Copyright 2001 by Edward Willett

It’s not easy running an arts organization these days. Everything costs money, and it’s getting harder and harder to find that money.

I should know; I’m currently on the board of two different arts organizations (the Saskatchewan Writers Guild and Regina Lyric Light Opera Society), both of which have faced monetary challenges in the past year.

I’ll write a bit more about the SWG and its plans in a future column (around the time of the Guild’s annual meeting at the beginning of November), but this week I want to tell you about a special fundraising event for Regina Lyric Light Opera to kick off the organization’s 25th anniversary season.

Starting Here, Starting Now is a revue—that is, a collection of songs—featuring the work of David Shire and Richard Maltby. Maltby and Shire are one of the most respected lyricist/composer teams on Broadway, but before their successes (Shire won an Oscar for his song for Norma Rae, and Maltby wrote lyrics for the mega-hit Miss Saigon), they had the usual paying-your-dues bad luck.

Things started promisingly enough; both attended Yale, where they wrote their first musical, Cyrano de Bergerac, which starred Dick Cavett, but once out of Yale, they wrote song after song for shows that either closed out of town or never got off the ground at all.

Rather than lose all that wonderful music, they assembled it into Starting Here, Starting Now, which was a hit off-Broadway in 1977. It’s a collage of sophisticated, quick-patter songs about love, life and relationships, each telling a mini-story. In one, for instance, a woman rails about lost love while working a crossword puzzle; in another, a man lashes out at his ex-wife.

The show uses only three performers, one man and two women. Lyric’s production features Colin Grewar, host of CBC Radio’s Afternoon Edition and well-known to musical theatre audiences in Regina for starring roles in shows ranging from Regina Summer Stage’s recent production of The Music Man to (most recently) Lyric’s production of Guys & Dolls.

The two women are Holly Donahue and Donna Trainor. Holly has been outstanding in a series of Lyric productions, beginning with A Little Night Music in 1999 and continuing through last year’s productions of The Apple Tree and Guys & Dolls. Donna has performed in numerous shows with Lyric and tye productions; her last appearance with Lyric was in A Little Night Music.

Directing the show and accompanying it is Robert Ursan, who has directed numerous shows for Lyric, tye productions, and Do It With Class, and was Lyric’s artistic director for three years.

The venue is a new choice for Lyric, as well. Le Bistro, located in Laval School at 3850 Hillsdale Street, seats about 160 people in cabaret style. The Jazz Society has been using it for months now, and Lyric is looking forward to offering a different kind of nightclub-like evening, complete with a cash bar.

Starting Here, Starting Now will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday, November 1, 2 and 3, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, November 7, 8 & 9. The doors and the bar will open at 7 p.m., with the show to follow at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $20, and are available from Book & Brier Patch, Bach & Beyond, right here from inregina.com, and via phone by calling 522-RLLO (7556). They’ll also be available at the door for last-minute purchasers, provided the evening isn’t sold out.

All proceeds from the fundraising performances will go toward Lyric’s major spring production, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel, at the end of May. That show will cost in the neighborhood of $35,000 to stage and in order to keep ticket prices down we deliberately budget it to run a deficit, so the success of this fall’s fundraising production and our annual fundraising brunch at the Hotel Saskatchewan the first two Sundays in February (this year celebrating our 25th season with songs from some of the shows we’ve done over the years) are vital to our goal of at least breaking even financially.

If you enjoy musical theatre, you owe it to yourself to come out to Starting Here, Starting Now. Not only will you have a great time and see a great show, you’ll be helping to ensure that top-notch, affordable musical theatre continues to be produced in Regina, and that the incredibly talented local performers Regina boasts can continue to have an opportunity to strut their stuff.

Posted September 22, 2004