launch the book at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m., where she’ll be joined in conversation by local musician/artist couple Christine Fellows and John Samson Fellows.

The author of All My Puny Sorrows, Fight Night, A Complicated Kindness, Women Talking and other novels has long imbued her fiction with events from her life.

MacIntyre blows dust off Tudor’s role in war

The Irish War of Independence, which saw hundreds killed and wounded in clashes between Irish Republican Army (IRA) forces and Britain’s Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) and the British army between 1919 to 1921, laid the foundation for conflicts that would persist in the republic for decades.

In his latest book, The Accidental Villain: A Soldier’s Tale of War, Deceit and Exile, veteran Canadian journalist Linden MacIntyre shines a light on the much-overlooked major general Sir Hugh Tudor, who commanded British police and military forces in Ireland.

A longtime friend of Winston Churchill, Tudor and his legacy in the military would be forever tainted by the copious bloodshed in Ireland’s conflict.

Tudor’s name came to MacIntyre’s attention while reading about a secret meeting in 1941 between Churchill and then-U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt aboard naval vessels stationed at Placentia Bay, N.L.

The other Alaska airlift: Volunteers save dogs from a flooded Alaska village, 1 tiny plane at a time

SEATTLE (AP) — The special delivery arrived in a plastic storage box after a chartered flight in bouncy single-propeller plane. Veterinarian Susan Shaffer Sookram snipped the zip ties securing the lid and greeted the cargo: four dogs, one with a gray collar bearing its name, Happy.

“What a scary ride!" she said. “You made it!”

As officials in Alaska work around the clock on one of the most significant airlift operations in state history — evacuating more than 1,000 people from remote, flood-battered villages on the coast of the Bering Sea — another rescue operation is playing out: getting the dogs left behind to safety, in hopes of later reuniting them with their owners.

The pet shelters closest to the devastated villages are in Bethel, a regional hub around 90 miles (150 kilometers) away by boat or plane.

Health warning over unlicensed food businesses in B.C. garages and homes

SURREY - Health authorities in British Columbia are urging people not to buy food from unlicensed businesses after receiving a flurry of complaints about illegal food services in the Lower Mainland. 

The Fraser Health Authority says the services operate from kitchens in homes, garages and elsewhere, and pose health risks from improper food preparation, storage and handling.

Fraser Health says the services include catering, "tiffin" meals that are popular in the South Asian community, takeout, ready-to-eat deliveries, and even bakeries.

It says people should only buy from licensed businesses where health inspectors have conducted a comprehensive review, including on-site inspection, and that permits should be clearly visible to customers.