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Looney Tunes cabaret brings music and laughter

The cabaret-style show starts Thursday
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Sarah Jane Hicks

“Be sure to tell people it is adult humour,” says Sarah Jane Hicks during an interview with the Star about Looney Tunes, a cabaret night that will cap off the Nelson Summer Theatre Festival starting Thursday night.

“It’s not a family comedy night,” she says.

Interesting, considering that it wasn’t long ago that the three main performers in Looney Tunes ­— Hicks, Gabriel Macdonald, and Elizabeth Barrett — ­were children themselves.

All three just-under-20-year-olds have been performing busily on various stages in Nelson as singers and actors for years. And they are close friends.

Hicks says they will be bringing in surprise guests each night, “people with illustrious careers in music and theatre.”

“Some of them are invisible,” Macdonald adds.

Each member of the trio speaks highly of the others.

Hicks on Barrett: “Hysterically funny. Great comedic timing. She has a way of pulling anything off. She can make anything funny even if it’s not. She has great conviction. She is light-hearted and kind.”

Macdonald on Barrett: “She doesn’t give herself enough credit for her singing. She is an amazing actor and I look up to her a lot.”

Hicks on Macdonald: “He brings gusto to everything, and does everything all-out and larger than life. His comedy is a caricature of himself.”

The evening will consist of a variety of songs and skits, done in various combinations of the three friends, some serious and some not, with Darren Fuss on piano.

“We are going to do a variety of musical theatre songs,” says Hicks, “mostly comedy, some solos, some duets, some group numbers, plus comedy skits and monologues. We are going to have a couple of David Ives skits. Elizabeth will do some monologues. We’ll have some pieces from Kooman and Dimond, something from Les Miserables, then we have Gabe doing ballads from Phantom of the Opera.”

Macdonald and Hicks have just come off of a successful six nights performing together in Saltwater Moon, also a part of the theatre festival.

Looney Tunes runs Thursday as a $10 preview performance, then Friday and Saturday at 8:30 p.m. at the TNT Playhouse at the corner of Ward and Carbonate. Tickets are available at Booksmyth, 338 Baker St.



Bill Metcalfe

About the Author: Bill Metcalfe

I have lived in Nelson since 1994 and worked as a reporter at the Nelson Star since 2015.
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