The review begins:

I confess that I went into the opening night performance of Marion Bridge at Globe Theatre feeling skeptical.

The premise, after all, sounds like the set-up to a joke: “A nun, an actress and a soap-opera addict walk into a kitchen …”

Not only that, the fact the three are sisters home together — in Cape Breton, no less — for the first time in years because their mother is dying made me fear I faced a turgid evening of stereotypical CanLit dysfunctional-family angst.

But thanks to Daniel MacIvor’s sharp writing, unexpected story twists, and above all top-notch performances, Marion Bridge won me over.

The 18th-century French poet Jacques Delille famously noted that while we can choose our friends, “Fate chooses our relatives.”

More than one family has fractured because siblings discover they have nothing in common with each other … which is exactly what has happened to the family in Marion Bridge, Globe Theatre’s next mainstage production, running Jan. 20 to Feb. 6.

Written by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor, Marion Bridge is set in Cape Breton, where the three MacKeigan sisters have come together to care for their dying mother.

Aside from their last names, they have nothing in common. Theresa (Laura Condlin) is a nun. Agnes (Liz Gilroy) is a struggling actor.

And then there’s the soap opera-obsessed youngest, Louise, played by Judy Wensel, a recent graduate of the University of Regina’s drama department.

“She’s the only sister who still lives in the home where they all grew up,” Wensel explains. “She feels a bit of frustration. They’re in her space. But over the course of the play they find some common ground and they become sisters again. They lost sight of how family is important, and by the end of it they discover that again.”

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It begins:

What could be better than a wonderful Christmas brunch onstage at the Conexus Arts Centre?

How about a wonderful Christmas brunch followed by a performance by the South Saskatchewan Youth Orchestra?

That’s exactly the hard-to-imagine-a-better-than event scheduled for this Sunday. A silent auction and food kick off the event at 11 a.m., with the concert to follow. Conductor Alan Denike will lead the 45-member orchestra, made up of players whose ages range from 12 to their early 20s, in Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite, selections from Carmen by Georges Bizet, and Leroy Anderson’s Christmas Festival, before finishing up with sing-along carols.

Before Angel Genereux became the producer of Regina Little Theatre’s programs of one-act plays in 2007, they were seen strictly as a venue for new talent on and backstage, and traditionally drew small audiences.

Genereux thought they could draw new audience members, too. She boosted publicity. The result: last spring’s one-acts drew record crowds and made money for the first time ever.

“It’s a chance to see what RLT is all about,” she says. “And it’s cheap: 10 bucks!”

Fast-forward to this fall. Genereux is no longer the producer of the one-acts (she’s moving up to producing the main-stage shows), but she’s still involved. She’s directing one of the three short comedies featured in RLT’s Comedy Cabaret on Friday and Saturday at the Regina Performing Arts Centre.

“I’m the only first-time director, and I picked a 50-minute play with seven characters and heavy on props and set!” she says.

For every form of music there are purists who say of certain practitioners, “That’s not really (whatever form of music they’re a purist in).”

Guitarist Robert Michaels admits Flamenco purists might say the same about Flamenco Fire, the concert he’ll perform with the Regina Symphony Orchestra on Saturday.

But the man the Ottawa Sun once dubbed “Flamenco’s version of Led Zeppelin axe-god Jimmy Page” is OK with that.

Saturday’s high-energy show, he says, is “a cross of different styles, everything from Flamenco to Cuban sounding music, as well as Brazilian, even a bit of Italian.” But it’s all infused with Michaels’s Flamenco style.

An excerpt:

Mackey says one of the main reasons she created the show was to let veterans know that a lot of people really do appreciate the sacrifices they made.

Another was to educate children, and Jake’s Gift, Mackey says, elicits the same “amazing” response from 10-year-olds as it does their elders.

“Those young kids really get it, and it makes them interested in history. They come up to me afterwards and want to know more about the war and Remembrance Day. That’s such an incredible reward.”

Eduardo Ventura, one of the ballet instructors at Class Act and Do It With Class, will dance Basilio.

“He’s a poor barber in the village,” Ventura explains. “Kitri and him have known each other since they were kids, and they love each other, but her father doesn’t want any penniless suitor for his daughter. He’s planning to marry her with the rich Gamache (Kent Wolkowski). They have to fight for their love.”

The role of Kitri is being danced by Jacqueline Burtney, a former student who is currently enrolled in the musical theatre program at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont.

“I’ve been working on ballet since I was seven,” she says.

Ballet isn’t her focus at Sheridan — she only spends an hour and a half on it there each week — but she says her ballet studies in Regina under former Class Act/Do It With Class instructor Ana Maria Campos have helped her get “my foot in the door for what I want to do, because the world of musical theatre is really surrounded by dance.”

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Women today are expected to be beautiful and thin, wonderful mothers and wives, and dedicated to their careers — all at the same time.

Those unrealistic expectations drive the plot of Local Talent, Regina Little Theatre’s final production of the season, June 10-13 at the Regina Performing Arts Centre.

But while the underlying issue is serious, the play is anything but. Instead, says director Mark Claxton, “it’s really funny.”

Read the whole thing, but note there’s a phrase missing in the fourth paragraph, which should read:

Local Talent, by Montreal playwright Colleen Curran, is Claxton’s first full-length directing venture for RLT, which gave him with a scholarship to study at Globe Theatre’s Actor Conservatory last year.

In the online version, at least, the bit about the scholarship is missing, which makes Claxton’s next comment, that he wanted to give something back, seem a little…disconnected.

An excerpt:

More than 350 dance students from age three on up will take to the stage of the Conexus Arts Centre this weekend as the Youth Ballet Company of Saskatchewan, celebrating its 25th anniversary, presents two year-end performances.

“There’s a little bit of duplication, but not very much,” says artistic director Connie Moker Wernikowski.

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The Youth Ballet’s elite pre-professional company will perform Ballet for Life, created by a world-famous choreographer, the late Maurice Bejar, in tribute to the many friends he lost to AIDS. It’s set to music by Queen that lead singer Freddy Mercury wrote when he knew he was dying of AIDS.

Bejar granted permission to one of his students, Artur Kuraczewski, to re-set the piece, and when Kuraczewski was here last August as a guest choreographer, he set it using the Youth Ballet’s senior companies.

“Crowds love it,” Wernikowski says. “The Queen music is so beautiful.”

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