Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty.

        We accept PayPal, Visa & Mastercard
        through our secure checkout.

 

Mastercard                              

 

Local Boy Makes Good: 3 Musicals

Local Boy Makes Good: 3 Musicals
Your Price: $24.95 CDN
Author: John Gray
Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 206
Pub. Date: 1987
ISBN-10: 0889222487
ISBN-13: 9780889222489

About the Play:

Winner Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama

Local Boy Makes Good is a collection of three musicals by John Gray: 18 Wheels, Rock and Roll, and Don Messer's Jubilee.

18 Wheels: Musical vignettes give glimpses into the lives and experiences of long-distance truckers. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male, 1 any gender)

Rock and Roll: In the town of Mushaboom, N.S., four aging rock musicians recall their 1960's high school days as "The Monarchs." (Cast: 1 female, 5 male)

Don Messer's Jubilee: The old gang is reunited in anecdotes and song in this musical tribute to one of CBC's most fondly remembered family programs. (Cast: 1 female, 2 male)

The book Local Boy Makes Good does more than collect three of John Gray's musical plays in one volume. In his preface to each play, and in his charming and wide-ranging introduction, Gray takes this opportunity to offer you some startling insights into the process by which his plays have come about; into his ongoing concern that his audiences not experience his musicals as "art," but as a way of recognizing something about their lives and the lives of those with whom they share their community, and into his own evolution as a playwright--how a boy from Truro, Nova Scotia, who got his start by failing music and playing in local bands named after fast American cars, stepped into the stage lights of Toronto, New York and London by daring to do something that everybody said wouldn't work.

What people say:

"18 Wheels is a high-speed delight — rollicking country music of great charm, characterisations of great wit — a totally successful musical entertainment on a wholly Canadian theme." — Vancouver Province

"Gray's Rock and Roll script and lyrics are alternately full of wisecracks and insights, spoken by highly original characters who never sink into sentimentality. The songs are smart and sassy." — Variety

"Gray's dialogue in Don Messer's Jubliee is witty and pungent, even when it's masochistic and paranoid, and he sprinkles the action with one musical gem after another." — Saturday Night

About the Playwright:

John Gray is the author of a novel, many magazine articles, and several stage musicals, a book on tatoos, Lost in North America: The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream (1994), Local Boy Makes Good (1987), and the internationally acclaimed Billy Bishop Goes to War (1982) with Eric Peterson. He has contributed sixty-five satirical pieces for The Journal on CBC Television, and is a frequent speaker on cultural issues. Among his many awards are the Governor General's Award, the Canadian Authors Association Award, and the National Magazine Award. He lives in Vancouver.

Related Products

Billy Bishop Goes To War (revised edition)
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Billy Bishop Goes To War (revised edition)
John Gray with Eric Peterson