Longtime Les Misérables cast member making his Canadian debut

Javert is a role Hayden Tee can’t escape.

The New Zealand-born actor first played the wolfish Les Misérables inspector over a decade ago in an Australian tour, before pursuing protagonist Jean Valjean on Broadway, in Dubai, on the West End, in Taiwan and across the United States.

“I adore the character. I’m always grateful to return,” says Tee, who has also played the dastardly principal Miss Trunchbull in the West End production of Matilda.

Next week, following a weeklong run in Minneapolis, Tee’s Javert will make his Canadian debut in Winnipeg at the Centennial Concert Hall as part of the North American touring production of Les Misérables, the beloved, long-running musical based on the novel by Victor Hugo, featuring standards such as I Dreamed a Dream, Do You Hear the People Sing? and One Day More.

Review: Actor connects multiple storylines in RMTC’s telecommunications drama Rogers v. Rogers

Inviting audiences into the inner sanctum of a dysfunctional dynasty, playwright Michael Healey’s Rogers v. Rogers does for the Canadian telecommunications industry what Adam McKay’s The Big Short did for subprime loans: surveying a national economic ecosystem that feels destined to take advantage of consumer’s best interests while lining the coffers of a controlling billionaire class.

Like McKay’s film, which adapted Michael Lewis’s bestselling post-mortem of the 2008 financial meltdown, Healey’s script — which he clarifies is fictionalized — is grounded in a journalistic account of corporate drama: Globe and Mail reporter Alexandra Posadzki’s moment-to-moment breakdown of the inner turmoil at the leviathan Rogers Communications as it attempted to swallow Shaw whole.

As in The Big Short, the grand challenge in this tale of consumer sovereignty is to make it interesting, infuriating and entertaining enough to compel the average audience member, and not just the daily stock checkers and economics majors, to find their place within the boardroom saga.

Healey knows this, and acknowledges as much during the production’s introductory address, delivered by Matthew Boswell, an impassioned civil servant who has been appointed to the office of federal competition commissioner.

New Royal Winnipeg Ballet artistic director takes big leap with new season

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s forthcoming 2026/27 season will mark the start of a new chapter for the company: it’s the first to be entirely programmed by newly minted artistic director Christopher Stowell.

“My perspective on planning this season has been one of looking in the rear-view mirror because of the great history of the RWB, but then also really looking forward about how we can continue to be innovative and dynamic and distinct,” says Stowell, who began in the role last June.

“And the other thing is really wanting people in our community to be able to connect with us in a much broader variety of ways make it more easy, more accessible, more welcoming, less of a commitment, if that’s how they want it to be.”

The mainstage season will open in October at the Centennial Concert Hall with Stravinsky Stories, a double bill set to two pieces of music written for ballet by influential Russian composer Igor Stravinsky.

What’s up: Shrugging Doctor, Adèle M. Wilding, BPM at WAG, The Trews, Sue Gordon & Aliana Au

Shrugging Doctor turns two… and nine

Shrugging Doctor Beverage Company, 483 Berry St.Saturday, 4-10 p.m.Free

Shrugging Doctor Beverage Company, a Winnipeg-based producer of wine, cider, mead and refreshment beverages (think hard ciders, vodka sodas, canned sangria and the like) marks two anniversaries in one on Saturday, and want you to come raise a glass of one of the aforementioned beverages in celebration.

The upstart drinks producer started out as a business in January 2017 on Brooklyn Street, and in 2024 moved into its current location on Berry Street, which has greater capacity, as well as the “Doctor’s Lounge,” a tasting room built from the ground up. It also tends Manitoba’s only vineyard, in the Pembina Valley, producing grapes that go into wine.

Consolidation plan: Actor takes on challenge of multiple roles in Rogers v. Rogers one-man show

When playwright Michael Healey wrote a Succession-tinged, one-person show about the family saga of the Rogers telecommunications dynasty, there was no competition when it came to selecting his performer.

Louvre official says fraud ‘inevitable’ at large museums as France probes multimillion euro scheme

PARIS (AP) — For the Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, it is “statistically inevitable” that fraud would come up at some point, the museum’s No. 2 said in the wake of a decade-long, 10 million euro ($11.8 million) suspected ticket-fraud scheme revealed last week.

Kim Pham, the Louvre’s general administrator, told The Associated Press that the museum's unique scale makes it particularly vulnerable. However, pressed to name other institutions with similar problems, he declined to single out peers.

“Which museum in the world, with this level of attendance, would not at certain moments have some issues of fraud,” wondered Pham, who oversees day-to-day operations, including administration and internal management.

And that's no easy task, with 86,000 square meters of space presenting 35,000 works of art to 9 million visitors a year.

Carol Shields’ airport vignettes set to take off again

The first play by one of Manitoba’s finest writers is scheduled for a return flight to local stages this weekend, with the Shoestring Players bringing Carol Shields’ Departures and Arrivals to the Forrest Nickerson Theatre.

Modern, historic letters showcase love in dangerous times

Love is in the air at Oseredok.

The Ukrainian cultural and educational centre’s current exhibition, Love Letters: A Timeless Experience, bears witness to the fraught and emotional journeys of past and present Ukrainian-Canadian couples through historical love letters, digital declarations and personal artifacts as they navigated courtship, separation and reunion.

Spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, the exhibition draws on a combination of archival material, including the cultural centre’s collection of rare wedding photographs and studio portraits, and visual installations to trace the love lives of Ukrainian-Canadians across the decades.

A letter-writing manual penned in 1913 by linguist and author F. Dojacek forms the backbone of the immersive show.

Opening the book on how Winnipeg libraries get new material

Last week, local fans of the hit television show Heated Rivalry received a thrilling notification: “Your hold at Winnipeg Public Library is ready to borrow!”

The gay hockey romance has become a major CanCon export, turning Haligionian author Rachel Reid, who penned the books upon which the show is based, into a New York Times bestseller and wreaking havoc on library wait-lists everywhere.

Things started heating up at the Winnipeg Public Library last month.

“That’s when it really took off. There was some increase in December, but not enough to warrant additional copies,” says Aileen Clear, one of three collections librarians responsible for keeping the city’s 20 library branches stocked with new and popular material.

What's Up: Snow restaurant, comedy, Heated Rivalry watch party, CKUW Fundrive, Love is Blank/Yours Truly

The Den1351 MB-200, St. AdolpheFriday to March 7Reservations $272 per person available onlineFine dining fans will find cold comfort at The Den, a seasonal restaurant carved from 500,000-pounds of snow.

Clint Masse — owner of A Maze in Corn and creator of world’s largest snow maze — has been building the massive snow restaurant each winter since 2023 in collaboration with chef Luc Jean of Wow! Catering.

Tickets include a four-course meal, signature cocktail and gratuity, as well as admission to the nearby snow maze and tubing slide.

There’s seating for 80 people in the Den’s cave-like dining rooms, which feature snowy artwork, sculptures and carved ice furniture. The space is unheated and the ambient temperature sits around -5 C. Diners are advised to layer up and dress for the outdoors.

New Music Festival faces diminuendo-ing audiences

The question of Canadian orchestral music’s future may not keep a lot of people up at night. But perhaps that indifference itself hints at a future that can’t be taken for granted.

Five things to check out during Winnipeg’s annual winter party Festival du Voyageur

Take 5: In a regular series, the Free Press explores five great things

Festival du Voyageur is celebrating 57 years of paying homage to the history of francophones, Métis and First Nations in Manitoba.

Headquartered at Whittier Park in St. Boniface, with other events at a host of indoor sites, the festival opens Friday and runs to Feb. 20, featuring a wealth of activities, music and art inspired by the voyageur era of the early 1800s.

Below are five ways to find your joie de vivre during the festival; tickets are available at heho.ca, where you can also download a handy app.

A strange brew of Canadians has joined Bob and Doug Mackenzie in their hoserdom

Every culture has versions of the picaresque hero: part myth, part social descriptor. The archetypal underdog, the lovable rogue of low social origin who outwiles the elite and powerful. In Canada, we could do worse than the hoser.

Public-access talk show parody offers comedic look at masculinity

There’s not much glitz or glamour in the world of public access television, and that’s part of what makes the medium enticing to Winnipeg artist Gislina Patterson, who’s spent hundreds of hours watching YouTube clips of low-budget, off-the-wall programming that wasn’t beholden to Nielsen ratings or network interference.

“What’s really exciting about those shows is that they’re this really pure, free form of expression,” says Patterson, who with Dasha Plett runs We Quit Theatre, a collaborative performance collective that wilfully and skilfully defies expectation.

“It’s people making something that they really like, that they really, really want to make. They have professional equipment, but there’s no expectation of what the material they create will be. And there are really beautiful things that emerge out of that.”

Plett and Patterson’s latest beautiful thing is Men Explain Things to Us … And We Like It!, a project that is exactly as it sounds, but so much more.

Fame a fickle flame for comedian who moves from screen to stage with ease

Fame can be funny. One day, the internet mistakenly pairs you with a Brazilian supermodel you’ve never met. Another day, a waitress at the Calgary airport asks for a photo, then tells you — innocently enough — that you looked “much fatter on TV.” Ryan Belleville laughs at both.