The City of Thompson's annual fall and winter concert series for 2010-11 wraps up March 12 with the Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC) making their annual Thompson visit as part of their regional tour, this time with the comedy Wingfield On Ice.
Show time is 8 p.m. Saturday night at the Letkemann Theatre at R.D. Parker Collegiate.
As the first frost comes to Persephone Township, Walt and Maggie Wingfield are prepared to welcome new life to their farm - she's expecting and he's nesting. Alarmed about old feuds that divide the neighbours and disturb the tranquility of the community, Walt tries to reconcile strained relationships. His attempts to mend other people's fences are met with a resistance as stiff and cold as the weather itself - and the biggest challenge to all of them is looming on the horizon.
This slice of rural life is the fifth of seven in the Wingfield series, which follows stockbroker-turned-farmer Walt Wingfield, in a mythical township north of Toronto. While performing in the series for over 25 years, Rod Beattie has won three best actor awards.
The Manitoba Theatre Centre, based in Winnipeg, is wrapped up the City of Thompson's concert series for 2009-10 with Robert Chafe's 2002 play Tempting Providence, originally commissioned to be a "portable" play to be performed in Newfoundland and Labrador's senior citizen homes and schools, written as a series of episodes that chronicle the early years of Myra Bennett's life in Daniel's Harbour, Newfoundland and Labrador.
This winter marks the 33rd consecutive year the MTC has gone on regional tour. In 2009, MTC brought to Thompson Theresa Rebeck's one-character play, Bad Dates, starring actress Precious Chong, daughter of Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong fame, as Haley Walker in a monologue by a Texas woman transplanted to New York City. MTC also took the play to Churchill, making their first stop there in 17 years. MTC brought Rope's End, Doug Bowie's bittersweet 2006 comedy came to Thompson Jan. 29, 2008 as part of its annual regional tour.
The night before Wingfield On Ice, the Home Routes Concert Tour, now in its second year in Thompson and organized by Lisa Evasiuk, is in its Basement Bijou room venue at the Thompson Public Library. Show time is 7 p.m. Friday and tickets are $15.
Katherine Wheatley, originally from Parry Sound, Ont., who graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. with a geology degree and spent five seasons roughing it in the bush, is here March 11. She started songwriting with a $13 guitar ordered from the Sears catalogue. She spent four seasons working north of Flin Flon before heading to Africa. She is also a member of the Toronto band, Betty and the Bobs and a guitarist in Wendell Ferguson's trio "The Smoking Section."
The season wraps up April 9 with Arthur O'Brien and Fred Jorgensen, half of the four-member Newfoundland band The Navigators, who were will be here to share their traditional Newfoundland and Irish music.
